History What us trad rodders were doing in the 70's...

Disco didn't come into my area until the very late '70's, more of an eighties thing.
Disco sucks.

 

I remember pumping gas at .27 cents a gal. here in Indiana you had to figure 4% sales tax in your head $4.80 in gas was $5 worth and that would last a long time, even pullin .410 gears. My kids tell me i'm stuck in the 70's that's only because their mother told them that, they have NO idea what they missed! I'd go back in a heartbeat.....who's coming with me?

 

Most of the scale model muscle cars still have the "accessories" for this look to this day.

I am far too young to have any stories about the '70s. I find it interesting to see the flow of vehicle trends.

 

What in the world made that fella think that his sport suite and a hot car went together.
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Edit: I mean liesure suit.
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I was actually wearing levis boot cut jeans back then, but 501s are the real deal. Still wear them today.

I have to admit that I had some pretty good times back then. Sometimes I had too much fun but that is the way it is when you are a young man, a life of excess is normal.

I was living out in SE Kansas in '76 when the Peace Train went though. Cruised right through our town @ 5:30 AM. Little podunk town in SE Kansas. I had a '66 Grand Prix, waxed to the max and settin purdy on someone else's cast off reverse chromies, and a mostly finished 80" flathead. Parked them both on the side of the tracks all night long. The whole rest of the town was right there with us. The song lyric "everbody does get stoned" comes to mind. What a party.

Damn if I think about it long enough I'll just about bet I can write a book about lost time in the '70s.

 

All this stuff was still happening in the early 80's in the U.K. I was about 16 and in a local car club, The Riverside Street Cruisers, and everything was jacked up, with slots. One guy, Andy I think was his name, a painter, had a really nice orange and silver road runner with centerlines. Another guy had a mustang all 'muraled up' called Gone in 60 seconds, appliance 5's, draylon interior, full works.
The Swedes used to come over with all there mad cars for 'The Door Slammers', basically a door slammer event at Santa Pod raceway, great memories.
Never did buy a muscle car tho, when i could afford one my folks said they would cost too much to run, no one wanted a Mopar, Camaros and Mustangs were where it was at, now I couldn't afford to any of them, another missed oppurtunity.
Wish i had some pictures.

Just found a U.K photo site,
http://hotrodphotos.co.uk/PhotoAlbums1970's.htm

 

I miss Dad, but I'm no longer sad so much as I am nostalgic. Thanks for sharing your other 'Vette.

Dad had fitted his with an LT-1 350 purchased from Berger Chevrolet in Grand Rapids. We still have it and my brother plans to get it back on the road once he sells his '77 off.

As I recall, the slot mags on Dad's '69 aren't Ansens, I think they were sold under the Mickey Thompson brand. He also ran Mickey Thompson branded Raider five spokes on his '65 GTO in the decade before.

-Dave

 

OK, I'll go first. 71 chev swb 350 3-sp. ... I had the double bed, 8-track, windowless with curtains, wooden rear bumper with Mickey Mouse sticker ..... oh, and did I mention the whip antennae with red bandana?






Lake Elsinore CA about 73'

 

right click save, great pics

 

In the '37 Hudson on our way to St. Paul 1979,... The paint was a couple days old, the carpet was laid down a hour before we left, It had a 40 ford front axle & brakes, a 8" mustang rear end, a stock 1969 Chevy 6 cylinder and automatic,... This was the madin voiage from Detroit to St. Paul,.... It used a gallon of oil on the way there and two on the way back,......


Putting a new battery, alternator & rear U Joint in, in the parking lot somewhere in Ill.
This car was built in about 6 weeks, on a shoestring budget,.. That's my late brother Rick munching on a burger at the door,..... (lost him to cancer 5 years ago....)


Recognize that old Custom ???? , They were broke down on the other side of the highway,... We stopped, and helped them get going again. Mark and brother Rick coming back across the road.


St.Paul at last,... Not exactly the Ritz,..... In fact it was a real dive. Found a better room the next day......



Seriously,... is there anything better than washing your car with Hotel towels ??????

This was before the "Dare to be different thing" What a butt ugly car !!!!

 

You can't say "up in the rear" without including that crazy rabbit guy's Plymouth from "Thunderbolt & Lightfoot"...

 

July 4th 1976, Baby Shjt Green (big Bad Green) 68 Javelin 390 4bbl 4 spd dual exhaust, gutted glass packs- ass end hitting treetops, bag of weed in each boot, case of bud in the trunk getting ready to party with a cute red head at my side.. Oklahoma Highway Patrol pulls me over and tells me to change my exhaust, I try to tell him I'm shipping out to Germany in a week. He tells me again that if he see's me on the road again I'll get hauled in and put in jail. I salute him, say yes sir and go. Never changed the exhaust..

 

cool pictures. man those shackles looked like shit!

 

riding around in a van ,blastin rock ,raisin hell, first harley,dirt track racin' !! i guess just havin fun !

 

In my mind the "Ten Most Beautiful Design Items " of the auto world the banjo ranks right up there with the 32' nose and midget duck tail.

 

Laughed my ass off! Funny stuff there!

 

I remember getting pulled over by a VA state trooper near Suffolk, VA in 1974 because my '70 Chevelle SS was too high in the back and too low in the front. The L60s needed the space and the air shocks really put that ass end up there. Good thing we had the windows down.
As for Pennsylvania, one of my Navy buddies was from there and he had lots of horror stories about what they couldn't do. I haven't thought of that in years, lol.

One thing that just came to mind; even though I had a couple of muscle cars and worked on many others for my friends in the '70s and much later, my original interest in cars was and still is the cars I saw in the '60s in Spearfish, SD when I was a kid. There was a nose high, y block, 4 speed 55 or 56 Ford down the alley, a blue telephone booth T with a small block, a red 55 Chevy with blue tinted glass and my sisters boyfriends early '50s Chevy taildragger. I can picture those cars in my mind like it was yesterday. Maybe thats why I like this site so much.
Okay, I'll shut up now. lol

 

I had long hair and wore bell bottom or "boot cut" Levi's... We were building sleepers with 455 powered Novas and the other GM clones..... Buick Apollos, Pontiac Venturas and I think the other was the Olds Omega...... Fun times indeed!..
Then I got hit by the early Camaro bug.. But that's another story....

 

I spent the late 60s racing the local dirt tracks and then got into Model As in the 70s.

 

Ha, I helped a guy put together a sleepy Omega in the '70s. he used the original 350 and tweeked the hell out of it. Used mostly canaro parts in the front end as Olds front end parts could not be found for some reason, not even from the dealer. Big block springs camaro discs with a hat disc setup as opposed to the common rotor built into the hub. Lots of neat little things. That car was a lot of fun to drive when he finished it.

 

Leaf Spring Shackles......
So under-appreciated in History!
$15 shackles and some nail holes in your muffler and you were an instant hot rodder, by God!!

 

As I recall the A's were pretty damn expensive in the mid-late 70s .... the resto guys had the value of a common restored coupe up to ten grand, which was pretty pricey back then. ....... and then the Shays came out and I thought "Man, this is gonna surely change the market."

 

On our way to a Hot Rod Show in Rochester in 1975...I still have the dash plaque

Yes that is me in the white hat...

 

For '70s rides those are actually pretty slick. I think the guys that really had it going on in the '70s were the old hot rodders. They saved us.

 

My parents driveway in the late 70's. Brothers and I still own all 3 cars.

 

Do ya still own the plastic one? I'd like to own that plastic on myself.

 

Hell yea,spent allota time hanging out at the station,Nite-ly ritual was to go down to the Sunoco Station and hang out sometimes 10 15 hot rods in the side lot

 

as a suvivor of the sixties (with very little memory) I always felt they must have had better drugs than we did. weird stuff came down in the 70's I'm glad I never left the 50's
excuse me for a moment while I run out and burn all the photo's and my plaid double knit bell bottoms.

 

Too young for motorized transportation in the 70's.