Don't Call Them Rat Rods:

It seems to me...

"Jim Rowlett..."Our GOAL was to change that image, to call pre-1949 cars Street Rods and to portray a family-oriented hobby".


Scuze me!! Since when does a pompous ass think they are the one who should change the world??

"A good clean name is "Retro-Rods" suggested Mathew Held..

Scuze me!!! Let's put grandma in the back and go on a picnic, get some cotton candy for the kids, and all pile in and go to chruch on Sunday like NICE folks.

Good god! A ride is anything one wants to call it. To be sure, there is a new generation that is building cars, granted some do look a bit abominable. but there are some that, well flat have talent to create.

Granted I'm from the old timers association, meaning I grew up with the 40's and 50's cars and trucks. Depending on which side you grew up with, the east, the west or even in the mid-west, we all called them by different names back then too. The culture these days want to re-live the good old days they heard us old farts talk about. And shit look at us, some of us never grew up, we play with the toys of our youth. We want to have a ride like the one we nailed Lucy in the back seat. Or one like our local Fonz of the day had.

I'm also confuse about, if it has a "Rat" motor in it, what should it be called?

Or Big Daddy Ed Roth, the icon of the "Rat Fink"

A lot of slang/lexicon has come and gone over the years, some has changed, some has a different meaning assigned now-a-days.

For me, if you see me coming, you see a hot rod. If you see me from the side you'll see traditional, but on the back you'll see the "Rat Fink" with a wrench in his hand, that says "Rat Rod", and I ain't going to sand over it and paint it to make the feel good boys proud to know they've changed this cantankerous of fart to their way of thinking.

I guess that's partly why I dropped my membership in the NSRA a few years back, and go lone wolf on my travels.

So...once a "HellRaiser" always a HellRaiser


The HellRaiser

 

This shit is getting rediculous! you know what a Riddler contender and a "rat rod/ traditional/ retro rod/jalopy/ POS have in common?.....



anyone ?


anyone?

THEY ARE ALL FUCKING HOT RODS!!!!!!!!!!!!

I vote we call them HOT RODS!!!! Bob here decided to dump 200k worth of billet on his show car while Tex decided to hunt and scavage to build a Rod like they did back in the day...

THEY BOTH BUILT THEM WITH PRIDE!!!!!!

Why is it that gene ,Chip, roth, Barris, and other countless builders are looked at like they are heros but they build the dreaded show cars the most of you dispise? Why is most traditional cars bare metal and rusty? The guys who built them back then say they didnt have them rollin around with rust and bare metal...so is it "traditional"?

Nostalgia!!!!! I like em all!

 

well put ill call mine what i want and you call yours what you want....its so simple

 

i don't care what you call 'em.... i want one.

black please.

 

I don't call them "rat rods"......I just call them "boat anchors".... and I've seen plenty of them parked on the side of the freeway or smashed up on the on-ramp (because a poor weld broke or rusted) on Friday nights after Bob's.......
Eeventually they will cause all hot rods to be banned from the road, as soon as the general public feels they aren't road worthy....... You know who you are

 

Denis 4x4 said it all !!!.... back in the 50's they were not making dirty welds with rusty parts...people actually put the best parts on the cars they could afford.

*** Look in the High School Yearbooks from the early 50's, the car show pics at the tennis courts weren't full of dirty rusty mismatched parts cars. ...they were polished hot rods, build with extreme care......

 

Yeah, Same here in Sweden. In early 80s.




I dont get it, What's wrong calling a homebuilt car that is rusty, often poor built and far from done yet a rat rod?

I do get it when someone calls your painted, built with influence from the past and totally finished Hotrod, Ratrod. Since that isnt what it is.

But there is a huge step between a so called "Rat rod" and traditional hotrod.

And for those who gets their car named ratrod, Give those who name it so a history class.

 

where did that article come from? I'd like to read it for shits and giggles. can't read that one, it makes me dizzy

 

My 2 cents:

Rat Rod - A good ebay search term, as well as a car usually built with rusty falling aprart crappy parts that may or may not include street signs, chicken wire, or your mother's seat cushions from her beloved sofa.

Hot Rod/Traditional Rod/ETC - A well built - SAFE, car with the proper parts in the proper places. A car that regardless of patina, flat paint, or shiny paint, your family would love to travel in and you would not have to worry about their safety.

I've seen numerous flat black hot rods that are so dead balls on cool, and well built. IMO a rat rod is mostly built by those that are among the wannabes and think that a street sign floor is the cool thing to do.

 

I build old cars.

Some of 'em are rattier than others

Most of them are never quite finished.

None are perfect, but they suit me just fine.

 

Yeah, and dont call me white.

 

Funny how that 'patina' thing that goes hand-in-hand with rodent rods became hip.

I've always had cars with patina. My Dodge has plenty, but not because I think it's cool. It'll have a stock-type repaint when (if) I have funds available.

Back in the Seventies and Eighties, my dad used to do a lot of work on H-D engines and gearboxes. His term for a bike pieced out of different year parts was ratbike.

But this 'ratrod' term seems to really mean a cartoonlike, almost undriveable car. So low that it WILL scrub when a tire goes flat. So chopped/sectioned/channelled that a six foot tall person would be in pain inside it after an hour.

Are these the cars the guys in the article were talking about being "built to be driven"? Opinionated outburst: the fuckin' things are only worth being driven to the car show, bar, or chiropracter...

C'mon guys, let's get some drama going and get this thread closed!

 

I would think calling them "Ratrods" would be prefferable to calling them "Piece of Shit".

Speaking of peices of shit, er Ratrods, I saw your typical one this morning at a garage here in San Antonio. Built by 'The Rod Shop' (at least, it was signed as being built by the rod shop), it was alright at first sight. Highboy 33 Ford with a Buick Nailhead, some black primer but mostly sanded off to give it that 'Patina' thats so hip.

I thought, "thats pretty cool", until I got a close up look... It had its entire lower 4 or 5 inches replaced.. terribly, gobby welds that were ground down and didnt even completely fill in the seam. Dents covering the whole thing, pitted all over with some sections having holes completely rusted though.. no attempt whatsoever made to repair and preserve.

Oh yeah, and don't forget the nescessary painted on spiderwebs and purposefully novice quality pinstriping and accents...

THIS is what I absolutly hate about these Ratrods, the total disrespect for the car, for craftsmanship and I hate how people associate them with how homebuilt is done. Growing up around hotrods and hotrodding, homebuilt rods were always done with quality, or atleast an attempt. Ratrodding to me just seems lazy. Flat black paint and the other gimickey shit aside, fix em up god dammit. They aren't building these cars anymore (well, nothing affordable ), they havent survived all these years just for you to get your grubby mitts on em to hack em up and totally fuck up what could be a potentially good project car for me somewhere down the road >.<

 

this is another BULLSHIT thread and I'm sorry that I'm bringing it back to the top.

Magazines used to take credit for transitions of Hot Rod trends. what ever you call a car has absolutely no bearing on how the car was built. ( a Rose by any other name is still a Rose) cars are cars, Hot Rods are Hot Rods. Why do so many people get there panties in a bunch, over a name.

"There are just two kinds of people in the world, good people and bad people! the only difference between the two? the GOOD go around saying who the BAD are!

Seems like there are to many GOOD people on this board.

Get a life and quit trying Judge all us BAD people. "we have feelings too!"

I just want enough money that the GOOD people will start calling me "Eccentric instead of Fucking Nuts"

Jim Arnold
Life By Design

 

I cringe everytime I hear the term. Especially withing the walls of the shop. I always am sure to say, "traditional Hot Rod" or just "Hot Rod" several times before I'm forced to tell the person that there are NO RAT RODS produced at our shop. I usually then tell them that 'rat rods' are under engineered, unsafe death traps. Then there's usually a moment of silence, and they say, "you know, that's pretty true."

Educating the world, one street rodder at a time.

 

I don't like labels.

I don't like this thread.

I wish these were just fables.

But this thread is dead.