Where chrome meets memory.
Meet Jon Dykstra, founder of JalopyTalk. A lifelong interest in the history of vehicles, told through serious editorial coverage of the cars, trucks, motorcycles, and roadside culture that shaped modern North America.
Connect with Jon on LinkedIn
“ You can’t really understand a modern car without knowing what it replaced. The story is in what changed.
A lifelong interest in the road behind us.
Jon Dykstra has spent his life paying attention to vehicles. The chrome-heavy sedans of the 1950s, the bench-seat pickups of the 1970s, the British twins and Japanese fours that fought it out on American roads, the long-haul rigs that ran the interstates before satellites and ELDs took over. What started as a kid’s fascination with hood ornaments and shop manuals became a serious editorial interest in the machines, the people, and the era they built.
He founded JalopyTalk to write about all of it properly. Most automotive nostalgia online sits in two camps: thin clickbait listicles for the algorithm, or restoration forum minutiae written for people who already know everything. JalopyTalk lives between them. Real coverage of specific vehicles, specific decades, and the culture that surrounded them, written for people who lived through it and people who wish they had.
“The cars themselves are only half the story. The rest is the dealerships, the gas stations, the drive-ins, the Saturday mornings in the garage. We cover all of it.”
Over time JalopyTalk became something more than a publication. Most car writing is one person’s opinion, or the same collector-market talking points repeated everywhere. Here you get something better: answers based on what thousands of real car people actually loved, owned and remember. Alongside the stories, the site asks about the cars themselves, anonymously and one tap at a time. Did you live it, remember it, or was it before your time? Bench seat or buckets? Which of two photos would you rather have in your driveway? Added up, those answers show which eras people actually drove through, which details they miss and which ones they’re glad are gone, and that goes straight back into the stories you read.
“I’ve read car magazines my whole life and none of them could tell me what their readers actually loved. Now we can count it — and share it.”
Jon has been publishing independent editorial brands since 2012 and runs JalopyTalk as part of a small portfolio of sites. He’s based in North Vancouver, British Columbia.
Jon Dykstra on LinkedInCheryline Lawson
Cheryline Lawson is a college graduate with a degree in Journalism. She is a mother of 2 adult boys and lives in Florida. She is an experienced writer, knowledgeable in multiple disciplines with a keen interest in researching and writing about various types of vehicles. Driven by her passion for writing, Ms. Lawson takes pride in her talent by providing the best work at all times. She is a self-published author with 8 books on Amazon platform. In addition to that, she has been recognized as one of the best and most consistent writers at Writeraccess.com, committed to her craft and showing it in her dedication and reliability.
Cheryline Lawson on LinkedInReal research. Real history. Written for people who remember.
Specific Vehicles, Specific Eras
Generic nostalgia content is everywhere. JalopyTalk goes the other way: real coverage of specific models, specific model years, and the details that actually distinguished them. The 1967 Mustang. The original F-100. The Plymouth Hemi Cuda. The bikes, the trims, the engines.
Coverage of the Whole Era
Vehicles don’t exist in a vacuum. We cover the dealerships, the gas stations, the cruising strips, the truck stops, the drive-ins, the magazine advertising, and the Saturday morning rituals that surrounded the machines and made the era what it was.
Honest Coverage, No Filler
Direct writing, well-researched pieces, and an honest eye for the details modern automotive coverage tends to flatten. Built for readers who lived through this stuff and can spot a faker at fifty paces.
The garage vote.
What you get from JalopyTalk isn’t one writer’s taste or a collector magazine’s price guide. It’s what thousands of real car people actually loved, owned and remember. As you read, you can react to the cars in the pictures, and those taps, collected anonymously, add up to answers no one else can give you.
Which eras readers lived
On nostalgia pieces, Lived it, Remember it or Before my time shows which decades our readers actually drove through, so you see the cars real people remember.
Which cars people really loved
Hearts and Hot or Not matchups rank the body styles, colours and eras readers would actually park in their driveway, not the ones a critic says they should.
Polls, Reactions & Price Guesses
Knobs or touchscreen, convertible or muscle car, a quick “why?” after a reaction and, on stories about old prices, a guess at the sticker before it’s revealed. You see how your answer compares.
It’s all collected anonymously: no names, no emails, no IP addresses, and only totals across many readers ever get published. The details: Data Collection · Privacy Policy.
The beats.
JalopyTalk’s coverage runs deep on the machines, the people who built and drove them, and the world they moved through.
Classic Cars
The 1950s, 60s, and 70s rolling stock that defined American driving. Specific models, vanished features, and the dealership rituals that surrounded them.
Pickup Truck Culture
The original F-100, the era of farm trucks that lasted thirty years, and the bench-seat, manual-window pickups that built the country.
Motorcycles
The British era of Triumph, BSA, and Norton. The Japanese invasion. Harley culture. Cafe racers. The bikes that earned their reputations the hard way.
Driving Culture & Cruising
Friday night on the strip. Drive-in movies. Sunday family drives. The teenage car culture of small-town America before the screens took over.
Features That Vanished
Hood ornaments. Crank windows. Three-on-the-tree. Ashtrays. Vinyl tops. Bench seats. The details that quietly disappeared from American cars.
Garage & Driveway Repair
Saturday oil changes, the tools every dad owned, and the era when cars came with their own toolkits and you were expected to use them.
Truckers & CB Radio
The Convoy era. Long-haul culture. Truck stops with chrome and diners. The 1970s when truckers ruled the highways and the airwaves.
The Showroom
What buying a car at a 1968 dealership actually felt like. The handshake deal era. The salesmen, the test drives, and the rituals that vanished.
Vintage Auto Advertising
Cadillac’s detached cool. Truck commercials selling masculinity. The car ads of the 1960s that built the dream and would never run today.
RVs & Travel Trailers
Airstream’s silver age. The VW van as counterculture identity. Pop-up campers, station wagon tents, and the era when every family camped.
Aviation, Rail & Maritime
Pan Am Clippers. The Concorde. The 20th Century Limited. Chris Craft wooden powerboats. The Queen Mary. The transportation history beyond the road.
Motorsports
NASCAR before the modern circuit. Le Mans, Daytona, Indy. The Trans-Am era. Drag strip culture. The drivers and races that defined American racing.
Roadside America
Full-service gas stations. Diners and motels. Auto repair shops in 1975. The giant-everything tourist traps. The America the car made possible.
The road behind us, properly told.
Browse the archive, dig into the model-specific deep dives, or follow along. New pieces go up regularly.