so where did this come from? i bought a couple of wonderful books this weekend when i went to columbus. i got "Gasser Wars," "The Birth of Hot Rodding: The Story of the Dry Lakes Era," and a little 10$ book called "Ford Hot Rods." it was in the last one that i read that early hot rods were called soup jobs. i've heard that before, and i have always used the phrase "souped up." but where the hell did this come from? any ideas? on a side note, the other books, the gasser book and the dry lakes book, they*****ing rock. TONS of color pictures, and from what i have seen, great info thus far. the Ford Hot Rods book is pretty sweet too, a little thing, but way more info and great pictures than you could logically get for 10 bucks.
From this webpage: http://www.oldfordstuff.com/whatis/ As far as "soup" goes, in the '20s, nitroglycerine was called "soup" in the under-world. It was not easy to get -- safe crackers had to extract it from dynamite. It was all illegal substance and possession was evidence of criminal intent, like burglar tools. Hence the code name. "souped-up" probably referred to a race car running on exotic fuel. I know that in the '20s it was possible to buy special racing fuel from the big oil companies. An old-time motorcycle mechanic told me of taking a can of such fuel to the races where his employer had bikes competing, then pouring the leftover fuel into the tank of his hopped-up Ford, and how fast it went on the way home. In the '50s they began to use nitromethane, which is a close relative of nitroglycerine. Small world. By that time "souped-up" had acquired the general meaning it has today and hot fuel users coined new terms like "pop" and "nitro."
this was related to me by a navy cook from ww2 era. in the old days a guys hot rod was his daily driver, rain or shine, to work and out on dates. the usual rod as we all know did not ride that good due to the suspension changes usually made that got the cars so low that the suspension travel was severely limited. cold nights on a date ment to stop at the little town food joints for some soup to warm everyone up. sometimes they would take the soup out with them for the ride. in any case whether eaten in or out when those rods would hit the road the meaner it was ment that it was a harder ride and inevitably the soup would go flying up or the girl from the rough ride would throw up the soup hence souped up.
Glad you thought to ask that, I'd often wondered that too. My gf's teens haven't heard that term before, beleived or not.
you know, the only reason i have heard is purely from my dad. i went to college at bowling green state U in ohio, and wrote a paper freshman year about a past event. i picked an occasion when my dad kicked the***** out of the competition in a quasi-legal 1952 john deere model 60 in the farm tractor pulls, and used the phrase. had a neighbor in the dorm proof it for me, dude had no idea what it meant. go figure. times are changing. i no like change.
Gow Job is another one. Half the slang my neices use, they don't have a clue where the words come from or why. Word!
Actually the term should be spelled sup'ed up. It originates soon after the man of steel, Superman's arrival on the comic scene. Originally you would say something like "that thing flies like Superman" or "It gets up like Superman". Then it evolved to "Super Jobber". At the same time rodders from the Pacific Northwest (colder climate) jokingly changed the term to "It goes like hot soup, man". When the two terms came together they eventually merged as one simplified version and became "souped up". Oh, did I mention that I'm completely full of*****. Now let me tell you about gow jobs...
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