Art & Inspiration Traditional images that need no explanation.

I hear this a lot, from some of old dirt track racers, and from the guys that wish they could find the old coupe bodies in the condition those old dirt track cars appeared to have been in back then, now, in this current time.

The hard reality is, many of those old 30s & 40s coupes were pretty rough before they ever saw the race tracks back then. The hayday of the old coupe racing was in the 1950s and the early 1960s. Those cars had already survived the WW2 scrap drives, and most were already close to or even more then 20 years old. Twenty years old doesn't sound like much these days, but back in the late 50s & early 60s, the average age of the cars on the road probably didn't exceed 5-6 years old, and many were lucky to make it past 7 or 8 years old and still be road worthy. A 10 year old car still being driven was pretty rare back then, at least here in the mid west. Old cars were considered to be junk, the only reason most were still around was because you had to pay to have them hauled off to scrap, so they ended up in old buildings, or behind barns, or in the trees,any place they could be hidden out of site.

The restorers of the time were only interested in the near perfect prime examples, and the hot rodders were looking for the best stuff they could find for cheap. A rusty body, bent or damaged body panels, or missing, or broken parts, were all a death sentence for the old coupes. No one was interested in the old 30s Ford (or what ever) with bent up fenders, broken glass, ripped up seats, and a motor that didn't run.

The dirt tracks were a place the old junkers could get used up before they went to scrap. There were a lot of old junkers around to use up, and a lot of them did get used up. The fact is, it took nearly 30 years of dirt track racing, nation wide (into the mid 1960s here), to dwindle down the endless supply of derelict old coupes that were still to "rough" to restore or build into hot rods (which was just getting started across the country). The next hard fact is that most of those old coupes that were used up on the oval tracks would have never survived long enough to be considered as a usable starting point for a hot rod. For the most part, the old coupes were not raced much past the mid 60s in most of the country.

Now 50 years after racing them ended, guys are willing to put forth the effort to fix up the rust buckets that are still around. They see the 70 old pictures and cry about how we ruined all those cars. Mean while, you are lucky to find a buildable example of a turn of this century car to build.
If you really want to blame someone for destroying all those cars, blame the junk yards that crushed them, the government that wanted them gone, and mother nature for ravishing the ones that did survive.

 

Ahhhh-Haaa somebody's building a tube frame for a Mustang (there...I said it !)
6sally6

 

That’s a young Smokey Yunick but I have no idea what engine block that is. Anyone know?

 

No,,,but a better pic.

 

Rip Kirby's roadster at the Fishermans Bend Drags, Melbourne in the early 60's

 

This is how my first roadster sat in the late 1960's. The deck lid was lower than the top of the rear tires.

 

Wish more people would build T roadsters with full fenders,, just my 2 cents worth

 

I really like these Aussie pics from bitd.I am currently in the planning stage of building a A Tudor from that era with a nod to how I saw hot rods, as a kid, being built in Australia and New Zealand. Nothing against period built American hot rods, but we had to rely on a lot of Aussie and British modifications for our builds at the time, until stuff started to appear on the shelves. Cheers