Traditionally "bad" ideas...

get some "little books" and look at the readers rides sections. chrome stars on the skirts, buick port holes in weird areas, mud flaps, too many antenas, the biggest thing was probably the mid 50's on up was too much is not enough. the term "unusual" was a good thing. you wanted your car to be "unusual" with crazy paint, fins that where way too big, lots of chrome.......


the biggest problem i see today is that very little of this stuff is traditional. you may call it traditionally styled i guess. guys are twisting traditional styling around to be what they like, you can't change history around to suit your needs. some of the new stuff looks good, but, it pushes the limits of what is actually traditional.


the one thing that bothers me the most about all of this is engine choice. there are way to many early fords running around with flatheads. they didn't have nearly as many hot rod aftermarket parts as we do. so, if you wanted to go faster you swapped engines to something newer and more powerful. be it buick, olds, pontiac, mercury, cadillac, chrysler, whatever was fastest at the moment. even the dreaded small block chevy. engine swaps are the very essence of hot rodding. leave the "put a ford in your ford" crap to the restorers.

 

my two cents on the rust issue...

40 or 50 year ago the cars that we like so much didn't have the time to accumulate the rust that you see today. especially in the Ohio Valley and other areas with high humidity. Sure, you could pick up a car off the back lot with minimal rust for a song and dance back then. Today, time has taken its toll on many of those cars and "straight bodies" just arent as abundant as they once were... much less as affordable.

the "rat rods" of today could just possibly be an evolutionary step in this hotrod world brought on by circumstance and opportunity.

a kid buying his first 30's, 40's, or 50's model car is going to have a hard time finding something he can afford that would be in comparable shape as to what was available 50 year ago. So, he may settle for something a little "rusty" to hold him over until he can scrape up enough cash for a rust free car. This has probably happened countless times. The kid then begins tinkering with his new pride and joy and making small repairs on saturdays but still cant afford the big buck "vintage parts" so he settles with what he can including rattle can paint.

Since this scenario has been played out so many times its only going to develop into its own style or "subculture" with time... and it will pass. 50 years from now somebody will start a thread on the same topic and we will all have a hearty laugh thinking about the completely dangerous rust buckets we would drive to the next state just to pay a $20 registration fee and show off what we got.

i would love to own a nice, clean car that i am proud to show off. I just cant afford it right now. So i will have fun with what i can afford. My cadillac isnt to bad in the rust department but it is constantly in a state of repair and i love to drive it.

i do understand the backlash against these rusty beauties. Im not a big fan of fake patinas and hand sanding bare spots just for the rust effect or not finishing welds but to each their own.

im sorry if this came off hostile... i have complete respect for the good ol' days and those that pioneered this hobby. i just feel that the rat rod thing is a product of its own environment.

im also sorry if i hijacked this thread. not my intentions.

 

You were in a totally different world than me in SoCal.
UglyAss hood ornaments went into the trash bin and the holes filled!

 

Mistake....Gassers that look like four wheel drive with a lift kit.
I know many of you think it looks cool and I don't necessarily disagree. It was an experiment. If it were desireable, drag cars would still be doing it.
Experiments and ideas from the minds of hot rodders before internet and catalogue parts deserve the credit for the development of our incureable passion for what is now called "Tradition"..

 

Yep..after getting the car running and stopping decent, the next thing we did was pull up a stool and start sanding, rust hole filling, and preparing that body for paint! couldn't be seen with a car full of rust...years back I remember seeing a car in one of the magazines, it was a 50 Mercury that had a 65 Riviera frontend molded onto it, it seems that was, is, and always will be a bad idea..anyone remember that car?.....

 

Its not so much an experiment or undesireable, but the gasser suspension and weight transfer set-up did what it was intended to do, made the cars go faster. As we got faster we shoved more air up underneath the cars and the handling got squirrelly..back to the drawing board..cars came down,suspension got changed and the cars got faster still..course, you knew all this already....

 

I'm not that old BUT.....so-called trad hot rods that, I guess, are emulating the EAST COAST style. Overly chopped, overly channeled, foot tall, mini truck style Z's accompanied with the ever present ass-dragging stance.

Make it go away.

 

HotRodFreak brought up a good point. It was not just "when" but "where" you were. I grew up in southern Indiana. Lots of channeled but unchopped coupes.Totally different from what you saw on the west coast at that time. "Trends" varied from one region to another.

 

I was born in 1945 and I grew up in So. Cal. (Paramount & Artesia).
In the 1960's this style is what 90% of us drove(see pictures below), not a lot of every day hot rods or heavy kustoms, week-ends more so.
Like doing the work on them myself I painted my own cars because there was no way I could afford to have it painted, $19.99 at Earl Scribe's was a quarter or more of a weeks wages.
Some times we would paint the front suspension, the wheel wells, and the gas tank white I guess to show your car was clean. I don't like to see dirty white walls or even black tires for that matter, the car has got to be clean. Pep Boys upholstery and hub caps (set of baby moons $6 bucks) Red Crown Gas valve, and chrome exhaust tips.
I didn't start really building a fast car or truck until I returned from the Army in 1968 but by then you could buy a Road Runner pretty cheap and in 1969 I put a 401 Nailhead into my '53 F100 and joined Pick-Ups Limited.
Well that's the way I remember it.

 

Nothing traditional about that style on ANY coast- it the new PUNK RODZ style- just like the comment earlier about the girlz with tatoos- both NOT traditional (except for circus side shows).

 

Thanks everyone who replied!
its cool to see what was done all around the country, and during different time frames...and what was "trendy", even then, and what stuck, because, lets face it: trends are not a new trend, either!
Cool old pix, Sillhouettes 57 ...reminds me of some of my fathers cars, he built 'em WAY before I ever thought to try!
Though...for the record...I LIKE carnie chics...

 

Great thread- I have shown some pics of current "Traditional" cars to my Pops, and he said-"We would've kicked that guy out of our car club. Rust looks like shit on a car." He was a member of the T-Timers car club in LA back in the 50's. Their club jacket looked like a letterman's jacket, not a leather jacket. He's told me stories about the club having to teach some "Toughs" a lesson because they were giving hotrodding a bad name. All the tattoos were not a part of "The Scene". I think we're living in a time of revisionist history...

 

I street raced a 59 Vette in the Late 60s in the St Louis area. $500, Solid lifter junk Yard 327. The "Bad Idea" was the gasser look done with shackles and 3" Oak wood blocks as spacers under the front suspension cross member (same as a 51 Chevy) that eventually collapsed. They had just built the I-70 bridge across the Missouri. St Charles was still mostly farm country, but the bridge brought in suburbia and the burger joints that made meeting places for the racers... There was one car then that met the webs definition of 'traditional'.. Rusty, junky, Model A roadster with a modern Oldsmobile V8 and drivetrain and a set of slicks with razor cut tread. I was running low 13s and high 12s at MAR in Wentsville, and the Rusty, offensive, POS Model A Beat me by 2-3 cars every time I had the misfortune to line up with him on the street. We all ducked him if we could. Don't think I ever saw him loose. So Rats actually were there, and in that case, DID rule... I'll never forget getting showered with Mud and dirt comming from under his wheelwells as he passed me.. POS--Yeah, but a Baaad Asss POS..PA.

 

Bad traditions? "Us vs. them" Whoever "us" and whoever "them" (rat rodders, ricers, restorers, etc.) may be. I just like old cars and while some things aren't my cup of tea (my personal ones are guys who fill minivans with speakers, painting the make of your car in 2' letters down the side, apple green wheels or low riders with little tiny spoked wheels) I can respect "to each his own".

The other day some punks in a no mod 3 or 4 year old Altima were beside me at a light and I could hear them laughing about the old car. One of them facetiously said "nice car". Not sure what was up with that but I just let it ride. To me they were the ones driving a peice of crap.

 

As I recall, if you smoked in public, had loud pipes, greasy hair, blaring radio, females of questionable morals, (based on their appearance) you were more than likely considered a "hoodlum"! Since I was 16 years old in 1963, I was old enough at the time to grasp most of the social mores ( mo-rays) at the time. To those of us who were "fringe element" in High School, the drivers and passengers didn't particularly matter, but the cars had to have a cool stance above all, and "cool" sounding exhaust. "Slick" paint jobs were also considered cool;..most of those were several coats of hand-rubbed lacquer. In the region I lived in, fender skirts were not well thought of. To start out with, you were covering up nice white-walls and highly polished hubcaps! Louvers ALWAYS got a high score. Some rides were not considered cool no matter WHAT you did with them!...case in point: the 48 Buick sedanette a local had with stupid flame decals trailing out of the round ports on the side of the hood was plain goofy-looking at the time! I see a lot of supposedly "old school" motiifs today that would have never have been considered acceptable to the majority of the hotrodders I recall in my teen years during the early 60'! I lived that era here in the midwest, and I remember it well. Tastes obviously varied from one region to another, but the opinions regarding the cars (and trucks) of that era weren't really all that far apart. Just rambling out loud;..nothing serious really.

 

Rolled up jeans......we called 'em "dungarees" back then. I recall my mother buying me jeans that were WAAAAY too long when I was in my very early teens ('bout '58 or so) and having to roll 'em up. After they were washed a few times, they shrank so you didn't have to roll 'em as far. Jeans were for work or play - if you had a date, you'd dress up in a nice shirt & "chinos" - slacks that were pressed and neat - and shined shoes. Yeah, there were a few greasy Fonzi's around, but few of them had cars and the ones that did, had pieces of crap - mostly, those guys were loosers.

"Sloppy" wasn't in style back then and only "old guys" from WW2 had tatoos. Never, ever saw a tatoo on a female, outside of the side-shows.

That's the way I recall it, at least around where I grew up.

 

As another 1940 model, everything HotRod1940 said is dead on.

As I've remarked here on occasion, we printed COURTESY CARDS back in 1957 when we formed our NHRA-sanctioned car club. The courtesy cards were to hand out to any stranded motorist we helped, all in an effort to change the public's impression of the "squirrels" who were passing of ftheir "shot rods" as the real thing. We were allowed to run the club plaque only if our ride was painted and sanitary.

Times change, and some of the poseurs now trying to be "traditional" are exactly what our whole movement was AGAINST back at the beginning.

 

Here in New Zealand, rods of the 50s and 60s were either channeled 32 roadsters or channeled but not chopped 34 coupes. You could'nt GIVE someone a Model A back then, no-one wanted them. Also reasonably popular were channeled but not chopped 32 and 34 sedans, fenderless of course. Anything post 34 was'nt considered a hot rod. I remember in 1967, a guy with a gorgeous channeled 36 coupe wanted to join our club. We said no, sorry, it does'nt fit our definition of a hot rod. And it was way better than anything we had!
as others have said, no fonzies, no tats (especially on chicks), no rust.

 

Its funny...I think today, many people are really emulating the 70's version of "exploitation" type hot rodders, as well as bikers...not really so much as the truth of the matter, which is: Hot Rods, have been, are, and always will be built by a wide assortment of people, with various view points...The old tin may be common ground...but, it very well may end there!

There are people who live in cages, trying to break out of them, by playing "outlaw" just as there are outlaws, at the very same moment, getting tired of being blamed, and frowned upon...

constant flux...

but, never dull, anyway.

 

The one thing everyone has in common, regardless of geographical location or age, is that there are always two versions of history:
The real history, that some of the people here lived through and remember, and the artificial history that some people invent to suit there own personal tastes.

I was born in 1965, yet I prefer the real history... the good, bad and ugly.

 

My "bad" idea was putting a full race flathead, that had spent 2 years on alcohol on a dirt track, in my '35 Ford with mechanical brakes. Good horsepower, lots of 60wt oil, and no stopping power. I "lightly" rear ended a few cars at stoplights. But, I was 16 in 1958 and it was the best I could do on a buck and hour.

 

In 1966-67 when I was a senior in HS the trend was the jacked up gasser look. Most of the cars did not have straight axles. They used double spinles, the original spindle was cut off and another was but welded to it to get the height desired. Then long shackles brought up the rear. I was riding in a '57 Bel Air when one of those sob's broke. Fortunatley it was on the main drag in town and not on the highway at speed.
Bad Idea!

Curious, was this a phenomonon just around my area or do others of you remember the double spindles?

 

Yep, HotRod40 hit the nail on the head. The upholsterey in the wheels wells, at least around here, was just snapped in for indoor shows. Actually, we didn't have many outdoor shows, just kinda hung around a good restaurant or garage. I always hated the bolt on junk like the hood ornaments (mentioned), and the fuzzy balls around the windows, the purple lights in the corners of the dash were OK though. Neat thread.

 

As a youngster here, let me ask this. Is there a difference to you guys, between (A)"traditional style" such as picking an era and using parts from the time to create the look of the times, and (B) "traditional attitude", meaning using what you can afford to keep your ride on the road while doing upgrades?

I guess to me, the timeless method of building a car is buying cool/functional parts for your ride, current or old. So a guy using parts off a newer ride to build his classic car, because he can find AND afford them, is doing the traditional thing, by making his money work for him. Like I said, this method is timeless, not necessarily traditional. Anyone agree, disagree, or not care? Just an observation.

 

" What's old is new again"

Someone said it once...

But, everytime it comes around again...each time...it mutates slightly. It is the nature of it...
because, after all...when you get right down to it: This...is 2007.

Thanks for all the insight, everyone, and the "technical" trends that were pointed out, because that was what I never really saw folks talking too much about...You always hear about what was done right, in the past...not too much talk about the dumb trends, or misguided engineering!

And thanks for keeping the "cultural" or style debates friendly...

 

i grew up in neark n.j.i got my frist car in 1959 and my frist bike in 1963 most of the older guys in my area were fords guys 46-48 coupes with olds or buick power the guys that were into raceing had mostly stock body cars with hop up drive trains the custom guys most work in body shops and built some cools cars some i have pictures here but nobody would drive a dirty p.os. rust bucket or a junk with a bunch of add ons

 

This is a great thread. It's so cool to hear about how things were really done in the old days. My parents were born in the 50s sol they really couldn't tell me a whole lot. My grandparents grew up farmers and can't really tell me much about it either. I do remember some bits of stories that my dad told me, though they don't really have anything to do with hot rods. My dad grew up poor in florida and he's number 3 of 7 children. i remember he told me a story about having to mate a porsche flywheel to the family station wagon so they could go get groceries and have something to drive on vacation. i also remember him telling me about the first time he drove a stick shift. He was at his grandpa's farm and grandpa told him to bring the farm truck in while he drove the tractor in. His grandpa wasn't gonna come back for him and told him so. I think back then it was you either did something or you didn't and tried to find a way to make it work. Then again I don't know. I'm only 23.

 

I think the BIGGEST mistake many of us regret is selling the cars we had then.
SO to you younguns, Keep it unless it is a Honda.

 

That is the #1 thing I hear. "Blan, blah...I had such and such car when I was your age. Damn I wish i hadn't sold it. Is yours for sale?"

 

You nailed that one on the head!! Model A's that cost $75 (and you were happy if you sold it for that much when you were through with it), 55, 56 and 57 Chevy's for $350 (and sold a year later in better shape for $300), lots of British sports cars for next to nothing...life was good!

I also remember (after I got a little more affluent) selling or trading in a car before it hit 20k miles because I thought it was nearing the end of it's problem-free life. Silly me...now my daily driver P/U has 220k miles and running as strong as ever.