Art & Inspiration Thoughts on the future of the hobby

Making our hobby more accessable contributed to the whole 'rat rod' thing getting out of hand. Cobbled junk could happen no matter what. Just my opinion, the hobby needs to stay alive but not be bastardized for the sake of survival. The best way to handle it, I'm not sure. But I don't think that the availability of junk chinese parts helps much.

 

Personally I’d be far more comfortable about building something from used parts than the bait and switch re- branded, re- boxed/white box fuckin shit that available now from you know where.

 

I am not arguing that the cars are out there and 7K for a decent Model T is absolutely accurate but after you spend the 7K on the Model T You still have a bone stock car with mechanical brakes that doesn't like any speed above about 30 miles an hour and isn't practical in any sense of the word for the modern world.
That same 7,000 bucks could buy you a somewhat built lesser loved muscle car or pony car That right out the gate is fun to drive and doesn't take literally thousands of dollars to make a driver out of on top of the initial buy-in (that is 50+ years old now).
Don't get me wrong I think there will be a few young guys that will always be into antique cars but they are the exception and not the rule and the further we get away from that time period The less you're going to see young people into the really old stuff. To put it into perspective I mentioned earlier and another post that when I was younger I viewed a car from 1980 or older as an old car My friend's teenage kids literally earlier today (Sunday) called their grandpas truck a "really old truck" (It's a 2001 Ford F-150).
I think most of us would call that a pretty new vehicle but it really isn't It's a 23-year-old vehicle that is older than a kid that is just now getting his license. And By that same rationale the "boomers" of my parents generation tend to view old cars as probably the mid 1960s and older and Most of them who are now approaching 80ish probably think a late model car is anything past the muscle car era of their teens or twenties.

Everyone on this website is kind of biased because most of us are all comfortable with carburetors, buggy springs that are transversely mounted, valves that need to be adjusted, points that need gapping and filing, brakes that will need adjusting but if a kid is lucky enough to be able to learn about vehicles in school today he/she isn't learning any of this in school... They weren't teaching any of this back in the late 1990s when I was going to college to become a professional mechanic. I got lucky on two fronts as I had a father who was an old school gearhead And I had a shop teacher that was also a gearhead and even with those 2 men teaching me the basics it's was still a pretty big learning curve. When I got out of school I decided to do some college to advance my automotive knowledge The college instructor in my local Junior college that was teaching auto mechanic fundamentals barely touched the subject of carburetors or breaker points ignition systems because as he mentioned you would not come across these working in a shop setting. I would imagine almost 30 years later it's even worse because now it is my generation is the school teachers and we (as a whole group not necessarily people like myself) unless we were into the old car hobby have very little experience dealing with carbureted era cars let alone cars That Henry Ford personally saw roll off the assembly line.
Solid axles and transverse leaf springs are very simple suspension systems but you still have to be taught how they work to a point.
I hope traditional hot rodding doesn't die heck even the non trad street rod scene or the restoration scene doesn't die but pre war cars in all shapes has been a niche scene since the mid-1960s and every year that goes on it's a smaller niche and the supply of pre war cars although I don't see a lot of them going to the scrap yard anymore everyday that goes by there is less and less of that stuff out there especially the oddball stuff that doesn't have good aftermarket support.
My biggest thing at this point in my life is hoping that governments across the western world start protecting the classic car hobby instead of trying to ban it because of a emissions or safety BS but I digress.

 

You're thinking in terms of muscle cars as a car to get a kid into the vintage automotive hobby. An average muscle car is now 50-year-old plus. They are as old as dirt from an automotive standpoint. Age wise if somebody that is 20 years old today a 1970 'cuda is just as old as a 1948 Plymouth coupe was when I was 20. Both are cool cars if we're being honest but they aren't young kid obtainable because the nice ones are expensive and the obtainable ones are beat up and destroyed generally speaking and a young kid will buy a beat up car but a beat up Valiant is much more drivable then a beat up model A and neither of them are generally being seeked out by a young kid that is just now getting into the automotive hobby with their first job as an adult.. With the youth of any generation it's almost always going to be a 15 to 30-year-old car regardless of make or country of origin.
It has been this way since the car culture took off in the early 1950s (a kid in 1955 was building a 1930 Ford A, a kid in 1965 may have been building a hot rod but realistically most of them had moved on to a 40s or early '50s cruiser type car because they were cheap and plentiful And you could still find nice examples for a reasonable price.
If a kid is 20 years old today and he is purchasing a old car He's probably doing a Civic, a Miata (You can blame the fast and the furious on the import craze) or an American pickup or if he loves speed he might be messing around with a Mustang or a Camaro or even a charger or Challenger... As crazy as it is a Challenger is a 15-year-old car and they are on used car lots all over the country for 5 or 6 grand and they are fast especially when compared to an obtainable Valiant that cost about the same amount of money.

 

I am okay with the rat rod scene although it is dying if not completely dead at this point You don't exactly see a whole lot of them out and about anymore everyday there's less and less of them and there's more and more of them for sale on the classified websites. The rat Rod scene got out of hand because people in my parents age group thought it would be a good idea to take their fiberglass '32 Fords and airbrush rust onto them and fake patina.
Then even worse is when you got the guy that thought it would be a good idea to put a diesel engine in a model A and deliberately make it horrendously ugly and loud and belch black smoke.
I was totally okay when it was just young people building "rat rods" I was in that age group, they are the ones The brought real hot rods back into the mainstream. I wasn't building mad Max type cars (In that early 2000s time frame I was doing bagged mild customs that looked 1950s style) but you could argue I was looking and lusting to build a ratty ass hot rod (a budget built traditional car). It's okay for people to do that stuff that's what gets them in the hobby and eventually those young people are going to be middle-aged men building the next generation America's most beautiful roadster show cars. Obviously this is just my opinion but Our hobby is way too small and is getting smaller everyday nobody should be excluded.

 

Just think those are going to be classic cars in just a few more years.
At The Pomona car swap meet or Turlock or Hershey soon enough You will see them along with new beetles and The abomination Thunderbirds that tried so hard to be 1950s but with a 2005 sensibility so they didn't do either decade real well. I dread the day but today's junk is tomorrow's classics.
I never thought I would see square pickup trucks become cool and now they are all the rage but I digress.

 

That's what got me into cars. I never cared about what was new at the time, I was surrounded by cool old shit so that's what was "normal" and cool to me. Not the most HAMB friendly but my dad daily drove 65 Mustangs the whole time I was a kid. They were a little worn but original and so much cooler than anything else on the road (late 90s) so that became my obsession.
Just telling a kid that something is cool probably isn't going to inspire much. Letting them sit in a cool old car and letting them start it up will actually do something. I still remember some random folks at the library when I was 4 or 5 letting me sit in their faded original '30- something coupe and letting me hit the starter button. That was the highlight of my week.
Now my whole life revolves around preserving and enjoying these old cars.

 

I am actually very introverted It's part of the reason why I like the old car hobby. I can basically lock myself into the garage and wrench on crap and not be bothered. But generally speaking when I'm driving an old car out public it's a pleasant encounter with humanity. It's totally different than when I was younger and I had to work retail and deal with idiots.
I don't have a problem with somebody saying "That's a nice car what year is it"
Or even the guy that claims he knows everything and the reality is he doesn't know anything about what he's talking about, It's all part of the fun. What I really like personally is when an older person that would have been a young person when my car was new can have a short conversation with me and you can see them reminiscing about their youth. My car brings a smile to their face and I think they're happy to see that history that they were fond of is going to live on a little longer because of people like myself.
Unfortunately as I get older there's less and less people older than me that are going to reminisce... I will soon be that old guy that is reminiscing about a former era except I won't be looking at 1980s or1990s cars fondly But that's because of my car guy and I know they are an abomination.
Now that being said I really like driving my cars as much as possible and although it is annoying parking at Walmart coming out to my car and there's a crowd around it or there's somebody sitting on it taking a picture, the reality is I knew that as soon as I parked it in the Walmart parking lot I could have driven the mundane economy car but I choose to drive the fun car and the fun car tends to get attention and by default I'm going to get attention with it and if I didn't want that attention I wouldn't have drove it.
I am pretty sure everyone here that is reading these comments have mundane blend in with the crowd daily drivers.

 

Never expected this many comments. So many different insights. Haven’t read them all, but will do so over the next couple of days.
Wonder if I’m an anomaly, being that I took up the hobby so late in life, or perhaps there are others like myself who got hooked later on in life. When I thought about this, Lord March came to mind and a vid he made of him acquiring an American hot rod. I posted it before in other threads, but just had to see it again. I’m guessing he bought it around 2010 based on when the vid was made in 2017. He says some poignant things, but at the very end, he mentions that he thinks of all the cars he owns, he thought this one was his kids favourite. Have no idea how old his kids were at the time, but that is an absolutely amazing statement. Imagine their upbringing, and their exposure to so many vehicles.
Of course there is a future to the hobby, but it is up to each and everyone one of us to keep it alive, so others may see what we see in this tired old iron.

 

Ok, a personal view. I don't think it's my duty to engraciate someone into what I like. Who dafuq am I? I'm just another swingin dick that prefers older stuff. Mrs Highlander says I'm an old soul. I don't dislike new souls, but I sure as he'll don't like what they like. I replied on a topic I'd feel nearly ashamed to tune my drag car in the pits with a laptop on my roof. But that's me, I don't want everyone like me. Do your thing, but look down your nose at me don't get pissed if you look too far down and it gets big for a few weeks. Make no mistake, as much as this vintage thing we love has infected the big picture it still breeds a level "WTF are you doing with that old shit?" every now and then. "Just get an LS and forget it." vs a 389 with trips. I'd rather shovel horse apples on a 90 degree day. Fuck an LS. Yes, I'm a dick to a certain degree, even somewhat of a snob but so be it. And finally, if the lifestyle/hobby/practice goes away? Who cares? Won't happen in our lifetimes and probably not in the next 3-4 generations. Short of world war we're going nowhere but to the burger joint or car show any time soon. I'll take mine with cheese, pickles, mustard and grilled onions plz...

 

My burgers are plain

 

Yes and hang on
Those comments I made only refer to terms of build difficulty.
Not age.
But I had a student work 3 jobs to purchase his dream engine. (2JZ). I helped him set up the trans and clutch from a 350z. That set up ended up in a BMW.
So I see teens doing crap way above my head when I was at their age.
I do like introducing students to the early hot rod builders. Young folks that cast/made their own parts fueling an aftermarket performance market that still going. Some names are still around that they are familiar with.

had a student ask about a first gen Dodge truck this morning. I replied “a 1918?”
Got a weird look from him

 

Someone tried to talk to me about battered women once, told em I preferred em plain...

 

the world will bring on more changes in American society in the next 40 years than the last 100.
I don't see an old car hobby beyond static display in museums or certain events... maybe driving around a fairgrounds like we see the old hit and miss engines or cars from the very early 1900's occasionally today.
internal combustion will be replaced with something that works as well. electric cars we have now are not the answer.

 

I don’t mind converting my old ride to a Mr Fusion

 

Google "First Gen Dodge Truck" and tell me if you see any reference to a 1918 Dodge in any of the results.

 

So you're of the opinion that people interested in the hobby in a way different than you are is bad?

 

I'm of the opinion that quality work deserves to be on a different level than hack job wannabes. I personally want nothing to do with the latter.
For the record I don't consider a tastefully built hot rod without paint to be a 'rat rod' as a lot of people do. I'm talking about the crackhead mad max garbage that shows zero skill, taste, or a desire to improve either.

 

Gotcha. Not what I was getting from your original post, thanks for clarifying. I went to a rat rod show in Vegas in 2014 that was on at the same time as Viva Las Vegas. The stuff that was there was eye-opening and mostly terrifying.

No suspension, bodies wired to the frame, garden benches for seats, etc. That stuff I have no interest in.

 

I appologize if I wasn't clear. The freedom to do whatever you want is a great thing, but those people just seem to want to leech off of the attention of legitimate car builders without actually putting any effort into being a legitimate car builder. That sort of thing does nothing good for our hobby and that's why I say it could be a good thing if not everyone can get into the hobby. In my mind, the point of building a car is to learn and improve certain skills. We all start somewhere but do we really need the 'participation trophy' crowd to be involved here? I do think we need people to keep the hobby going but I don't believe that it should be watered down to please everybody just for the sake of keeping it going. At that point let it die with dignity at least. But with all this said, I don't think we have to worry much about car guy culture dying off.
OP sure knows how to get reading material...

 

While walking Hershey this year I couldn't help but notice the number of "in memoriam" signs displayed throughout the flea market. The demographics at large and small shows and events I've attended would indicate that this hobby is dying off quicker than it is being rejuvenated. I anticipate a lot of cars coming up for sale in the coming years.

 

After seeing the other thread for the 32 Vicky, I might just change my mind lol. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum...do-you-want-a-32-vicky.1304359/#post-15034525

 

This ! There will be far more early hotrods than buyers, with the space to even park them. So, lets have some fun while it lasts !

 

Your opinion, everyone has one.
I have no idea how much you really know about the humble beginnings of this car adventure, but it appears you have either never really seen many examples of some of the early stuff that has been tried along the way, or you were guarded from seeing some of that early stuff, or you came into the action after things started to improve.

The hard reality is, a lot of the early stuff was very crude, and much was down right unsafe. It was built by the average guy learning what would work and what wouldn't, some with no actual skills or experiences in building anything. Others were simply experimenting to see if a thought or an idea would work, and some of their experiments had coisotropic endings. As a whole, the hot rod crew tends to ignore, over look, or forget those things. The things that are now considered "the proper" way to build things are the result of those failures, often paid for with someone's blood. It was the same way most current "safety" rules came about.

The industry as a whole is doing a much better job at pointing the way to build better stuff, but unsafe junk is still being built.

I was around through the rat rod beginning. There was without a doubt some real junk built. What might surprise you is much of that junk was actually built by qualified builders that were intension building "rat rods" to prove a point to the other builders at the time. Those were what was called "Shock Rods", their entire purpose was to shock the other builders. It was successful. Most of them were not actually driven any more then around the fairgrounds (or from the car trailer around the block from the event). The problems started when those with out knowledge started to copy the shock rods and thought they could actually drive them. The reason you don't see many "rat rods" now is because the shops quickly quit building the unsafe shock rods (or refined them so they could actually be driven), and those that didn't have the knowledge figured out they couldn't actually drive that crap. The really unsafe rats disappeared rather quickly. Some of the current rat rod builders have actually become pretty good at it, and some have a huge amount of engineering under those rusty shells. Like any automotive fringe, there are still guys building the rats with a lot of shock value, and some will always push the limits.

The rat rod fad brought new life into the hot rod culture. It was fast becoming a culture where it was thought that every car had to be perfect. Because of them, it is now acceptable to have a car a bit rough and still have fun with it. It also removed the limitations of how cars were supposed to be powered and finished. It rolled the hot rod party back to 1950 when even odd ball things were acceptable.

 

Currently, there are a lot of old guys with huge collections of these 30s- 60s cars dying off and their collections are being auctioned off. Some of these project cars are already selling for very reasonable prices.

At some point in the near future, some very nice builder stuff is going to be on the market fairly cheap (if the hoarders don't snatch them all up). Those young guys in their 30s-40s may be able to have access to those really nice projects in conditions that they have not been available for, in many years.

It probably isn't going to help many of the guys in their 20s (unless they are prepared for it), but 50+ year old cars have always been out of the reach of most 20 year old guys. I was in my mid 30s when I bought my 1st 50 year old car (it was a pile of junk, but I got it built and drove it a lot).

 

I do understand how sketchy most of the early stuff was. I wouldn't want to be on the road near a lot of it. However like you said, it was because they were trying new concepts. The nice thing about doing this stuff all these years later is that the knowledge of the failures is already out there and easy to learn about through basic research so that a beginner doesn't have to make the same mistakes. I'm assuming we're talking about preserving traditional hot rods, meaning the historical aspect of what's already been done. Not trying new modern concepts as modern "hot rodding", I couldn't care less about the LS swap crowd so I'm not going to comment on that. But someone who is serious about joining our traditional car hobby and keeping it going shouldn't and really has no excuse to be proud of being a hack. Beyond the obvious learning curve of putting craftsmanship into something.
As far as "shock rods" go, if someone put some actual quality craftsmanship into one then I could sincerely appreciate that aspect of it but I have no interest in that culture. Personally I think the whole "look at me" thing is very annoying. I can appreciate the fact that a rough but cleanly assembled car is considered 'acceptable' now but it sure seemed to go downhill from there in a hurry to the point where it was 'cool' to hack together garbage on purpose. Where I live, that mentality is unfortunately still alive and well and it gets really old to see this junk everywhere.

 

I know lots of people here were complaining about your car getting attention, the annoying part to me is people offering to buy it constantly. i'll gladly wave, but people hounding me with "would you take 2,000 for it?" or "what would you sell it for?" really does get old fast.
im obviously younger so i guess some people think im hurting for money (i am, but id rather have the car ) how many people have that happen that often?

 

They offered cash? Seems everyone these days wants to trade for guns and a dirt bike.

 

no ones tried that one yet.

 

I was showing my car at the Portland roadster show a couple years back and they had a rat rod corral in one corner which I actually enjoyed. Yes, Portland is the city of inclusiveness (and urban camping) but in a sea of cars with ropes and railings around them the rat rods were open, and they were actually encouraging people to come sit in them and touch them, check them out all you desired (tetanus shot recommended).

They are not for me, but I enjoyed talking to the guys that built them and some of their creativity is off the hook. These cars cost a fraction of what it costs me to build, most of what I saw appeared safe and well-constructed. Not everyone likes Salvadore Dali's works, but I think it is good to mix it up a bit.