Are traditional hot rods and Customs too perfect now?

You can't make a car perfect, some just get closer than others.
And we all draw the "Good-enough" line in the sand at different points.
Throw in the sliding scale of "Traditional vs. not traditional", and that affects things as minute as 1/16 inch wider pleats from stock (for example).

 

I think you said it right there! I'm not trying to be a wise ass or anything… I respect the question… But it's kind of like that old argument in the art world… Is that object "Craft, or is it Art?" It can go on forever.

My answer is you look at as many Rods & Customs as you can… then you know! Yuo just know! Just like art… you look at hundreds of peices of art and you just know it when you see it.

In both cases… It's a gut feeling! You train your gut! Then you trust your gut!

That's my stab at it!

 

Here's a different tack, lets see if I can get the feeling across............

Say you have a car show / gathering. Most of us will pick one favorite car at that show and admire it. At that moment in time, that car is perfect. Other people will do the same thing with other cars. They find their "perfect" car.

It's all opinions, the cars aren't really all that more perfect. Sure, there's more of them out there now, as opposed to a nation of used unrestored metal.

Its the appearance of "perfect" in the eye of the beholder that matters.

 

oh nice thread, I'm gonna save this one and read it at work tomorrow.


....at lunch time of course.

 

I don't know how to quantify perfection..but when I see it..I know what it is...

Use..function..beauty...in a continuity.. The essence of the three exemplified in the continuity of elements..

Some part of it is..static..shape. Some of it..the anticipation of motion in the design..and then the feeling of the machine in motion..

Combine the visual..the anticipation of motion..and the sensuality of the dynamic in motion..
Perfection..

 

This one of those (religion and politics) discussions.... every one has there own opinion and in there mind they are right..... That being said this my takeon the subject. First off, I dont really have a certain (style) that i really like. A properly designed and proportionate car does it for me! I think that the most important part of a car is the stance, with wheel choice a close second. Remember.... this is just my opinion!!!!

Soul is another thing brought up in this thread. To me soul, or lack there of, can come from many directions. If somone put there heart and soul into a build..... it most likly will have soul, but if they take that car and park it in the garage and polish it into oblivion.... the soul is lost. And IMHO you can take a boring, souless, billet-mobile and drive the shite out of it (and make it your buddy) and it will grow a soul. So I guess what all this blathering is about is..... drive em. No matter how perfect they are and all will be right in the world!

Ok Im done making an idiot out of myself.

ENFO

 

Two or three schools of thought and all of them are correct.
People who want perfection should strive for perfection.
People who want pretty should strive to pretty
People who want to drive their stuff should drive their stuff

If it is too pretty to drive, set in the garage and enjoy it
If it is too perfect, put it in a show and let the public enjoy it.
If it is safe ,and fun, to drive, drive it and have fun.

In the 30's and 40's there was only yourself, and you had to build a car that met the standards of the clubs and be accepted. That meant you did the engine, body, chassis, electric, and paint yourself, and then you met the standards of the club as being able to be a club hot-rodder, because you could do those things and bring something to the club.

Otherwise you enjoyed what you were doing and kept at it until you got bored.

Now you are all members of the HAMB and may you all have fun and pleasure.



traderjack

 

EXACTLY!!!! ....But at least you cant find 2,500 different ripoff versions of thickston heads, kinmonts, etc... at a flea market.

 

If I ever had the chance to own one of the Rolling Bones deuces I would assume I owned perfection. Give it 12 months and I would probably start wanting to alter things.

There is no perfect hotrod. Just perceptions of the perfect hotrod inside your own head.

 

When you're building something, you sort of want to get it perfect, but at the same time you want to eventually finish it, so you have to compromise a little here and there. I think I'm glad the hot rod I just finished is a truck, because when something gets nicked, or the bed has ripples in it, or the interior looks pretty spartan, I can just tell myself "hey it's a truck!". It's not much fun if you get it too perfect, because then you're scared to drive it.

When I see the indoor show rods on the fancy mirrored displays that really are perfect and some nutcase spent more on his chassis than I spent on my house, it seems pretty ridiculous. I can appreciate the time they put into them and the quality of workmanship, but I can't imagine owning a car like that, and I don't even think I would want to own a truly perfect car. It wouldn't be fun to drive. It's almost nice to have a few chips in your paint, because then when you get one more chip on the highway it doesn't feel like such a big disaster.

I think if anyone wants to have fun building hot rods, they need to keep telling themselves that they're going to be driving it someday. If you get too hung up on trying to get every last detail perfect or polishing bolts under the frame that nobody will ever see, you might never finish, and you might never actually drive it because it'll wind up being a big sissy trailer queen that's "too perfect to drive". The people with "perfect" cars set the bar really high for the average Joe to try to come anywhere close to perfection, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be happy with what we can do by ourselves and our own level of skills. If you make it with your own hands and you gave it your best shot, you can be proud of it!

A lot of the ideas that we take for granted as being cool and traditional, like chopping tops, or frenching tail-lights, were probably looked at as kind of goofy by a lot of people when someone first tried it until it started to catch on. I think it's good that there's still people willing to try something different. It might be some subtle little thing like moving a molding over 1/4" or it might be something extreme that makes people's jaws drop in horror, but it's cool that people keep using their imagination. It would be pretty boring if everybody followed the same exact recipe. When I go to a car show, it's the cars with something different and fresh ideas that catch my eye.

You can have fun striving for perfection, but don't beat yourself up if it doesn't come up looking as perfect as you'd hoped. Hopefully everybody is building hot rods because it's fun and they're going to have fun driving them someday. Hopefully people don't get so hung up on perfection that they never finish anything and they turn into some obsessive compulsive mental case. Those perfect cars might wind up in a museum or some rich guy's car collection. But where's the fun building them, if nobody ever gets to drive them?

 

i understand the concept of a traditional rod or custom , but wasnt this sport started to so that we could all design and build or own original version of a auto. i dont understand personally the guy that has to put a straight axle with drum brakes under his 54gmc truck but has a 6.0 200? fuel injected motor under the hood and is telling me that ,cause i have paint that my ride isnt traditional , and really when this sport started they used the best stuff they could get there hands on .when over head valve motors came out do you think any of the sports forfathers were like nope thats too new ,,,,,,hell no they were scoring anything they could from the closest local wrecking yard thanks

 

I think Kevin's head just exploded.......................

 

The thing that REALLY bugs me is all the "perfect" lettering on the doors of so many rides these days..."Billy-bob's chop shop" or what have you. The almost NEVER look like the old stuff.

I can appreciate a nicely finished car as much as the next guy, but the stuff that really gets me are the original cars in "unrestored" condition, or a nice ride that gets the shit driven out of it. Seeing a car with some road wear really speaks to me. Cars are made to be driven.

 

This is a really neat and provocative subject. Too bad I don't have the attention span to read all the posts.

I don't think the question can be answered, but several thoughts occurred to me:

- There are certainly traditional cars being built today to a standard that would once have been reserved for pure show cars. Not just cars like Orosco's or Poteet's latest Deuces, but drivers like the Tardel/Cochran coupe have been detailed as painstakingly as a 1950s Oakland winner (in fatigues).

- The tools that are available today, from Photoshop to MIG welders, have made it possible for relatively amateur builders to achieve results that would have required world class expertise 50 years ago.

- Most of us recognize the handmade quality that we revere from an earlier, less perfectionistic era. As an example of a car that was not massaged endlessly for perfect forms and surfaces, consider the Pierson Bros coupe. It's really kinda clumsy and gawky, but everyone agrees that it has a badass look to it that few cars have equalled.

- Tradition means different things to most of us. For me, it just means that I developed a number of aesthetic preferences 50 years ago that have served me pretty well, and I haven't updated very many of them. Sadly, the cost of things has risen so steeply that I can't afford to buy the cars or do the things to them that I could have done back then.

Are they too perfect now? Naawww. But beaters can be just as cool.

 

im building this track roadster....trying to keep it as period perfect as i can
but not really having any experience all i have to go by is old pictures and whatnot and plain old figuring things out
well, when i was working on the grill for the nose, i made little plates to seperate the bars and evenly space them across the grill so that i could weld them in place
i started at the side marking off each incrament along a scribed arc
next i drilled a hole at each point, then cut along the arc so i had a series of notches to lay the bars into
when i realized after it was all tacked together is... i didnt account for the thickness of the bars...therefore the first and last measurement went from the side as a centerline to the edge of the bar
inturn creating a bigger gap on the left and right side
i was a bit frustrated and ready to cut all the tack welds and start over
i quit for the day and read some books
and wouldnt you know.... Niekamp's car, built by Whitey Clayon....has the same darn problem.... i think niekamps was the first one he did? and apparently... im guessing made the same mistake in figuring that i made?

so..... im leaving it......it doesnt stand out...
its for Whitey...this car was almost entirely inspired by the work he did

Zach

 

I often think about that too! Especially when you look at old hot rods, and their paint jobs Look at Charles Clark's roadster below, on this car I think it actually looks good, but if I had put a paint job like this on a shoebox, and gone to a show somewhere, people would have propably laughed at me and wondered if I had done the painting while I was drunk:



The same goes for many of the days scallops, pinstriping, and trunk lid paintings! they are as far away from perfect as you could propably come! Today, it ain't good until it looks like a computer did the job!

 

door gap!, tommy....... look at that unpinched 32 frame.....ahhhhhhh

 

I don't post much here anymore....back to my roots of motorcycles. But I still build things with the same mindset of a cash strapped teenager. Build the coolest car, or bike that limited resources will allow....farm out only the absolutely necessary (machine shop stuff) and do EVERYTHING else myself......so the word "perfection" will never fit what I build, unless I see it as perfect. I only have to please myself....

 

Yes, Athough customs always were a strive for perfection.
Look at us....
Just like historic homes and furniture. We have covered beautifully cracked and potmarked clapboard siding with aluminum or vinyl because we don't want to paint it.
We covered 8-10-12" warped floorboards with carpet and tile. We refinish originally painted antiques with plastic clearcoat. All for the new look! The new look of the decade!! Every generation wants to look hip with the popular themes.
All Cars must have a flat color, ever panel must look perfect, we chop 40 fords and channel and remove the fenders from every hotrod truck. Yes it was done in the day...
But not every one in the day was done this way.
Wanna buy an old home??
find one that wasn't changed with the (new decade) fads and gently massage it in its original condition. Isn't that what turns us on??
Finding an old original hotrod or stock looking car tucked away for decades.

 

One of the best thought provoking threads on the HAMB in quite a while. We all have a different opinion on this subject.

I think you can polish on the a car to the point that it may not be practical for what your original intentions for the car was. Our good friend Larry and his coupe are a prime example. Was it wrong of him to built the baddest 3 window of our time...No! But you cannot expect someone to treat the coupe the same way I would treat my sedan.

Myself, I am on both sides of the fence. If I was able, I would have both. I love my little sedan and its far from perfect existance, and the fact that I can beat on it no matter what the weather, or road conditions, and park it where ever I end up. On the other hand, I have always wished to have the financial means to build the best, most perfet car I was able to.

 

This exactly why I love survivor cars so much...... every one is different and they all have something a little cooky about them.....

Everything has become so refined and builders today all pretty much build the same car.
quality ranges from super shitty to super nice..... that hasn't changed at all.

I think this subject is more about the little things.

Man I love old hot rods.

 

I agree with your observation, Kevin. But that also probably explains why the rat rods are attracting so much attention. The are the oddballs, now. Not the "traditional hot rods/customs".

The common experience for all of us across the country is to see "magazine cars". The cars in the magazines were always something special, the best, and the thing we aspire to. Sure, we've all built cars, and we all have friends that built cars, but many of the cars we built as youngsters left a lot to be desired. We didn't have the talent, money or tools we needed to actually reach the ideal we had in our brains. But as we got older, and disposable income increased, we found we were able to get closer to that ideal. Additionally the line between "Hot Rod" (cars built for maximum speed from commonly available parts), and "Custom" (Taking commonly available cars and improving the lines/style) has become blurred to the point where when you go to a car show, there's lots of cars that are as good as most "magazine cars" from 30-40 years ago. Hell, I can't remember the last time I actually saw someone lower a car by torching the springs.

So next thing you know, somebody pulls and old hot rod out of a barn, and it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. A throwback to the past. Then everybody wants to find one. And before long, people start building them to look like they've been found in a barn, patina and all. Which leads directly to Rat Rods sporting rust, goobery welds, tractor parts, junk tires, and all.

But in a couple of years, it will all change again. Mean time, make yourself happy, enjoy the hobby your way.

 

A lot of interesting points of view on this thread, which goes to prove that old adage 'different strokes for different folks'.

Perfection is boring - after a couple of minutes I move onto something else. No flaws, no character, no soul.

Take a 1950s or 1960s Ferrari - beautiful, passionate, hot, sexy, fiery - yes. Perfect - not even close. If it were perfect it wouldn't be Italian!

Now back to the sex analogy - 'I can't describe it but I know it when I see it' - how very true. And for each of us it may be something different. A visually perfect woman is like a visually perfect car - too perfect, and no soul. I see many beautiful women and can look at them with total dispassion - they do nothing for me. And yet others may not be good looking but they have got 'it' and radiate 'hot' - fire and passion. And so it is with cars be it stock, hot rod or custom.

So to post my answer to Kevin Lee's question: Yes these obsessively clincially clean ueberperfect cars - especially the new breed of 'gotta have all the 'name' parts, checkbook perfectionst dial 1-800 build a trad rod, not a single original part on it, repro steel bodied clones are just another variant on the billet smoothie striving for perfection of the 1980s. Boring, boring, very, very boring.

This is why I prefer odd rods - bodystyles that are not reproduced either in fiberglass or steel. They may not be perfect but they are for sure real.

Give me passion over perfection any day.

 

Yes, when the 'big show's' and magazine's began giving ink to the new/old movement. Now big shop's and money are building the perfected trad. car's. New fad: 'shiney' is IN. And the primer is dead mentality has begun. Screw that! Keep the coverage balanced. And your mind opened.

 

I am in the unique situation of knowing a car from the '50s and still seeing that same car today.
A chopped and channeled 32 cruised our streets in the late '50s and, after all these years, is owned by a friend. It has been painted over and new interior but the main car is the same as it was.

Back then it was the show car, the best I had ever seen. Today looking at the work on the frame and suspension it looks cobbled and dangerous. The bar has been raised so much that many of those older beauties look less, much less than perfect today.

 

Ok,,but now I have to ask.

So many go on and on about 'period correct' yet this site cuts off at 64. Now lets just say Milners car ,,from what we can gather from the movie was built in the late 50's early 60's,,and alot of rods were built in the 60's ( think there was a big rod revival in Cali then ?? ) So how can one say 'period correct' ?? A 60's rod could have Strombergs or Rochester's and a mixing of old and new parts as would be avail. in that time ,,would that make the car any less 'traditional' ?

 

When I was a kid everyone did the best job they could with what they had,same as now,but how many builders actually spent days and weeks making every intersection,gap,and shadow line perfect from every angle? When you have lives to lead it becomes pretty hard to be that perfect.Just read about a master craftsman spending one hundred hours fitting a hood,Glad someone is doing it,but would take the fun out of it for moi.

 

To me, the best hot rods look like they were built in a home garage. Rudy's cars for example. Being too precise robs the soul from a vehicle, IMO. I get bored looking at perfection, because it is simply not realistic or attainable to the average or even the above average Joe. A little spit, mixed with piss and vinegar is what makes a car real in my book. Does it need a trailer? Are you towing it everywhere you go? Sounds more like a job to me.

 

In the case of the sign being far from perfect and absolutely perfect all at the same time, I think that all comes from the work put into it. If we were to see a sign built today using a computer to lay the design work out, imperfections are really just a lack of effort on the designers part. Imperfections can only be truly appreciated from the hard work and time that it takes from laying a design out from scratch with no aid from computers. The strive to create something perfect should always be there, yet the ability to realize that when something is finished should occur also. True perfection never really comes, but that is what makes us work harder and really hone in our craft. It's that desire to achieve something on the next level. I spent a great deal of my time in college sort of scoffing at the likes of artists such as Picasso. I thought artists that purposely go out of there way to divert from what other artists had honed in on for Millennia before was pointless. I mean take the human form, to me it's one of the hardest things to truly draw realistically (besides automotive art). So I started ask why the hell would someone appreciate an artist that appeared to try half as hard as other artists and get twice the recognition. It was not till sometime later that a tattoo artist explained to me that artists like Picasso had as much skill as the great artists prior and had put the time in to mastering his craft that he reserved the right to revert to a child like style that he was known for. I think that if there was one thing that is becoming more and more scarce these days is the ability to really master a hands on craft. How many people these days are offered art shows to showcase their work when they really don't deserve it?

And in terms of cars, the whole Rat Rod bullshit sort of offered the same thing. It gave a the chance to many to jump right in and not put time into researching proper parts and mastering skills. It's way to easy and I cannot accept there is any real gratification besides the thrill of going fast or the 3 minutes of fame.

I was talking about something similar at dinner with some friends a few weeks ago. There were talking about how clean the Welds have gotten on modern Tig machines and how paint technology has eclipsed what was used in the 50's. So when they see it on a car that is going to great lengths to be traditional it sort of ruins it for them. But really I think that there is a medium that we all should be searching for. It's building the cars using the parts that were available and with the same style as they have done in the past while also not doing us the disservice of limiting our potential. Take the new BASS '29 roadster for instance. I think the car is beautiful and screams his target goal of a mid 50's hot rod. But we can't pretend like the spot on beautiful welds that he built that car with are "traditional". The frame on that car is something that would have blown the minds of hot rodders back in the 50's. But how can we ask a man like Brian Bass who is trying to perfect is craft to DUMB it down for the sake of being "trad". I think it's a natural progression of ourselves as humans.

When I read the article on the Ala Kart in the Rodder's Journal and I seen that the Crew at Brizio went to great lengths to restore the truck I was amazed. The fact that they laminated their own wood to create 5/8" think plywood for the floors because it's no longer offered blew my mind. I think that right there is a perfect example of paying homage to hot rodding while not limiting the potential of the builder. I mean laminating your own plywood for sake of reaching true perfection? Great lengths are needed for some builds and for some builders, and I think that's a great example.

So I guess in this long rant what I am getting at is if your good with sheet metal, then don't limit you potential buy not metal finishing you hot rod, if your a painter, don't limit you hard work by throwing flat black on your flawless body work, and if your a welder, don't throw bubble gum welds on your chassis for the sake of being period. Respect the past tradition of early hot rods and create a balance between you and your car. Try to build the car in the spirit of the early days but above all build it so that you are happy with your work.