Hot Rods What came first...The Hotrod or Race Car

Just looking at this...



Truly a golden age...the Hotrod came first...just a read into it all...

Making a Racer is clearly related to if not Hotrodding...Employees of Car Manufacturers and the Free World aiming at winning the race...gotta be Fast, handle well with a little luck, even no cheating...heck there was even shady shit involved in the evolution...then they went home to the salt and Streets...evolving to another style we celebrate here...or so it goes...

 

If you are a fan of automotive history guys started racing them not long after there were two "automobiles" in the same area. Purpose built race cars came soon after.
I'm saving that shot because I haven't seen it before and that car has a lot of the look I want for one of my projets. The first organized automobile race in the US was on Thanksgiving day in 1895. A bit before it was common to have hot rods.

 

Unison from the top down to the bottom up...workers had the know how and contributed to go fast...like a nice running engine...Racers had to get home...many were sporty on the road I'm sure...

 

I think someone once said The first race started as soon as the second car was built !

 

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I look forward to the journey...do you have a Thread yet...a wild time in go fast and real polished big car stuff...that is a Buick...maybe over yonder...incredible competition

 

Big Names and others evolving at the Track...that was places like Bonneville and the many worldly tracks and roads of the nations here and abroad brought together by trade and war...



@The37Kid remember that Roadster with those odd fenders...maybe they used a set of these...

 

I thought a hotrod was just a race car that you drove to work on Monday.

 

This is true. When I first moved to DE in '01 I met a fellow in his late nineties.
I took him for a ride in my T model, and he went on about being a kid, and the car owners bragging about how quick they had traveled (on unimproved roads ) from this town to that town.
It was every day was race day.

 

Influenced by go fast...

 

At 7mph things weren't to bad at the track...boy did that ever change...

 

Hod Rods started with souped up buggy's. They both started when they invented the wheel..

 

Ben Hur, the OG with Heston was great. He was talking chariot race strategy with another racer, "put the little white horse up front on the inside". I wonder if this is where the term "pony tire" came from .

 

The original four banger!......and we know Horsepower sure was a standard in measurement, even today...A lotta' truth in that...that 999 comes to mind

 

Racecar....for sure! When the car manufacturers decided to see who's car was faster, it all started. IMO, the Hotrod didn't start til young guys started taking the fenders off their dad's cars and driving them on the street. 30's or 40's, maybe.

 

That looks like it could be a Batten Special.

 

I worked for Batten performance in the early 90s...

 

Any connection, do you think? https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/...sions-the-batten-special-v8-a/?v=68caa8201064

 

Naaaa.... probably not..

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_999

Quoted..."Henry Ford had an early interest in racing cars, having built and driven "Sweepstakes", a 26 horsepower (19 kW) model that won a race against Alexander Winton and other challengers in 1901.[1] It was from the proceeds of this race that Ford created the Henry Ford Company.

They were painted red and yellow, respectively. The result was a huge engine with a bare chassis attached to it, with no bodywork whatsoever. Both of the cars were extremely heavily engineered,..."

More at the link above...

Bob I appreciate yours and the others opinions...My opinions are just that as well. I am not much of a reader or historian of such things but I just was thinking the other night along the lines that the early days of the big car Manufacturers especially with racing road and track related in the beginning and having the fastest car is essentially Hotrodding...

What we celebrate at the core of the Hambs focus is the evolved direction and aftermath of the primitive days of the infancy of the automobile which if I read above with 999 was it came before the Ford Motor Company did...which is kinda neat when you consider the description of the Racer they built...no fenders, open engine, very little body etc...

These guys propelled literally the evolution of racing and tinkering with making horsepower harnessing it and putting it to the pavement...the people that worked with them assisted in that evolution and no doubt applied that tech in their own ways to their vehicles...to boot some of the people that watched this go fast stuff also got in the game...there were so many car companies that evolved...and that influenced the later stuff we most celebrate here...

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Henry also had this before 999...

https://www.corporate.ford.com/articles/history/1901-sweepstakes-race.html



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Quoted..."Ford V8 1933 Vehicle Reg. No. AGJ567. Event Entry No: 42. Driver: Wise, T.C. Place: S.W.A.C. Welsh Rally. Date: 30.6-3.7.37"

https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/n...he-south-wales-auto-club-news-photo/654317182

I think that is a fullsize 32 Ned...the Cowl forward anyway...the back is definately custom in nature...it is across the pond and I believe I shared it in the oddball 32 Thread...I think it was actually featured in that magazine you shared above...

 

Hello,

There is no question about the hot rod being the first. Ownership of any car starts the whole ball game. One tends to see old race cars and think that was there. Without ownership of any car, first, there was no race. YRMV

My wife and I have always been interested in the development of cars in general. We see/saw plenty of stock photos of the earliest car on a dirt road “kerplunking” over ruts and obstacles toward a day’s outing in the time of day. So, as that person started out from his home, he started the hot rod version. But, no one called it that day. When the owner put on some goggles, it upped his game to “race” version.

We happened to watch a TV streaming series called 1928. It is a prequel to the popular Yellowstone series that everyone is “ga-ga” over for its story line and scenery. But, for our purposes, the prequel as part of the continuous steps that paves the way of the development of the characters in the whole family tree.

The premise is that folks on horses were a huge part of how the West was developed. It was technically the first drag race… to the nearest river, tree, campfire, etc… But, this series adds in an unusual car theory versus those on horseback.

Jnaki

With no electricity or plumbing as we all know it, the early settlers struggled and made do with what they had. Improvements were already in place in the Eastern cities, but out West, no such luck. As the culture crept Westward, those things naturally come along. This also pertains to the development of cars from the first one on the Eastern seaboard scene.

So, by the time in the series, 1928, automobiles were now a newcomer to the daily scene in towns and home spreads. As the culture moves West, so does the parts that make the society what it is or has become.

Horseback racing was already in vogue. We all know how that goes. But with the advent of a new form of transportation coming on to the scene, what makes it progress? We saw plenty of snow in this mountainous areas. In towns, out where the homes were built in big properties, etc. One thing caught our attention, extras for cars to excel in new arenas.

Some cars were stuck in the snowy roads. But, those with the extra added accessories were able to move along at a better rate and safer at the same time. So, what was it? the advent of odd ball chain links added to tires for traction, gives anyone just a little more of an edge in any encounter.

 

Daytona was at one time the land speed track of the world. They raced at incredible speeds on the packed sand, fascinating racing history. This was in the very early 1930's.

People came from all over, England, Australia to race and the cars were behemoths. Many hours and dollars went into these one-off wonders. This spilled over into the rest of the car world, people wanted to go FAST.

 

It works the other way too!

I thought a race car was just a hotrod that you drove to work on Monday.

 

They were doing 75mph in 1901 and tracks were already happening...yes it was certainly an evolution and a couple wars and aerospace got wrapped up in it to...but like I said Henry was into racing first...the Hotrod connection was that they were building the car like a Hotrod even though it was racing that was the focus...they didn't even have a Factory yet...sounds like they had a shop and fabbed it based on what they knew and had available...

 

That is true that the Roaring Roadsters were racing in events called Hotrod Races at some point and were apparently driven to and from the race at some point in the history I've read...

 

J that's again a great analogy of possibility...they were going fast even before the 4 rubber wheels hit the road...the horse race Tracks probably started doing double duty once the motorized car came on the scene...

 

I am not so sure that this question will ever be answered with any real certainty. What is the definition of a hot rod? Is it removing the fenders of a production car or does it require more performance minded modifications? I am sure others could add to the definition. The real answer may be that they happened at the same time or pretty close to it. Let's take 1904 and 1905 when guys were drag racing in essence on the beach at Ormond (Daytona) Florida trying to set records with their modified specials. When Packard wanted to build a new model for 1904 (the model K a car that they never really finished) they built a racecar to house the new 4 cylinder and they called it "The Grey Wolf". It set records at Ormond in January of 1904 and raced in the Vanderbilt Cup race. Later Packard in the teens built what I believe could be termed a Hot Rod and called it Geronimo. It had a crude body with their new Twin Six (12) and they had no intent on racing it but used it to test their new engine. The Chief Engineer for Packard was Jesse Vincent and he was a hot rodder at heart and raced boats as well as getting involved in racing cars. Packard took a 1914 Grand Prix Mercedes and they rebodied it and Vincent was the pit manager at Indy in 1915 when they won the Indy 500 with it. My grandfather worked in the experimental department at Packard at that time and they played with hot rods and racecars, such as Toodles V(a Sunbeam 12) and they built a couple of Packard racers such as the 299 cubic inch SOHC 12 cylinder that lead the Indy 500 for the first half of the 1919 Indy 500 and the 905 cubic inch SOHC 12 they used to set a speed record at Ormond in early 1919 at 149+. These were basically aero engines that they built to go racing. The aero engineers developed supercharging and turbo charging in the teens for aircraft use which of course made its way into racecars and hot rods eventually. It was more evolution than anything else.


If you take the period 1905 for instance with the three cars below, that is Willie K Vanderbilt in the #1 90 hp Mercedes and E R Thomas on the far side in his stripped down 90 hp Mercedes and Arthur McDonald in the center in his Napier that he used to set a record on that day in January 1905 of 104.651 mph. These were basically production cars stripped down to set some records and in my opinion were more hot rod than racecars (debatable I suppose).


The second picture is Herbert Bowden's Mercedes (with two 60 hp Mercedes engines-last years models and not as powerful as the newer 90 hp engines). He set a record for the flying mile at Ormond in 1905 at 109.756 mph. Some may call it a racecar and others may call it a hot rod I suppose.


Here is a picture I took the other day at a local museum of a 1909 Austin Model 60 with a 784 cubic inch six cylinder engine. At the time that this car was built the Ford Model T sported a 20 horsepower four cylinder. This car was owned by my grandfather (Barney Pollard referred to on the card) and I was given the task of getting it running back in the 60s when it came back from us loaning the car to the Thompson Products Museum in Ohio. The car had a great sound and tremendous power. More than most could imagine. I could easily do 70 with more left in the pedal. Definitely not a racecar but I would argue it was a hell of a hot rod. When I have done research on the era of the teens over the years in Motor Age and magazine called "The Automobile" I would see references to guys making changes to their production cars to make them go faster. Hot rods for sure. Still it will be a subject to be debated but not sure there is one simple definitive answer.

 

Jim I love the story and you are fortunate to have the connections you have to that greatness back then...the civilian automobiles weren't breaking records but those into go fast seemed to get the mph up there pretty rapidly...

Those vintage pictures are priceless...and as you and others have mentioned there was a global aspect to all of this just to mix things up even more...

There was a Thread on when the first use of the word Hotrod was used...I'll bet it may have been being tossed around even in the early 1900s even if it seems to have entered the vocabulary later...the early racers were of mixed engineering and quality really highlighting how connected the two movements were...

It truly continued till today...as all the Car Manufacturers still build what I often refer to as factory Hotrods...