Art & Inspiration Stance: rake, drag, or slam?

I don't really car what it is called or was called "back in the day" as long as everyone underatands what is being spoken of.

Although it is good to get a feel for the difference in the jargon. Language and its usage is pretty interesting stuff.

What you are calling drag we called power rake in my part of the country in the '60s. I personally prefer them a little down in the snout or raked. But my very next project will probably have a mild power rake. Anyway I degress, sorry for hijacking the thread.

carry on.

Oh yea "stance" just describes how it sits. So yes level is a stance. Not all hot rods or customs were raked or dragged or slammed (we called that lowered). Some just sat the way they sat.

 

I always remember a small R&C magazine with a bunch of color cartoons in it. My favorite was a 40 sedan with the trunk open. The caption was something like "guys make fun of my rake but at least I don't have to bend over to get my spare out"

My memory coincides with yours. In the early 60 it was popular around here for a short time to have a big rake with chrome scavenger pipes exiting under the rear end. I think the Roth cartoons were an influence on that. A friend had a 60 Starliner jacked up in the rear with his rear end painted white. When someone kidded him he said if you can beat it, I'll paint it any color you want.

The "stance" has moved around a lot in my lifetime.

I do not like the current trend of grounding the rocker panels. They look so stupid to me. They look like they are broken. We couldn't get out of the driveway in my area of the country. I didn't have a driveway but I did have to get into and out of the gas station.

Damn right it is.

 

For me it depends on the car, what make / model. How it has been built or customized.

Lundo

 

Great thread!

 

I agree with everything you posted Tony, except the word "stance". At 41 I can not remember NOT using the word stance. We have always used it to describe how a car sits. So lets say my memories start to get strong at 4 years old when I first saw American Grafitti. We have thusly been using the word stance for 37 years!

 

stance.....I call it "AT***UDE"...nice thread Tony and you have some very cool cars!

 

I find it funny that some of the posts on this thread have called bagged cars "posers". Yet, these people would call Matranga's Merc or Hirohata's Merc iconic, perfect, and timeless. Trust me, if air bags were available to the customizers of the day, they would have ALL used them. They would have laid them directly on the lakes pipes to get the low look they were going after. A lot of them tried, but they were undriveable. I knew Larry Watson very well, and back in the day, he tried almost everything to get his cars as low as possible. Was he a "poser", too?

The cool part about a bagged vehicle is that you can set it at a driveable height and not destroy the undercarriage, yet you can lower it down at shows when you want to show it off. When done correctly, they ride nice, too. I've had lowered vehicles for 25 years, and I have tried nearly every method to get them down and still ride nice. I had a few that had the rake and stance I was looking for but rode like ****. They destroyed the exhaust systems, and they looked like somebody took a 24 grit grinding disc to the undercarriage.

I think the stance all depends on the look you're going for. I like all stances, it just depends on what you're trying to achieve. To call a bagged car a "poser" is absurd. If the term "poser" means that you're trying to be something you're not, then maybe you should remove your power steering, power brakes, air conditioning, and stereo because aren't those really "poser" items, too?

I build my car for me, not for the peanut gallery to judge. I could give a **** what they think.

 

A couple of other points that may be a bit too new for the theme here.

NASCAR rake=stock or a bit lower in back, real low in front. Keeping with the race car theme and different than the drag look where the back was raised.
Easy to do on Mopars with torsion bars...

Notice that many cars have taller front wheel openings than rear.
This also visually lends itself to a forward rake when both tires 'fill the openings the same.

I prefer that the center of the wheel is even with the fender lower edge or lower. Visually fits better.

 

For me, anything full-fendered and HAMB-friendly gets lowered just a little bit more in the back than in the front.

 

yea bud but that's still into the '70s.

When I was young very young where I was at the question was always "How's it sit?" Or the comment was "I like the way it sits".

The English language is very regional. Its good to know what others say or how they say it, sometimes it can help you not be offended by what someone has said. But like rodding itself the language used and or the slang is going to be at the very least a little bit regional.

Some of it we have all picked up by reading the magazines. Way back when most of what you saw on the news stand was either published in So Cal or the East Coast. So a lot of our vernacular is going to be close to the same, but not all of it. There will always be colloquialisms that are distinct to the region and the style of rod that we built in the region we were living in.

Its like slammed, I don't recall hearing slammed until the later 80s or earlier 90s. I do recall lowered and or s****ers. For chopped as long as I can remember a chopped car was hammered or hammered down. But I am aware that some folks will remember different terminology. Its just a fact of life.

 

In my humble opinion,I would have to go with Bob on this one. A car that looks like you can get in it and drive away as is to me looks "parked".

A car is laid so low "in da weeds" that you could not possibly drive it as is looks "posed". I don't think anyone so far has called anyone else a "poser" in the derogatory sense.
Paul

 

Stance can make or break the overall look of a car just as the wrong wheels an tires can ruin the look of a car.
As for early sports cars and GP cars having different size tires front to rear this was a method of adjusting the handling of a car as the suspensions of the day offered little in the way of adjustment. Smaller front tires tend to induce some understeer which was desirable in these tail happy early sports cars. Also at the time to get a wider tire you had to also go taller due to the tire tech of the day.

Personally I like the late 50s cruiser style of a heavy forward rake like the 58 chev in American Graffiti. I also like the Bellflower slammed look of the Watson cars.

One of the most wicked evil looking cars I have ever seen belonged to a friend of my fathers. I first remember seeing it when I was about 5 years old. It gave me goose bumps then and I still get them when I think about it know. The car was a 49 Ford coupe, black, nosed and decked, hood full of louvers, black interior consiting of only mustang buckets black carpet hurst shifter and a Grant 3 spoke hard plastic rimmed wheel. It had one of the wickedest sounding small blocks probably due to lots of compression. It was also on a steep forward rake with radiused rear wheel wells chrome reverse rims and black wall tires. This thing was also as fast as it looked, it would walk away from my Dads Hemi Roadrunner. The rake is what made the car look so evil.

 

Language is a funny thing. I was reading a late 60s mag last night and a full bodied 69ish sedan was being called a street rod.

And to fully go off on tangent....I was listening to a linquist (not cunning AFAIK) and he mentioned the English accent we hear today came about from Brit society trying to fit in in upper French court. Us Americans actually sound closer to pre-colonial Engrish than they do themselves!

 

When I first remember the term Street Rod being used it had to be a pre '48 car. It seems that as of late anything that is cleaned up with fancy scmancy wheels that isn't a pro touring car is a street rod.

I don't know about our spoken accent. in this country there are so many ways to intone the language it would be hard to place it. They sure speak English differently in Appalachia than they do in the LA Basin.

 

Just an afterthought on the subject of the taildragger stance as the only correct one for a traditional custom: While researching this thread, I came across a couple of pictures of cars that are waaay up in the Pantheon of great early customs:


Jimmy Summers Merc


Jack Calori '36

It's not my intention to argue that taildraggers weren't the real deal, but to say that there were universally admired customs built in the '40s and '50s that were DEAD LEVEL, as these two greats obviously are. Just examine the gap between the running board/rocker and the ground, and it is almost perfectly parallel.

 

Oh and the coupe is also on black walls not wide whites but that is a completely different can of worms.

 

Stance totally changes the at***ude of almost any car. No matter what I am building(rod,custom, drag car,etc), I buy my wheels and tires first and that gives me the base to build on and set my ch***is height exactly where it want it. For me, this can make or break the way the car looks.

 

Throw in a new part of the question? Is the question also ***ociated with rat rods?
If it's an A Tudor, needs to have a Z'd frame today?
Stance is a combined effort of suspension height influenced by style of body mods with wheels and tires that compliment the package. It takes the package to make it eye candy, not just one part.
What makes you want to walk across the road to look at? What makes you not to put that effort out?

 

Low, Drag. Rake, or Slamed....All good with me...EXCEPT THIS ONE

 

You are smart, that what mock up is meant to be. Not propping rusty **** against a body with snow tire rollers.

 

Didn't say I like RRs and didn't build one. Why I raised the question, think it's related.
Throw in a chunk of ham or an onion into this pot of beans while it's cookin'. It'll feed ya better than popcorn.

 

50Fraud .... cool thread you have here.Im always preaching about stance and the way our cars sit.(All of the time) This thread is not about hitting switches,so hopefully the airbag arguments dont get crazy.

 

I was gonna say...you guys forgot one stance...the slightly raised, level look. I'm glad you brought up this question, SinisterCustom...and glad you answered it, tommy. That '57 answers the question perfectly. THIS is the kind of car that was typical, and got my attention as a kid in the early/mid sixties where I lived. (suburbs of Detroit) Fact is, I'm not old enough to remember the early days of rods and customs...might've seen one or two max back then. I didn't really get hip to those until the late '60s when I started building models and reading the mags. But boy-oh-boysenberries...when a car like this husky lookin' Ford rumbled by, you know my little gonads were just a-twitter.

A little thought on this type of stance: Most of us are aware that a '57 Ford never sat this high as stock...but a '56 did...as did most of the earlier "slab-sided" cars. They sat pretty high from the factory. So a simple change to some taller tires, I imagine, pretty-much did the trick...and it was a good, husky, aggressive look. About 1957, all the cars came down, and now it was up to the owner to bring 'em back up...such as someone did with this bad-***ed '57.

I like to think of a '53 Ford I saw once in the mid '60s...stock looking as could be, with the original wheels and caps, seafoam green paint, and I believe a non-altered height. Even my dad mentioned, "That's probably the nicest '53 Ford you'll ever see." It was just the sweetest creampuff ever, but with a set of tall blackwalls that completely filled the wheel-openings. That alone gave you the idea that maybe the car was not your typical grocery-getter. And sure enough, as I was enjoying this vision, the owner came out, started the car, and RUMP-RUMP, RUMP! Yes! I do beleive it was at that moment that I truly came to understand the term "sleeper". And I happen to think that the stance was simply killer...even though it was basically...stock.

Good thread, 50Fraud...and I see that you did address the point that some customs also sat level.

I do love this site, and shootin' the breeze about stuff like this with you guys. There's nobody...and I mean nobody else in the whole world that appreciates and can enjoy discussing this kind of stuff...the subtle nuances of the different styles of hot rods...like you guys do. Anybody else, I'm afraid, would be bored to tears. LOL.

One more thing...porkand****** and 50Fraud..."Colloquialisms"? Design minutiae? Historical treatise? Now cut that out.

 

Rik, I think the greater sin on this car is the shape of the front wheel wells. They look like they were borrowed from a 1-1/2 ton truck, and they cut deeply across the wheels. The shapes of the wheels and the fender openings have no relationship to each other.

This is, for the most part, a nice custom, but its stance at the front just looks like it's broken.[/quote]

 

Further to Rik's post and my answer above:
This car was posted in another thread, and its stance sparked some debate:



It reminds me of this car, which very likely inspired the design above, both in shape and stance:



Both of them have skirted front fenders, and some forward rake. I was surprised to notice that I didn't mind their at***ude; seems like hiding the front wheels makes it acceptable (I understand that not everyone will agree with me here).

Of course, this is all moot; front skirts don't exist in the real world anyway.

 

Hey Tony,

Of all the drawings, photos, paintings and actual Figoni designed & built Delehaye & Delage automobiles I have seen, none have had a ''rake'' to them. I suspect the claret coloured one may well have some lazy spring work under the heavy six cylinder sitting on top of the front cross member.
The "Bugnaughty'' & the ''rake'' it sports I suspect is the work of the photographer tryin to put his signiture on the builder's work.

The '35 Ford three winda a.k.a. "Ruby Delux", the one with the '35-'36 Plymouth/Dodge fenders & the White truck grille won't fly in my world!
Beautful workmanship & finish betrayed by incongruent shapes from dissonant sources.

''Meanwhyle, back aboard The Tainted Pork "

 

I'm not sure if the Delahaye actually has a rake. I suspect that it sits pretty much level, and that the impression of a rake arises mainly from the absence, in that car, of parallel straight lines that could give one a hold on the perspective in that view. Everything flows and tapers to the rear, so the eye wants to compensate by reading the front ride height smaller than it is. Do you have any photos from other angles?

 

Hey I was just trying to sound important. Well that and dig at the fellas that have never left their neighborhood and take offense because they don't know what you just said.

Something that we are all missing I think because we equate tall dragging as purley a custom mod. I am in the midst of building a true period gas coupe. There is a rule that says no body or suspension lift in order to get weight transfer. The rule does not say you can't lower the back a little. Tail dragging was one of the ways that some of the savvy racers got around the no lift rule when I was a kid.

And it does look cool if you know what you are looking at.

 

I agree 100%. From the doors back, that car is a stunner. If the builder would have left the '35 parts on the front it would have been perfect. Maybe a quick flick of the front airbag switch to get it level would help, too.

 

In this picture, there's clearly more of the rear rim visible than the front:



However, I did find other pictures of the car in which it appears to sit level. I think the rising line at the bottom of the rear fender contributes to its apparent rake.

I make no claim that the photos of this car show its original stance. My point was just that the cars with skirted front fenders look OK to my eye when they are nose-down, but -- as Rik points out -- not when the front wheels are visible.