Hot Rods For Debate: When Did Hotrodding Take Root?

36C8, the timing sound about right. Since Truman was born in 1884, he'd have still been a younger man when T's were around as used or old cars. I can surely imagine a farm boy in Independence, MO, tinkering with hopping up a car. ('course, we know he went off to WWI, where he attained the rank of captain.)

HEY! Does this make President Truman (at least unofficiallY) one of the FIRST hotrodders???

Interesting!

 

Senior HAMBer TFeverFred of Houston posted something on another thread Oct. 1, and his tag expresses a viewpoint VERY relevant to this thread on the "roots" of hotrodding. To wit:

"Defining the term 'Hot Rod' is about as elusive as trying to find a deuce roadster that's been stored in some old farmer's barn since April 1st, 1932. It can and does mean many things to many people."

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daytona_Beach_Road_Course
DAYTONA BEACH was the cradle of land speed racing NOT SOUTHERN CA

NORTH CAROLINA was also the cradle of racing / hot rodding ./ moonshine running hot rods and old school customs to evade the law, then NASCAR started.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA is the cradle of promoting / magazines / tv / hollywood
but all that glitters is not gold.

I was born in California, and do love it. But hotrodding was going on everywhere, just not promoted as much.

The Answer would have to be Daytona Beach or North Carolina.
Sorry guys. Don't believe everything in the magazines/tabloids.

have fun
wil
www.sakowskimotors.com

 

Yes it was, and both venues were worlds apart.

Daytona Beach was by far the most unsafest place to attempt an LSR but unlike the drylake beds of California it was accessible to every man and his dog. It was also a place where many millionaire playboys attempted to scribe their names in the record books with overweight underpowered 'accidents waiting to happen', a far cry from the far cheaper jalopy pilots who roamed America in contraptions complete with parts originally manufactured for heavy vehicles and later to be called speed parts. These guys and gals are what i call copycats.

 

SakowskiMotors wrote: ". . . hotrodding was going on everywhere, just not promoted as much."

I think this is a succinct point EVERYBODY can/should agree on, regardless of where one is from. To do otherwise is pretty much like inter-collegiate rivalries -- rah, rah!

Good point, good post (but somebody's ALWAYS gonna argue, just for the very sake of argument, you know?).

 

As soon as the first guy with a automobile challenged a guy with a horse.

 

Hank37, you may be right, buddy. But, given terrain and the comparative attributes of, say, a curved-dash Olds and various horse breeds, I bet a lot of people would have bet on the horse! LOL

 

Now that I think about it, HOW WOULD YOU GUYS VOTE? Curved-dash Olds VS. thoroughbred?

Assuming, for the sake of argument, an eighth-mile drag race, the horse would obviously get the jump. But, would the Olds CATCH him before the finish line? Hypothetical situation, but interesting!

(After all, the "Get a horse!" crowd were only finally muzzled when early car performance finally SURPASSED that of horses.)

 

No contest. Not over an eighth of a mile.
The Olds has a top speed of 18MPH while a top thoroughbred ranges anywhere from 30-45MPH.

As for your last comment, the "get a horse" crowd finally learnt to join 'em if you couldn't beat 'em. The motorcar was hated so much due to the fact the roads were built for horses and they stunk.

 

Thanks, Kurtis. That settles THAT! Speed-wise, I mean.

As for the other point, traditional folks used to using horses hated early automobiles, because they scred the shit out of horses. Plus, some drivers were rude on the roads & streets. Mufflers were not around in the early years, and WHO mounted on a horse or driving a carriage is gonna take knidly to some jerk using his bulb-brass or Klaxton horn?

But, yeah, not much after 1900, the auto overtook the horse in performance -- and remained an obsession with those who could afford a car AND even those who could NOT.

 

In another current thread, "Packard V-12 in Hotrods?" HAMBer Jim Dillon of Highland, MI, wrote on Oct. 2:

"The more you research the engineers at Packard back in the teens the more you may come to the conclusion that they were just a bunch of hot rodders."

It's an eye-opening thread and WORTH a read if you give even a hoot about Packard engineering.

 

We nailed down the official adoption of the term "hotrod" to the 1940s, of course. But I do recall some terms used earlier by old folks about juiced-up oldies. So, I did a little digging.

"Jalopy" originated about 1928, according to Webster. It just referred to an older dilapidated car. Another term I heard a lot as a kid was "rattletrap." Though the word was coined in the 1820s, it was adopted as an alternate name for jalopies during the '20s and '30s. Jalopies and rattletraps were often rattly, smoky and noisy. "Job" was another one I heard, as in, "Will you look at that job!" The older crowd and the more affluent just plain looked down their noses in disapproval, or outright disgust, at youngsters "tooling around" in those "heaps."

SO, before they were called hotrods, the inventive lads of yesteryear might be said to be puttering around town in a "hopped-up" or "juiced-up" jalopy, job or rattletrap. Heck, they couldn't afford newer cars, so boys picked a car out of a junkyard and substituted elbow grease and ingenuity for money to make the old beasts go fast. They were driving the "hotrods" of their day!


Any HAMBers out there think of any OTHER names and adjectives applied to hotrods BEFORE they came to be known AS hotrods?

 

Any HAMBers out there think of any OTHER names and adjectives applied to hotrods BEFORE they came to be known AS hotrods?
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Gary Nichols posted a thread on Oct. 20, "World's first street rod?" that is replete with some hard facts, lots of informed opinion and speculation AND a ton of humorous baloney, too! Great READ (and thought provoking, as well!).

CHECK IT OUT!

 

Here's another early expression for hotrods I hadn't heard in SO long that I actually forgot about it! Somebody on another thread mentioned a rodder tooling around in his "go-job." THAT is an oldie but, well, maybe that one didn't get much traction, eh? LOL

 

"The Roots of Rodding? And the trunk, the whole damn tree!" quipped HAMBer PaperDog of somewhere north of Minneapolis/St. Paul on the thread, "Sitting & Rotting." He reported that "a little cutting" was apparently required. When he returned, both tree and car body were GONE.

 

Ah! Don't ya just LOVE a woodsy scene??? I guess, MORE of the "Roots" of Hotrodding!!! Keen shot from Nebraska HAMBer JDK on his thread, "Behind the Barn Find!" WAY cool project-a-comin! See this thread!!!

 

Still MORE wood (in this case, EXTREME!!!).

Senior member 2-Toned shot this '34 Ford in southern Minnesota and posted
it on the thread, "Old Tin found in Woods, bushes, behind a barn etc...." in 2006
with the remark that it would take a "a real man" to save it! Word up! I've seen
a TON of '20s to '50s cars that were WAY far gone. But THIS poor car looks
as if the tree has EATEN IT! 2-Toned save some garnish moldings & apparently
used his recip. saw to save a corner of the windshield frame, at least!

 

Siting historical records are only as accurate as the record itself is and what about all the things in history that weren't recorded or that occured to give the noted people in history the idea that they went and made historyw with. It's as heated of a debte as what the term custom or old school or retro really means or what defines what a muscle car is and these are all a source of amusment watching all the idiots argue about what is or isn't hot rod, old school or retro because of some detail they hold as gospel that someone else doesn't. It really comes down to what you and your gang beleive and hold true that makes you feel right with the world. Recorded history does show that Hot Rodding became a more popular focus after WWII but it still existed before this. The speed records at Bonneville date back to before the 40's and what about before they started keeping records there? It started somewhere before that, before it became popular. I quit trying to find these exact dates and arguing the details of these words that are supposed to be labels a but really in our society have become more of terms of slang. Endering terms of slang but slang none the less. I heard a quote made by the King, Richard Petty where in an interview he stated "the very first car race occured 10 minutes after the second car was built." The interviewer said "where was that?' Petty just smiled. The history of Hot Rodding beyond what records show can be fun and disappointing as you realize how inaccurate or lack of depth the noted records really are but those records too are a good read, the developers had to stop somewhere, and some of the exact events in our cultures history will never be noted and have and will be lost forever. That's just the way it is. Don't worry too much about details like this, you'll go nuts. Go have some fume fun. Remember, just make yourself smile.

 

Hey, BigJer! Thanks for wading in with such an analytical take on this theme. It's been a fun thread, and we did hash out various details, leading to some very logical conclusions. One of those is that RACING is in the human BLOOD, and EVERY competitive spirirt was always looking for a comp EDGE -- legally or otherwise!!!

Yeah, guys posted some COOL cartoons of Brutus and Maximus racing their chariots in the Colisseum in Rome in the first century. BUT THEY WERE RIGHT!!! RACING -- be it with horses or hotrods -- has ALWAYS been with us.

The competitive spirit, the spirit to get MORE speed out of a horse, car or steamboat . . .THERE is where the REAL roots of hotrodding date back to!!!

Thanks for your thoughtful post, man! Nice to revisit this theme, briefly.

 

Barney drove a roadster with a track nose, wide white walls, and double wishbone suspension?

 

I see they also had the first auto clubs.

 

Ya know, Schmoozo, JUST when I thought I'd get the very LAST word . . . ya gotta bring up Barney Rubble's splits & the FIRST auto CLUBS!

Sheesh! I give up!

LOL

 

More of the "ROOTS" of Rodding !

 

Damn trees! Taking over all the old iron. Let's kill trees!

OR, let's make veneer and turn this '26 T into a WOODY!!! THAT's the ticket!

Seriously, though, HAMBer KopperKraft shot this touring car in Wisconsin, before he cut it into two pieces and rescued it! Great job, man!!!

 

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1903, Ransom Olds racing "The Pirate" at Ormond/Daytona Beach, Florida
Roddin' a REO on the beach, this about the oldest roddin' picture in America.
GMRodder new guy from Alberta, Canada, posted this on another thread.
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There is a great racing history thread going on the HAMB covering 1894-1944. My late friend Tom Arthur was researching a RACE in 1878 that was for a prize fund authorized by the Wisconsin State Legistlature for "Road Tractors" when he passed away. A HAMBster not only concurred he produced the appropriate newspaper clippings. What a great community here!

Archealogists have found dozens of ceramic tile mosaics throughout the ancient world that show chariot racing scenes and slogans like "go blue" or "go red"; there were not only chariot races but traveling professional teams and fan clubs with club houses to support them.

If "hot rodding" is fitting aftermarket parts to production cars, the Model T spawned its own industry by 1920.

Chuck Schultz
Winfield, Illinois

 

Maybe it was when some dude hooked a second horse to his cart !!!

 

It is my understanding that the First car ever to be called by the New Term "Hotrod" is and will always be the first "Hotrod"

Find the first usage of the word "Hotrod" and you will find the first Hotrod,

no ifs and's or buts, the first hotrod was the first car to be called a hotrod.

Although throwing money at a car in hopes of making speed preceded the first actual hotrod, it was the first usage of the term hotrod by the one and only first person to coin the phrase that dictated what he thought was a hotrod and I believe that the term was first used to describe a Ford.



Ford = first "Hotrod" as far as the term is concerned but souping up a car to gain speed obviously predates that.


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If the term "Hotrod" wasn't coined until ~world war ll then how would REO be considered anything close to a hotrod?

It wasn't called a hotrod in 1917 and it certainly wasn't called a hotrod anytime between wwll and today.

REO = not a hotrod

REO = modified lakes or track racer in it's day


Hotrod = term coined by someone around wwll referring to a modified '20s or '30s Model T or Model A.

Find the first usage of the term hotrod and you will find the first hotrod.

Until then, all else was modified racing.



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Guys, as a point of form, the thread proposition hinges on two keys, if you re-read it. First, I expected a DEBATE (we surely have gotten that!!! LOL).

Secondly, we are not (NOT) arguing when the term "hotrod" was coined. Never were, that's not in question. If anything, the idea was to trace the ROOTS, i.e., when did people start stripping down, hopping up, modifying cars for speed (which only later got nicknamed "hotrodding," of course).

To put it another way, what went on and what language was used back when hotrodding wasn't yet CALLED hotrodding?