Mythbusters: an unscientific statistical analysis of rod building styles, circa 55/60

I had some time on my hands this afternoon. I dug out all my Hot Rod issues from 1955 through the end of 1960, and went through them, recording what I saw.

My sample size was 40 magazines, or 55% of the total possible sample size, big enough for any statician to consider it a valid sample size.

I used cars from feature articles, show coverage, readers write, and the for sale sections.
My goal was to do a statistical analysis of hot rods from the era based on build style and region.

I picked '55 as the starting point for two reasons, 1) it was the year the SBC hit the scene, and sounded the death knell for the flathead, and 2) it marked the transition of the focus of the rod scene from lakes to drag strips.

I split the build styles as follows: Channeled full-fendered, channeled cycle fenders, channeled no fenders, unchanneled full-fendered, unchanneled cycle fendered, and highboy aka unchanneled no fenders.

I split the country into Hawaii, California, the NW(OR, WA, and BC) the West, including Texas, the mid-west, and the East, including Florida.
I left post '35 cars out of the sample, as they would obviously skew the numbers towards full-fendered, and I left out dedicated race cars, as the class rules dictate the build style.

Before I post the numbers, anyone want to hazard any guesses/predictions? % of CA fenderless highboys vs channeled, cycle fendered? percentage spread of channeled cars vs unchanneled across the regions? Most popular CA build style?

Even I got a couple surprises, well one big one anyway.

 

A very cool period in Hot Rodding I look forward to seeing this thread progressing. As someone who has every Hot Rod issue from Sept '48 to 1960 I will sit back and enjoy.

 

Cool. I'm wearing my Mythbusters t-shirt!

 

George, you may well have too much time on your hands ! I'll say more un-channeled with cycle fenders if the fender law was in place at that time. East coast I'd say more channeled cars.

 

I'm in

 

First off, let me say you have got wayyyy to much time on your hands. But just the same I'll bite: Only 10% channeled at all, of those, 10% channeled with cycle fenders, 5% channeled with full fenders and 85% no fenders. Of the total cars, 90% highboys with 30% of those with no fenders. V8 in maybe 25% of Hot Rods.
These are just a wild guess as I was born in '63 and have no idea what the laws where in CA at the time.
Fasttoys

 

I'm looking forward to this.

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I'll play, George. And I won't even look at my old magazines. Let's see...

West: Full fendered non-channeled.

Midwest: Full fendered non-channeled.

East: Full fendered non-channeled.

If I'm right...and I think I might be...the results will strengthen the point that some proponents of full-fendered cars often make...that there weren't nearly as many fenderless and/or channeled hot rods back then as we see today...even in the east.

 

DAMN Ricky Bob! First close guess! CA was HUGE full-fendered unchanneled, I mean WAY disproportinate to everywhere else, and WAY higher than I expected. they constituted 42%(!! I expected channeled cycle fendered cars to dominate in CA) of the CA cars featured, and 33% nationwide. Fenderless highboys constituted 6% of the total sample, in other words virtually non-existant. If you remove the full fendered cars from the sample, channeled cars out-numbered unchannelled cars by a wide margin nationwide and in CA, which I expected going in. I will post a fully detailed set of numbers in the morning, its beddy-by time.

 

You forgot to correlate fenders versus no fenders with salt belt versus west coast. If the fenders are solid and in good shape, there's a better shot people kept them.

 

Hi George, you may be able to answer a question I have,i have a Edelbrock alloy intake and im trying to have my 26 T have a 57-58 look. Should I paint the intake or could I leave it natural ? Cheers, JW

 

Interesting... can't wait to find out "what the survey says!" In the doubting Thomas department, how can anyone be sure that what cars were published in any time frame were an accurate representations of what was actually on the road? Or is that another question entirely?

You know what they say about history books, the winners (publishers / authors) write them after the fact to reflect their own version of the story. There is inherently a lot of inbreeding in that process - the person who controls the ink flow ends up publishing articles about cars / events, or editorials reflecting a narrower point of view, or from a small circle of friends, photographers, promoters, business partners, advertisers, curators, collectors, etc.. Would you get another result if you looked at magazines and books not published in the same network, in today speak, or the same part of the country? Gary

 

Channeled with cycle fenders might have high numbers because...

- That's commonly thought of as the typical traditional eastern style.
- The cycle fenders were more popular back then.
- Your survey goes 'til the end of the '60s and the styles were getting wilder.
- They still had pretty strict fender laws.
- Easier to mount cycle/bobbed fenders on a channeled car. More difficult for full-fendered channeled.

Although...a lot of guys had a penchant for full-fendered channeled cars during that time period.

 

Why would you want to paint it?? bead blast it and leave it be. Is that manifold a gennie 50's Edelbrock?

 

No its a wieand 7504, I just got a Edelbrock Streetmaster 3225 with filler/breather tube and not sure of vintage but it did come in a shipment from the U.S. Would it look ok in that period if left Alloy finish ?JW

 

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There are lots of variables that should be considered, some of which "gnichols" touched on above. Here's a few more things to ponder.

Cars featured in magazines a lot of times are innovative/trend setters stuff that catches the photog's eye as being different. Takes a while for those looks to actually hit the street so cars in Mag's might not be an accurate representation of what you would see driving around your town. Not everyone is a trendsetter.

Cars take time to build, what ever was in a Mag in 55 was probably started in 53-54 so there are bound to be influences from those years and possibly earlier. How long did it take for a car to get noticed/known enough to be featured in a Mag. Not sure if it was true then like now but Mag's are done months in advance so that may set the clock back a bit also.

Cars get updated to some, but not all, of the current trends so actual cars on the street may have been a mix of old and new. There were probably still a lot of fenderless cars running around even though the trend in the Mag's was going toward fenders.

You've gotta figure a SBC wasn't the easiest thing to obtain in 55 unless you were lucky enough to find a wrecked car or had deep enough pockets to waltz into the Chevy dealer and buy one.

My truck was an old hot rod. It wasn't complete when I got it so I tried to stay in the 57-60 period. I'm running a 1957 283. Tried to build it as if it had a flathead when first built mid 50's, then was upgraded to a chevy engine when one was obtained probably 59-60ish.

Cool history lesson man. Should be a great discussion. Thanks for doin the work George.

 

I would have taken a nap with the extra time you speak of.

 

G'rat, ya beat me to it. If it's in the book it's probably exceptional. However, the book has serious influence on the real thing. Advertisers, desire, it's all there. Look at how the mags have influenced the trends over the decades we've been active in this. Do we think the dreaded pro street look would have existed with the strength it had without the full color features the likes of Scott Sullivan and others? Pro touring? Now look at how "traditional" cars are starting to rule the day. If we want to keep it strictly with the realms of pre 35 cars, look what Lil John and Boyd did to the craft. Like art imitating life (or is it the other way around?) we've come full circle to a point. Still some high tech cars being built (I'm doing one for a client) but the people will always gravitate to the old style cars. If had the quintessential A coupe on Deuce rails with all the "right" big dollar rare speed parts, and parked it next to the new Speed33 I'm building, it's not hard to guess which car would get the most pictures taken, draw the most attention. And the GNRS winner this year was? Yeah, I suspect the Ridler might go the same way soon, perhaps as early as next year if the right car is being built for it.

Well that's my lame research FWIW...

 

Sorry buddy, sittin at a computer and not feelin this work thing today.

 

This is what I saw to be true here in my area, and in a few magazines that I got to see at school.

The Y2K "traditional" builds are not the way it was.

The modern representations are also a very obvious cluster-f of decades, like a 40s Lakes competion highboy body, with 58-up finned drums, yet running pre-55-rod style 16" wheels, but with the 70s-style "too" big and "too" little tires, not to mention 30s style stock big bulb headlights. wth

Not to start a crap-fest, but in some ways, the modern "Kulture" rods are a closer feel to the old builds: "low, level stance, rear Z'd frames, and channeled"

 

Most of the cars featured in the magazines were built years before they ever got published...I had a T featured in Hot Rod in 1967 that Bob Hegge took photos of in 1961...you cannot go by your assumptions

 

Well before I read on I want to say that I got my knob polish out because I am absolutely sure the the experts are about to bend down for me.

By the way this is just opinion but I am going to throw it out there anyway, the cars that made it into magazines are not a good cross section of hot rodding in general as they were the cream of the crop and not your standard street scene hot rods. To do a proper study you really need to look at everyone's old picture albums. And Hot rod magazine just did a history of hot rodding taken from their archives and it is amazing how many unprimered hot rods made it onto their pages. They primered rods didn't start showing up until the later 70s or '80s. Again this is magazines and not street scene.

Edit damn it:

Note none of this is an affront to george's findings.

 

I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to see your findings. Great topic, I lean toward the '61-'67 period of rods myself; but I love the pre'60 stuff as well. Trend setting TRUE history is all in the facts, and Hot Rod was on top of it. Although, it may skew a little differant if the little eastern rod books were to be taken into account. Thanks for your time to check it out.

 

Another thing about magazines:

I skateboarded until I was in my early 40's. learned to skate pools in SoCal in 1978. Fast forward to the late 90's. I read an article in Transworld about this killer empty Blue Haven in Houghton Lake Michigan. Just so happens I'm going there the next weekend. I wanna hit it while I'm there of course. I get hold of the guy that wrote the article to see if he will tell me where it is. He says:

"Oh, well, I just made that up for the article. I needed to fill the page".

Don't always believe what you read.

 

I got a '58 magazine, it is not hot rod and I don't remember the name of it but it has an at article about building a skip jack. I am going to post a build thread when I get started on it, and the article so that everyone will know that it is traditional hot rodding.

Yea I know it will get deleted and I will probably get an ugly mail but as long as I don't get banned it will be worth it.

 

Maybe I'm a bit slow on the uptake today. Is this some sort of crack at me throwing my 2 cents in? Just checking.

 

Ok, just the only 2 late 50s builds that I have ever owned. Both were built in Massachusetts; the red roadster is a 1930 Mopar, early 2bbl SBC, with a Ford truck shell. Was bright turquois first, then in mid 60s got red paint and pinner whites. Built in Springfield, Mass (pic taken in 70 or 71, when I got it)

The roadster pickup is a 1930 Chevy, 303 olds, chromed drop/drilled spring-ahead ford axle, was white with dark copper chassis,firewall,motor, and lights. 12" rear frame Z, had chrome Harley mufflers at bed tops, like "belly burners".Was built in the Boston, Mass area (pic taken in last 2 weeks, when I got it)



Note the size of the lights and the front tires on both cars

 

Looking forward to your analysis George!

 

George, I did this same thread several years ago