After 35 years in print, we have moved online with a full color digital edition. We hope you like the new look and features. We were not able to continue printing a hard copy due to increasing production, printing and mailing costs so made the change to a digital edition so we could continue bringing you the auto-related events you want to know about. 

If you don’t know our history, here’s the short version told by our Editor/Publisher Tracey Ellis.

Hi. I’m Tracey Ellis and I’m a female auto enthusiast who grew up in Loveland, Colorado and graduated from Colorado State University (CSU) in Fort Collins, Colorado. My dad did all his own automotive work with the exception of engine or transmission rebuilds since we couldn’t give up the one-car garage for that big of project. I had two older brothers and my dad would ask any of us for help with automotive projects. I really enjoyed working on cars and didn’t realize that my car interests set me apart from the other girls until junior high and walked home after school with a male classmate to see the 1969 GT 500 Shelby he was restoring with his dad.

Because I was raised in a car family, I drove a “cool” car to school in high school and thought nothing of it until I looked around the parking lot and saw what everyone else was driving. When I was featured as “Student of the Month” in my high school newspaper, my picture was taken with me standing by “SCOOP”, my 1969 Ford Mustang Wimbledon White coupe. He later acquired a hood scoop and racing style mirrors found on other higher performance models. As soon as I could drive, my best friend introduced me to “cruising” and hanging out with other auto-enthusiasts. I was an excellent student during the day, participated in high school sports, and worked my way up to being editor of my high school newspaper my senior year. However, I couldn’t wait for weekends to come so I could go hang out with my fellow auto-enthusiasts. I am still friends with many of those people today and even met my future husband cruising when mutual friends introduced us. 

After graduating from CSU, I settled into married life and working as a social worker in Northern Colorado. While cruising in Fort Collins one night, my husband and I met Drew Alcazar and some other Mustang enthusiasts and we decided to start the High Country Mustang Club in Northern Colorado. We also joined together with other local car clubs to form a group and not be scheduling our own club events over the top of each other so we would all have more car events to attend. We also put on one bigger show together each summer called the Fun Fest.

THE LATEST SCOOP started “accidently” when I kept track of all these club contacts and their club events as well as any other events I heard about in a notebook. I could rattle off upcoming events and their dates and eventually started receiving phone calls from people I didn’t even know asking me what auto events were coming up and my husband suggested “maybe you should be doing this for people.” If I was going to tackle this project I realized I would need a computer to keep track of all the events and the people. I decided on a new Apple Mac Plus computer and a dot matrix printer. I received a loan from my local credit union using my 1969 Mach as collateral and THE LATEST SCOOP was born in 1990. The first issue’s events were printed out on a dot matrix printer and then laid out using wax on light blue-lined layout sheets for those of you who remember that layout technique. With tons of support from many auto-enthusiasts, auto-related businesses, graphic artists and my family here we are thirty-five years later! 

As always, thanks for your support!