I was looking back in to my hot rod magazines archives and found a not to past issue on 60s to 70s street machines and there cliches so i started to wonder what other types of cliche parts there are out there but keeping with the hamb spirit i wanted to add the 50s to the list so heres the cliches to look for 50s 60s 70s i can think of air shocks, shackles, fender flairs, and wheels to big for the rear wheel wells. what can you think of now
Wouldn't it be better to call them trends? Nose up attitude (60's, lots of times achieved with twist in spring spacers), Chroma Graphic lettering on race cars (late 60's/70's), skulls & shrunken heads hanging from the mirror. That kinda thing? Larry T
Your right about the term trends! You just don't see enough red steel wheels, wrapped with wide white walls and flat paint finish anymore...
* Dual exhausts fairly close together with little red lights beside them....actually looked really cool * Raise the FRONT end up so high you couldn't see anything except the traffic lights. * Raise the BACK end way high, then run "Scavanger Pipes" (large exhaust running straight back..no bends..and stopping short of the rear axle.) * '40'ish Fords/Mercs with no hood or front fenders....really cool if a convertable!! * Lettering your car, usually on the lower part of the front fender with cool names..... like "Cherry Yet" or other clever ones. Really miss those days....good thread. Cheers, Bob
Orange or red painted differentials under a raised-in-the-rear car. Spring shackles 10 or 12 inches long. Yikes. Wide rear tires that didn't fit the car, and had bright white "slashing stripes" on the sidewalls where they hit the fenders and exposed the white rubber under the black rubber outer layer. It seemed that those odd tires where everywhere. Side windows cluttered with stickers from STP, Valvoline, Crane Cams, Thrush, Moon, ZOOM, Holley etc. ("well, the cool race cars have them..") Dumbos who would retard the distributor timing a bit to get a rough idle , thinking it sounded "hot-cam". Four door six cyl Plymouth Valiants, Comets, and other slowpokes with the rears raised. Some with really skinny tires, some with too-fat tires. Brand new Cragar chrome 5-slot wheels with fat tires. One of my favorite looks when MOPAR came out with the the big-engine-in-plain-car affordable muscle cars, was the painted steel wheels with small dog dish caps and red pinstriped tires. That was so cool. It looked like a plain Plymouth Satellite fleet vehicle with just a small clue that it could wipe the street with the lesser cars. Bolt-on slapper bars painted a bright color, usually orange, so people would see them under the springs. Shoot me, but I actually liked the air cooled Beetles with the 37 Ford or Rolls Royce front ends on them. Does anyone remember the VW rear deck lids made to look like they had a big bulge as if to hide a big-engine transplant? Anyone remember some bugs with V8's sticking out the back? Don't worry, I didn't laught at everything. The cars I thought were cool at the time- - - Back when early Camaros and Mustangs were all new-late-models, almost always 6-cylinder cars, V8 models were not common, and only the Daddy's Girls or spoiled fancy kids had them, there were hotrodders among the rest of of us.... For kids like us, it was so cool to take a very slightly rusty $25 or $50.00 55 Chev, or Stude Lark from the scrapyard and hop it up. Some would search far and wide for a wrecked Impala with the new BIG 327 for a transplant, or a Stude engine with a blower on it, find a four speed stick, and poke the shifter up through the floor. Almost no one had a floor shift in those days. That was a real danger sign. Either leave the old paint alone or put a few red-oxide primer spots over the rust repair spots, and go looking for anyone daring enough to try.... Those were the good old fun days. I was the only kid for many miles around with a real Hemi. $300 for a garage-kept tail-finned 57 Chrysler with 30,000 miles on it! I don't know if you would call it a trend, or a cliche, or just a sign of the times, but even to this day, my favorite cars are not the pretty-boy show types, but the $50 junkyard cars (often 55-56-57 Chev, but could be almost anything 50's. I prefer Studes) with gutted interior with one bench seat, single shift handle sticking up through the floor, and real signs of use. THAT is my favorite "trend" that will never go away as long as I still can drive.
60's cliche? How about shag carpet, funny fur / angel hair? How about Ed Roth's pointed, felt Hillbilly hats air brushed with R.F. (did anyone ever actually wear them in public? I wore mine once for about 5 minutes and then tossed it out as totally uncool and stupid. It was actually less cool than I was. And I wasnt' cool. But Roth laughed all the way to the bank, eh?). Thin belts and ties. Or.. tinted plexi windows (on street cars!); Cragars with narrow white walls or red lines, jacking the nose up high for weight transfer? And... chroming just about everything that didn't move. Gary
I like those giant wool seat covers that made your ass sweat, after about two weeks in the hot sun everything everywhere smelled like swass.
When is this trend of all this mind numbing base gonna wear off? it feels like my balls are having a boxing match with all the vibrating, kids pull up next to you when youre driving all full of beer with all this base and it makes you sick.
dummy spot lights, curb feelers, a hurst shifter, crager mags, radiused fender wells, fender well headers, side skirts, blue dot inserts, and cant forget cherry bombs or thrush.
I think its supposed to be things that generally sucked right retro? Like those gas pedals that look like a foot with toes or that felix the cat turn signal where his eyes signaled your intention and you rear ended the guy cause you thought his car had Linda Blair in the back seat. Bolt on wheelie bars, tv antennas.
Things that sucked---Big square boxes with speakers in them setting onthe package trays---mud flaps on muscle cars---sunroofs that cranked way up---double ones looked like toilet seats---your favorite rock station sticker on the rear window---would you put this stuff on your hot rod today.
How about the felt look covering the whole car, it looked like a rolling pool table. We ran our Scavenger Pipes back past and under the rear end housing. I made some of the earliest shackles around here to compensate for some of the late night trips I made with a "heavy trunk". How about a switch to turn off your brake lights. We would roll the spring shackles down under the hangers on '55-56 Fords and some would put a pipe behind the shackle in the hanger to jack up the rear end. "Drag Plugs" were popular and were pieces of pipe with screw on caps you could take off to open the exhaust for 'draggin'. I remember a cousin coming in from California with the first slammed '49 Mercury I ever saw, it had cruiser skirts and spot lights and shaved doors. Do you remember putting spark plugs in the ends of the exhaust pipes and flooding it so it would shot flames out when you cranked it. In the late sixties and early seventies I ran with 8" chrome reverse wheels (couldn't afford Americans) and Mickey T's on the back and 6" on the front with the tail high to keep from cutting the sides out of the Mickeys. Some times I ran baby moons and some times open wheels. Don't forget the add on 8 track player and cutting speaker holes in the package shelf and kick panels. Later there were the paisley tops and lace paint inserts and some ran racing strips on one side or the other across the hood, top and trunk lid. Dang, I didn't know we were as weird as we were.
70's - Like everyone else said, big shackles but then with the rear diff painted white; diamond tufted velvet; aftermarket sunroofs; raised white letter tires. Steve
Fake leopard skin upholstery.Yuck. Short wide tires and wheels that stuck out of the wheel wells so far that it looked like a kids match box toy. Running with the front bumper removed to make it look like a gasser. Cable operated cut outs that always leaked. Buying everything from JC Whitney that you could stick on your car because you were too cheap to buy anything that required you to actually mount or modify it.
From the '60s: Fuzzy Mirror Muffs, 'You lose' written on the trunk lid, Keystone, Hollywood Accesories and Fenton wheels, Muntz 'Blue Light' 4-track stereo, chrome speaker grilles in the doors for same (at least FOUR!), a Vibro-sonic reverb unit for the car's AM radio, Hurst Mystery Shifter and Spark-O-Matic 3-speed floor shift conversions, go-faster decals of speed equipment manufacturers that weren't actually installed in the car, ditto for the drag strip decals on a car that was never raced, glasspack exhausts that ended just under the driver's seat, cheater slicks, the list goes on...
Playboy stickers, Fog lights, Keystone Classic wheels, Aircraft lights, Pioneer super tuners, Prismatic stickers, Long whip CB antenna's.
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