Introducing TGP Magazine!

We’ve redesigned TGP!

I’m just super delighted to tell you we’ve completely redesigned the site to make it easier for you to find more of what you like. We’ve got Cars, Business, and Life editions, a properly organized podcast page, and all our formal business stuff is located under the About menu. 

There’s easy access to the forum and special columns like JDM Journeys, Escapades in the Everyday, and Amazing Machines, plus explanations and timelines for all the next level stuff we’ve been scheming up for the last two years. 

Take a look around! Test drive the new site! And let us know what you think (or if you find any issues)? You can comment on this post or send us an email. We wanna know what you think!

That’s it! Piece of cake! Of course, if you want a little more context…

Here’s the backstory.

Two years ago today, I launched The Gearhead Project. After almost 10 years, Gearbox Magazine had taken me as far as it could. GBXM evolved, from a showcase of Mitsubishi owner pride to a master class in global automotive citizenship and how cars improve our lives. 

I can’t help but think back to 2009 and the first post on GBXM—the one about Mitsubishi’s DNA. What did we have in common with the OEMs? It all started with a love for motoring; the machines we built with blood, sweat, tears, and hard-earned money.

We grew up playing with cars. We’re STILL playing with cars. 

Time flies. Blink and you’ll miss it. When I think back to the first post on this site, I’m reminded we all started somewhere—and one day we look back and realize just how far we’ve come. We were all excitable, clueless no0bs—but nothing stopped us from figuring things out. 

Such is The Way of the Gearhead. And so it is with websites, and businesses, and life in general. Once we start chasing our crazy ideas—our dreams—with real, actual action, things start changing. it can be hard to keep up, but that’s what we do. Goonies never say die.

What would you say you DO here? 

That’s probably the most common—and frustrating—question I’ve heard over the years. It’s clear we’re doing something. And it’s clear we’re really excited about it—but just what IT is has been a bit tricky to define. Our website wasn’t doing us any favors, either. 

A few months ago, as COVID-19 was testing toilet paper supply chains and our ability to remember what day it is, Todd asked me, “Why is the website setup the way that it is?” “Well,” I began, pulling up the TGP home page, “I wanted to, um…”

And that’s when I remembered. Back in 2018, I just wanted to get a basic site up so people could read the stories and get the newsletter. That’s all; just something basic to get the job done while I focused on the content and the business plan. 

A year and a half later, the site had not changed in any meaningful way since Day One. I think that’s the longest I’ve ever let a site go without fiddling with the look. Just goes to show, appearance mods are nice, but eventually you gotta back ‘em up with performance. 

We have a mission now.

TGP helps people build better cars, businesses, and lives. This is where we talk about what works, what doesn’t, how what we know about cars applies to the rest of our lives.

TGP Mission

We’ve designed the new site around our mission so it makes more sense. It’s been a long time coming. Honestly, much longer than I ever thought it would take. GBXM was like my first project car. I started out with grand ideas fueled with hopes and dreams. I took it as far as I could. I got by with a little help from my friends. Deanna, Dennis, Kim, Dave, Rob. Thank you. 

As with most project vehicles, you reach a point where something’s gotta change. I started GBXM as a DSMer interested in extensive modifications and how regular Joes and Josephines like us can turn commuter cars into high performance giant slayers. I walked away a gearhead interested in how modifying cars modifies our lives. 

TGP was borne out of this revelation. 

But talk is cheap! How do we back up our big ideas with action? We start by reverse engineering the ridiculously epic future we see for gearheads like us and building clear, easy-to-follow roads to the appropriate waypoints. 

TGP goes deeper. It’s not so much about what we do with the machines as it is about what all this car stuff does to US. So we tend to blur the lines between cars, business, and life in general. And that can get sketchy for some people—especially when our website pretty much just leaves everyone to figure it out for themselves. 

Up to now, we’ve been blurring the lines between cars, business, and life; kinda hoping more people would catch on and “get it”. You know, here’s a story about a gearhead who started selling his spare parts to make room in his garage and now he’s paying for all his mods with that money. Or, here’s a story about a gearhead family camping trip where they pretended they were hobbits in Mordor.

The idea was we’d share those stories with you and maybe you’d think, “I’ve got a lot of parts lying around. I wonder what I could get for them.” Or, “My kids are all about Minecraft. We should go check out that strip mine in the next county.” That’s the thing about mods. They’re not limited to bolt-ons and internals. DRIVER mods deliver the biggest performance gains.

TGP Magazine: Cars, Business & Life

Our website is pretty much TGP Magazine. Our home page features everything we’ve published. You can read page after page, all the way to the first thing published on this site. We’ve also created three special editions of TGP Magazine—Cars, Business, and Life—to keep things better organized.

There’s going to be some overlap, but we expect these sections to stand on their own in the coming months. Here’s a quick explanation of what you’ll see when you click CARS, BUSINESS, or LIFE in the main menu. 

In other words, now that we have reserved parking for specific topics diving deeper into things beyond just cars, we’ll make sure we keep them there. Easier to find if you’re looking for it—and not gonna distract you if you’re not. 

The Gearhead Projects

The footer of every page includes icons and links to the foundations of TGP, from the Magazine to the Forum. We’ve been working on this website remodel for most of 2020, but we’ve been collecting ideas and thinking about what we launch next. (Hint: Check out the Project Roadmap)

You can read our latest on TGP Magazine, the home page. You can get it delivered once a week by email in the TGP Digest. You could browse our collection of podcast episodes, or learn more about the forum if you’ve not joined us in the forum. 

You’ll also find easy links to special columns like Phil Hanford’s JDM Journeys and John Rimmer’s Escapades in the Everyday, as well as Amazing Machines and my random Daily Drivers. It’s all been redesigned to make more sense. 

The best is yet to come!

We’re glad you’re here. We appreciate you. And we want to do right by you. 

Thanks for taking a few minutes to have a look around. We look forward to your feedback.