Want on my hotrod that was cool and cutting edge for that time period, what rims, accessories and modifications would I do to say a deuce roadster, any picture or examples would be cool to.
just look for what was all the newest stuff at the time It would have all the highly sought after parts everyone here is looking for like sbc corvette motor, cal custom valve covers, 4-71 or 6-71 super charger, hilabrand wheels, chevy rear or 9 inch, lots of chrome,
Thats easy, If you pull out an 62 HotRod mag that pretty much will tell the story. Everyone had there noses in them reading about the latest and greatest ***ys or hp improvements.
After you have wide whitewalls, every part of your engine that can't be chromed should be painted white. Don't forget to chrome the frame to match!
Using the aforementioned styling cue's, plus you would for that era: Dress, walk and talk like an Ivy Leauge grad. And if you were connected, it would keep you out of Viet Nam.
This is helpful...any pictures of "non-magazine" gold chainer rides from that era...anybody have a rich uncle, grandpa, etc.
Multiple straight exhaust pipes and scavenger pipes were in vogue. Chrome wheels, candy and flake paint. ****on tufted interiors were starting to show up. Multiple carbs, some blowers - mostly 4-71. Nerf bars were very popular, as were cheater slicks. The most popular tire where I lived was the Atlas Bucron. They were a super soft compound tire sold by Standard Oil, and had a perfect tread for drag racing. Here's a few pics from the Hot Rod Yearbook #2 1962. Mutt
The wannabe goldchainer in 62 would throw the JC Whitney catalog at his car. Cheap, all show and no go stuff. You would see a lot of that stuff on cars at the shows in the early 60s. In my area the most popular car at the local shows in the early 60s were Model "T"s. Probably the second most popular were Model "A"s. There were very few 32s or 40s and more restored cars that all out hot rods and customs. Guys would "doll up" their cars with anything cheap they could find. Portawalls, fender skits, rearview mirrors were popular add ons.
'32 roadsters were obsolete then, definitely gone from mainstream rodding (which was about to switch from '55 Chevys to super stockers to musclecars in the '60-65 period), but lots were still being updated in '62--looking at the mags, I see two schools of thought: ******** tradition oriented people still flogging the old iron for performance, and those drifting into the Kustom show category. See Tom McMullen's famous flamed '32 for an example of a regularly updated, high-dollar, very hot traditional car--street driven, very fast at the drags and on the lakes, but definitely a relic in the overall scene. HRM is full of the roadsters becoming show cars--usually '32's and '29's with basically traditional overall layout but funny quad light setups, bulgeing grills added to the rear, free-form grill shells, and fun stuff like rolled and pleated radiator cores...the top end landmarks here would be cars like the Emperor and AlaKart.
And this means no leaks or drips too! Check out the gold, full fendered deuce roadster in the current rodder's journal. That thing has '62 written all over it! If I didn't know better I'd swear it was on a beach boys album cover. Gotta love the white running boards!
Just remember that most every car in a 1962 hot rod type magazine WAS a goldchainer state of the art hot rod for that time. The same thing as today. I get a grin when people seem to think those cars are a snapshot of what was on the street back in the day. We would get one chance a year to see one of them...When the World of Wheels came to town with the "circuit cars".
Right! To begin with, the concept of the "Gold Chainer" we have today didn't and wouldn't have existed in '62. It is a product of guys who really don't know whats up but have the bucks and saw American Grafitti when it came out in '72! '62 was a Nostalgic Era, just ten year's after it happened! and they hired someone and are still hiring people to build cars for them today. Usually with no knowledge of th history and no taste in the development of the custom or hotrod car. That wasn't the case in '62. Guys, both rich and poor were still doing it for the first time. The evolution of the hotrod and custom were still happening, the first time around. There was no, "lets slow down and do it the way we usta do it" that was what white haired restorer's did. SO, with that out of the way, I'd say anyone who paid someone else to build them a car fits what I think you are calling a gold chainer and the BEST representation I remember from '62 was seeing at the Trident's show in the LB Arena in November of '62, Bob Nordskog's-Barris built "Asteriod" '63 Corvette. (Barris "Kustoms of the 1960s" page 23-25) This was a radical custom done on a car that had only hit the dealerships two months befor the show, and already the car had an all chromed out engine, custom interior and metalflake paint over the modified body. With a matching metalflake Skiboat in the same show! I didn't know who Bob Nordskog was at the time but I knew he had the bucks to pull that one off. "Gold Chainer"..? No. Well off enough to say "build it! Send me the bill"... Yes!
So, 40 years from now, some guy's gonna find a "Boyd" car setting in a garage and be stoked because he found an unmolested "05" hot rod. If hot rods are still around then, that's the "in the day" styling they'll be copying.
Only the women wore gold chains in '62. I was there, I know. If you were a gold chainer, you'd have whatever your boyfriend built for you. ;-)
Mutt's summary is right on the money; he has all the important details nailed. WWW, chromies, candy, lotsa pipes. Anything that isn't body color or chrome is either painted or upholstered white.
More than likely a shark skin suit, 1" wide tie, 1/4" wide belt and thick soled Bombers, but the aim was still the same...out spend the compe***ion. Human nature doesn't change...only the current styles.
hell half the guys that are into roddin dont know as much as I do and i' m dummer than dirt! every one wanted a car that was cool. the requirements were that it would start and it would stop, when we wanted to not when it wanted to. It had to be fairly cheap cause we didnt have much money, It was really top shelve if it had a radio (am only those days) so we could listen to Wolf man Jack, or even the Lousiana hayride, rock and roll was still young and we were having a ball. many of the rides were built out of necessity, your engine blew and you replaced it with what ever you could get and you tried to stay cool. cool didnt mean it was show quality, It meant it would get you where you wanted to go and hopefully the girls dug it enough to want to ride in it. It couldnt be to far out or the cops would impound it. it
I took the question to be "What would a guy with unlimited funds build in '62?" And I agree that some of the cars in Hot Rod and Rod & Custom were beyond what the average guy was building. If you want to see what was real world, look at the Hot Rod Mart in the back of the book and Post Entry where readers sent in pictures of their cars. The cars I posted weren't top show cars, but were representative of the time. There were also a lot of what we now consider traditional cars, both as originally built, and in transition to newer style fads. As mag wheels became available, both physically and financially, they became the norm. When your Sun two-piece tach died, you bought a new one piece tach. When you needed tires because your WWW wore out, you put the new narrow WW on your traditional rod. This was a time of transition, and most anything went, depending on your wallet. Mutt P.S. It was a great time to be 18
On well finished/highdollar/goldchain rods in '62--the rodders who could actually finish and detail a car, unlike those who were just trying to rod their near-junk drivers on $10 a week, weren't like chainers--I'd say most were just young men who had good jobs and no families. Poor rodders were either students/teenagers with the discarded old family car and practically no money or young men with families who had great difficulty breaking loose the bread for hotrod stuff. Most also were learning cars from the ground up, ****ing up whatever education they could get from Spotlite books or friends who knew a little bit. The magazine car builders were simply at a stage in their lives that allowed them to pour their wages into the short without restraint. Note that high dollar street rodders nowadays are OLD guys at this stage in life--the kids have grown up, and money can go into toys again! Also, most of the successful builders of '62 had some kind of a leg up technically--they were mechanics, perhaps, or otherwise had a better understanding of cars than the average kid. Another cl*** of people that got interesting things accomplished were somewhat older people who were rich in skills--machinists and engineer types, people who didn't even see themselves as rodders, and who read Pop Mechanics rather than HRM. These people often did amazing things based on whatever was being tossed at home or work, put together with pure design/fabricating talent gleaned on the job. I had a neighbor like this--middle aged aerospace type, middle cl***, not a rodder. He was restoring an old airplane in his ba*****t, but on the side he accidentally built a rod he wouldn't have called a rod--he had s****ped the commuter beater he drove after WWII, and its original and spare V8 60 engines were in the ba*****t. His new beater, a Henry J from the absolutely worthless section at the back of the used car lot, smoked its engine...the swap was utterly impractical, but that's what he had, and so he fabricated his own trans adapter, re shaped the oil pan, built headers, added outlets to radiator, and so on, all done in a completely non-hotrod state of mind...later, he put in a cam and Offenhauser heads and manifold, but he still wasn't playing from a hotrod angle--he did stuff like fabbing a neat little adapter box so he could use his existing aircleaner on the dual carbs--after all, this was just a ba*****t project, and hotrod aircleaners would have meant spending $5 on a completely worthless heap! Some older rodders were much like this--machinists and such who just stayed at the shop all night inventing fuel injections or variable drive widgets and building cars that were unique.
That 5 window is the exact style car I am building with my sedan, big rake, chrome reverse, big crust, 6 carbs and lots of chrome.. In 62, a gold chainer would have sold his hotrod and bought a new 62 CHevy dual quad posit traction 409. and if he was really money, had the lightweight frontend (aluminum) and Z-11 package...
By 1962 a gold chainer wouldn't have wasted his money on a hot rod. He would have bought a brand new corvette. My parents graduated in '62 and my dad stated that regular guys were into 1956 chevrolets because they were pretty cheap by then. Anyone who had an early hot rod would gladly "upgrade" to a later model for luxuries such as brakes, heaters and back seats. He also said that his next door neighbor used to s**** 3 windows because they were worth nothing. Dave
413 Max Wedge with 4 bolt valve covers or a 409 or fuelie vette motor. I saw a 55 Chevy in a book on hotrods and customs from about then, and they radiused the rear wheel wells and put a 406 FE with a factory 3x2bbl setup in it. I guess if it made power and was available it was happening. Sounds like an interesting project Randy
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