Welcome to the Fall Festival issue! Returning readers will know that this is the column where we beg everyone to send in material -- no, we're not about to stop; that's what makes the magazine possible. This time, however, we got more than we bargained for.

That's because a major Volvofest took place in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, on the third weekend in September: the VSA Eastern National Meet and the second Vintage Volvo Gran Prix at Road America. We'd casually mentioned having an interest in this to-do to a few friends ("Hey, as long as you're going, mind snapping a few pics?"), and they responded by enlisting a whole squad of their friends to provide coverage of the festivities.

As well as continuing his saga about reviving his 544 for the trip to Wisconsin, Mark Hershoren reports on both events (Mark has been promoted from "Friend" to "Friend and Foreign Correspondent"). Our Associate Editor David A. Hueppchen and Richard A. Hayden (owner of Art Riley's historic P1800) put us right in the center of the racing action. An enormous pile of photos arrived from Mark, Michael Schultz, Brooks Townes, and pro photographers Edmund Lacis and Bill Hodson.

All in the week before our deadline -- Uff da!

In order to cram all that material in, we decided to devote a supplemental section of the magazine to the Elkhart Lake stuff on top of the regular full issue. We'll build a photo gallery of the Road America races (at least) as soon as the oil temp on our scanner cools down a bit...

The "regular" part of the magazine includes Mark's saga (heroically illustrated by David Doyle -- 'bout time we had some art in here), a partial report on our road trip to Oregon and a "how to" article on rebuilding front ends. We reworked the Archive and Ask the Experts sections, wrote a serious Soapbox editorial -- oh, and Marsha found the time to sort of fool around with a pumpkin or two for our cover.

There were a few casualties, unfortunately: Jeff Meek and Associate Editor Cameron Lovre sent in excellent photos of the recent VCOA meet at Puyallup, Washington, and we had planned a third part to our road trip series featuring Cameron's assorted Volvos -- there just wasn't time, guys! Something had to give. Please accept our apologies -- we'll get you into the next issue.

We hope you'll enjoy this issue (well, someone likes this stuff -- the August/September issue bagged some 9300 "hits"). So, enjoy yourself! We're off to find some aspirin.

Phil Singher, Editor