Is the HAMB the place for muscle cars, VWs and Toyotas?

Im going to TRY to save judging what i'm seeing, but i'll just point out an observation(s) and a question(s):

Im noticing a lot of threads about muscle cars, VWs, Toyota engines, etc. over the past month or two on the HAMB.

Is the HAMB readership evolving beyond traditional hot rods and customs, or is the HAMB getting a lot of members who are into cars and traditional influence but are also forward thinkers who cant limit themselves to an era?

To me, being truly traditional IS like being trapped in the past. I think in nature many people have a problem with that. I work in the technology industry, and not evolving technology or ways of thinking is certain death- and in my professional life is just isnt possible. However, in many aspects of my personal life I kinda like pretending im trapped in an era-- it's less stressful and easy on my mind.

What is tradtional in my mind?..... For example, if you're building a 40's car based on traditional mid 50's customization style-- then you pretty much put yourself in a time machine and utilize past vision and what was available back in the mid 50's. Yes, it's obvious that things evolve and get better, but tradition isnt about that... its about back then. In a way, it's about limiting yourself and your mind, and im ok with that.

So, if the HAMB is supposed to be about pre '64 cars customized via traditional means-- than a lot of discussions im seeing on the HAMB just wouldnt exist. We'd be trapped back in time and humans would not have evolved into making VWs look like hot rods, using Toyota hemis, or even understanding what a '67 Camaro was...

That said, i push the edge a bit... I use airbags on my cars and i've talked about that here (don't tell anyone, but i also have a satellite radio hidden in my glovebox .) So, im interested-- where should the line be drawn, or should one be drawn at all? On one hand, not drawing any line seems to be a perfect answer for the forward thinking and rebelious (how punk rock....) However, without any lines will the HAMB evolve into talking about subwoofers and '89 Mustang 5.0's ?

Im interested in hearing peoples opinions. I also know this is a bit of a can of worms, so I realize some keyboard bad ***es may need to try to beat me up personally on this subject-- swing away, ive got a pretty good chin

Thanks,

-scott noteboom

 

the primary focus of the hamb is traditional, alternative lifestyles

 

huh?!

 

you took that out of context, it said traditional too

 

They call living in the Castro distict in SF an alternative lifestyle.... Hummmm......

 

The HAMB is NOT about any type of "lifestyle". The HAMB is about traditional hot rods and customs period. Ryan "allows" alittle leway reg some off topic posts BUT if/when the first page or so get too many they disappear, rightly so. If anyone wants to discuss topics that aren't related to traditional hot rods or customs there are plenty of other forums on the internet for that. You don't have to do it here on the HAMB.

 

Er...lifestyles? Too much "kulture" on here for me now days. I thought this "Welcome to the THE H.A.M.B. - a community dedicated to spreading the gospel of traditional hot rods and kustoms to hoodlums worldwide." was what the HAMB was about?

 

I think this statement says a lot.....

The word traditional is rooted so deeply in being conservative.

Yet, being traditional today as defined back then is very liberating and fairly different to many people

Thus, we get a clash of conservative (traditional) and liberal (alternative) in this statement and this board. I think that quick comment says a lot...

DAMN... now that i read over this, I really think im sounding like a hippy. Maybe i should go shoot myself now

 

Message boards on the Internet aren't tradtional.

 

Lots of good points.
Yeah, alot of muscle car/VW talk lately.
I think alot of has to do with the volumn of traffic here and the fact that alot of the younger guys (myself included) owned VWs/Muscle cars before coming to the dark side of rods and customs.
I think the moderators do a good job of keeping a handle on things though.
PMs should be used more often when topics go way OT.

The HAMB is such a great place to get quick answers to problems for your rod or custom that I think guys tend to abuse that privledge w/ OT topics hoping to get answers without going somewhere else (ie. other forums).

 

You mean like trying to be John Milner and not Ward Cleaver, right?

I mean, I'd probably get laughed out of Billetproof if I arrived in a stock, woodgrained '54 Ford wagon wearing a gray flannel suit, matching fedora and smoking a pipe, right? Yet isn't that more traditional than a guy with a t-shirt and cuffed jeans and more tattoos than an old sailor?

Ima go put on a Perry Como record. These musclecar threads are stressing me out.

-Dave

 

I take the HAMB as a place for people that appreciate and build cars as close as possible to the style and mechanics of pre 64. That Does not include muscle cars, rice rockets, ect even ****py ones.

 

I dont know what a fedora is, but i agree with that statement

 

It's a hat.

-Dave

 

I think its a small cat.

(edit) I mean... a hat.

 

I have the feeling that the people that built the cars in the '50s and earlyer might have been more diverse in their interests than we give them credit for.

Some of these guys really studied other types of racing, airplanes, etc.

So it seems logical to me to include these influences...
Not to compete with the Trad cars, but to support them.


So in my personal opinion, some diversety is good.
As long as it doesnt drown out what the HAMB was created for.

Just my personal opinion...

 

I'm pretty sure that the stuff we call traditional now was pretty non-traditional then, or it would have gone unnoticed. How will the traditions of tomorrow begin if we do not break the mold today?

I agree that the moderators on here keep us in check pretty well. They also foster innovative thinking by allowing the discussion to venture into new areas. One of these days, my kid may be bragging about the toyota hemi his dad ran back in the day.

 

I live, eat, breath hot rods and customs, I also own a 69 Camaro as well.
I don't go to McDonalds for chinese food, but come to the HAMB for my greatest p***ion and ignore the rest. The mods do a good job weeding through the chaff. Most guys have a variety of interest concerning mechanical stuff, but I try to keep it based to what the HAMB is about.

 

I don't bother reading about post 1965 vehicles, unless Big Foot just crushed some.

 

I'm recently departed from the VW scene and find myself pulling from my vast knowledge of watercooled dubs to help figure stuff out with old american iron. it's just where i learned what i know so in one way or another it's going to transfer into my style and tuning of a car.

 

i did a amerisan motors thread the other day..someone replyed sayin bein how it was ot, they would post a shot of there motor.. i really dont think it was ot..i understand what era were here for and that is what i was hopin to see...old nashes, and g***ed ramblers etc....so what some think of as ot and not are sometimes different....and a word about tradition....thats all great but to stick to a period perfect car would involve more money then most of us could ever afford!!im puttin a 62 cad motor in my 29 sedan...i seen a blower mount on egay goin for 1700 bones with lots o time left the other day....maybe its a midwest thing but parts of any kind for about anything are extremely rare!!!!!!!!!!!!>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.....breeder

 

There was a lot more "Kulture" being pushed thru here when I first signed on.
It's much tamer now...

There are usually 'reasons why' ***ociated with the longer lasting off topic posts that make their being around understandable. You need to look at the posts in relation to the other posts made during the same time period.
For example VW posts.
Some get shot down right away or are barely tolerated at best because they offer a modern take on the role of the VW and its acceptance or non-acceptance by the early Hot Rodders.
Others, like the pre 64 VW G***er project going on right now, are based on historical fact and can't be denyed...no matter what a persons feelings are towards the vehicle itself.
It was posted due to an overall HAMB interest in G***ers and Altered's that was being posted at the time.

This place is about "preserving interest" in the old ways of construction and the styles of the vehicles during that era.

But not all the builds are gonna be 100% reconstructions of a pre 64 ride.
For many people that form of restoration thinking would **** the fun right out of the buildup!
Respect to those who do strive to pull it off completely...but not everyone can be expected to be that deep.

I truly believe the HAMB strikes a perfect, (self-policing) balance between how it was, how it is and how we chose to remember and honour it.

 

To me, its like if you saw two cars parked side by side. One is a 31 model a coupe, with a full house flattie for power. The other is a 67 camaro with the usual muscle car mods. I will always check out the hot rod first, and the camaro second. I like em both, but the hot rods and customs are what interests me the most. I think the moderators (and the more outspoken members) keep things pretty well in line.

 

Just based on the sheer volume of members on the HAMB I think its inevitable that the parameters of traditional will get pushed.

I think that's a good thing. Even if someone expresses an unwelcome idea or posts a picture of something questionable, anybody with an open mind and creative spirit should be able to understand how that could relate to his own projects. Even if the only purpose is to represent something that you wanna avoid. Understanding origins can only help you build something cooler today.

I just put a set of chrome reverse on pinner whites on my '66 GTO. Maybe I should ruin everyones day and post a picture of it.........nah, I'll save that for a board that doesn't exist yet.

 

very well put...nuff said!!!!!!

 

You shouldnt go there at all......their "food" tastes like ****.

 

Must be that time of year when we debate and define what we're about here. I'd like to suggest a viewpoint that I haven't heard offered before:

When a technology is in its infancy, lots of widely varied solutions are tried. To stay close to our area of interest, I would offer drag racing, Formula 1, and commercial airliners as illustrations. Of course I'm gonna end up talking about hot rods and customs.

In the early days of drag racing (or more specifically, dragsters) there were rail jobs, and then slingshots, and eventually rear-engined top fuelers. Wheelbases were variously long or short, engines supercharged or not, racing fuels were (at first) not put into a separate cl***. People tried 2 or more engines and a wide variety of ch***is designs. Nowadays, top fuel cars all follow a similar recipe and -- aside from graphics -- are virtually indistinguishable from each other.

When F1 started in the early '50s, they were all front-engined single seaters with wire wheels and drum brakes. But there were 4-, 6-, 8- and 12-cylinder cars (even a couple of 16's). Body shapes varied tremendously as various teams experimented with aerodynamics. Then came disc brakes, alloy wheels, rear engines, monocoque ch***is and ground effects. In the period 1958-68 there was a nice variety, with old and new tech competing on a more or less level playing field. Today, like drag racing, the best solutions are widely agreed upon, and there's very little apparent variety a**** the different teams.

Airliners: I think Ford tri-motors and Lockheed Constellations were cool designs, and very different from their compe***ors. But now they all follow an established precedent, and unless Burt Rutan starts designing airliners, I don't think we'll see anything that fresh and distinctive any time soon.

OK, so the point of all that is that over time, solutions to similar mechanical problems become themselves similar. Variety (and interest) are lost.

In the meantime, for most of us, as we grow older we become nostalgic. We favor what we knew in an earlier, simpler time, and recall it fondly. Many of us also develop an interest in historical precedents. What led up to the stuff that first caught our interest?

So -- second point -- most of us, especially this group, prefer the stuff we grew up with.

The early days of hot rods and customs (I'll take the '40s and '50s as the frame of reference) were a period of experimentation and improvisation. Guys put V8 engines in model A's, and put Cadillac taillights on Chevrolets. Some of them even adapted Mercedes-Benz superchargers or Marmon V16 engines to their Ford-based hot rods.

But after a while, these areas too developed the successful recipe. An SBC powered Deuce roadster, or a chopped '50 Merc with a DeSoto grille -- what could be better? For a nostalgic wannabe, the ideal car would look just like something he saw when he was 14, so he re-creates it. On the other hand, a guy who puts a Lexus hemi in his Deuce is spiritually pretty close to the guy who used an Ardun in 1954.

A beam-axled VW or a Toyota-powered T are absolutely within the spirit, if not the letter, of a tradition-based culture of car enthusiasts.

I suspect that there are similarly a bunch of closet enthusiasts for 427 Galaxies and hottie Camaros a**** us, but those cars are apparently outside our area of common interest. My daily driver is red pickup on a big rake with yellow wheels and a blown V8 -- but it's a '99 Ford Lightning, so it doesn't qualify as appropriate subject matter for this board.

I suggest that, as a group, what we value is innovation and ingenuity, within the context of traditional style. Our scorn for the cookie-cutter street rod is not so much because it's bad or lacks style, but because it lacks IMAGINATION (for this topic I'm ignoring the DIY factor). I have to say that sometimes we are guilty of that ourselves -- I have seen some flathead-powered steel cars that are less imaginative than some other Chebby-powered plastic ones.

Muscle cars, VWs and Toyotas are not within the focus of this board -- except when they are. It seems that the board is successfully self-regulating in this regard MOST of the time, and when it's not, Ryan gets to play Solomon. I'm very glad that he doesn't have to do that very often.

 

and it gives ya the Mc****'s

 

I sat with a guy at back to the 50's this weekend who is a real old hot rodder (34 highboy roadster in the 50's) who just laughed at alot of the "rockabilly" guys and cars he saw out there. He said when he was doing this back in the 50's, he and his buddies wouldn't have been caught dead driving some of the stuff younger guy's think they did "back in the day". He said they were always improving their cars, not just seeing how big of a POS they could build. He said for him, it was to pick up girls, and avoid being h***ledby the cops. The girls didn't want to ride in a rusty old car with no floor, and the cops didn't want you driving one! He said it seems like now guys go for the impact (like ground s****ing channel jobs, or 12'' chopped model A's) and forget the rest. I did tell him, that cars like that tend to be the exception, not the rule, and that alot of guys try to stick to the way they were then.
He did commented on how he see's alot of the new cars that are being made to look old that hit the look right on.
My opinion on that topic is the guys that are new to the Hot Rod hobby seem to be the ones who do the most radical, in your face cars, and lifestyle kinds of things.
The ones who grew up with their Fathers and Grandfathers being into it tend to hold the tradition a little truer to the way it really was. I think that is what comes from having a person who's been there to guide your path.
If you don't come from a background like that, seek out those old timers, get as much knowledge and opinions as you can from them. Don't just covet their parts stashes, as they may be willing to part with things they have easier, if they know it's going on their style of car.
I know there's a wide range of styles, tastes, and ages on here. I think that's what makes the HAMB a great place! I also think that it can go a long way to keeping the traditional side of this alive. When someone post's a "what do think of this..." give them an honest answer! especially from the guy's who where there "back in the day". Don't just post some *** kiss answer to get your post count up.
I see the HAMB as a place to learn something new, everytime I log in. I enjoy learning about non-traditional stuff now and then, but I still like it traditional!
As I said, this is just my opinion, not trying to step on any toes!