Just wonderin if anyone else has read this book or knows where to get a copy? I think it starts out with the hero driving on abdonned strech of road writing down info from gauges on a pilots board that goes around his leg. The story is about a punk who drives a hot rod and enters a contest then ends up helping local sheriff. I think it was published in the 60s or 70s I read it like 20 years ago and would like to find a copy for my nephew get em reading young and into cars at same time thanks lumpy
If your talking about "the" HOT ROD by Henry G Felsen. You can get paperback copies on E-bay for reasonable money. It is from the fifties. Felsen wrote a lot of youth books, quite a few car based. All of them are morality plays to an extent. Hero (Bud Crane) gets in with a bad crowd, someone gets killed doing something stupid (like street racing), Hero comes to his senses and saves the day. Good reading though. I own several Felsen books and collections. I actually credit that book to be a turning point in impessionable jr. high mind. Been hot rod hungry ever since. lol Hope that helped, George
Yep' remember it well, but it was about 35 years ago I gathered it was a primered shoebox, on the last page didn't he and the gas station owner take a torch after it? I gotta see if it survived when the library moved, check it out agian. "Chicken" Lidell survived, he would be about 70 now?
Another book from that era is "The Red Car" about a kid that rebuilds a wrecked 1948 MG-TC and goes racing.
Felson books are all great reading, a little juvenile but well written and a pretty neat insight into the teenage hot rodder mind of the '50s all pretty much the same, boy gets car, boy gets girl, boy and girl both die in a horrible bloody metal twisted wreck
Henry Gregor Felson was a popular author in the fifties and sixties. The car themes are pretty much the same -as stated above. They were originally published by Random House,Street Rod in 1953. My paperback copy of Street Rod was published by Bantam Books and cost 45 cents. Good books on rodding with a lesson for everyone. Felson also published Crash Club and Road Rocket.
I have one of Felsons books, I thought it was an awesome book up until the last few pages where the kid and his girl end up in the river upside down and dead. I had nightmares for 2 weeks after that. I have a few other cool books, I will have to see if I can dig them out of the closet and share their titles/authors.
Search for Henry Gregor Felsen on www.amazon.com, there are always copies on there. You'll be suprised for what copies of Hot Rod will go for. Karl
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