The wrecking yards were sources for late model wrecks giving up 'performance' parts. They also offered many bodies/chassis that had to be preserved (babied) throughout the war. The combination allowed the youth to create individual rides. ( cheap ) Many of these guys had talents and stamina from military and depression era regimen. So why not?
Customs were for getting the girl, hot rods were for getting rid of them! Hot rods were the excuse not to have kids!
These pictures of "Ed" and his "T" roadster, are pretty much, a good definition of what a "HOT ROD" is !
Individuality...Innovation....Engineering......Problem Solving.....Bad-Assery.....Drag Racing ....Street Racing.....Girls.....Parties.....Hot Rods......Kustoms......Car Shows......Girls....Music.....Cruising the Local Burger Joint.....Chasing Women......Raising a Little Hell....Staying Out of Jail.....Trying to Keep Your License.....Late Nights on the Local Illegal 1/4 Mile.......Girls....Late Nights in the Garage.....Haulin' Shine......Girls. What did I miss?
Figuring that covers from 1945 through 1960 if you wanted a fast car you pretty well had to build it. The new cars that were pretty fast when they rolled out of the dealers showrooms were also pretty expensive at the time and not what most guys could afford. Quite often you could stick a later model engine out of the wrecking yard in a fairly decent older and lighter body and have the fastest car in town for less than the down payment on the new model version of the engine's donor at the dealership. In 57/58 my then step father traded a 53 Mercury with a tired engine for a 52 Ford Victoria with a 56 Thunderbird Special engine in it that had run in the 14's at the drag strip. That car was fast for the time period. A friend of my dads started selling cams and intakes out of his Gas station and that grew to the point that he left the gas station and started a parts house that ended up being a small chain of parts houses known for stocking speed parts in the Renton and Seattle area.
Which one ? The original generation ? Current ? Since hot rodding began before the war, there have been a few.
Finally , somebody said it , gettin' laid , everything else was a by- product , the same thing that motivates everything .
Perhaps "hot rod generation" just needs to be qualified more narrowly? Do you mean "generation" in the sense of a society-wide age group, considered to have some kind of societal attitude in common, in this case the tail end of the Greatest Generation and the beginning of the Silent Generation? Or do you mean "generation" in the sense of a group of contemporary creative figures who worked in the same cultural/historical context, and who were in some way in conversation with each other, like the Beat Generation? A generation in a subculture like hot rodding would seem to be either a bit of both or something in between. The history of the hot rod phenomenon during the "traditional" era does indeed track the Beat Generation in many ways, and it can be argued that both are responses to the same societal situation: a sense of being well-informed and sidelined at the same time, and therefore making do with what you can get and working outside the way things are set up. As to what it was "about": it should be fairly obvious that Allen Ginsberg wrote Howl because he wanted to, but we don't learn a hell of a lot from that bare fact. The fact that hot rodding in the "traditional" era was as a rule not overtly political does not mean that there wasn't an inherently subversive aspect to it. The "hoodlum" character was generally not consciously embraced by hot-rodders, but thrust upon them due to the unbeknownst systemic implications of hot rodding. I do not the time to flesh this out right now, and I am fairly sure a thorough socio-cultural analysis would take in territory inappropriate to the HAMB. Besides, I have to leave now because my wife reckons we need beer (yes, she's a keeper!)
For some reason I woke up thinking about the hippie generation. They are probably the generation that is most easily described. They tried and did (to some extent) change things. I think that there is no hot rod generation. It'd be like trying to describe a generation by a hobby or a sport.
The Jalopy Journal
