History What would hot rodding look like if the '"pinnacle" cars didn't exist?

...or Cord hiboys

 

What’s hard for many to grasp is that in some parallel world, Fonzi is Richie and Richie is Fonzi. Joanie would be attractive.
A post apocalyptic movie would look like Leave it to Beaver. A world where the sanitary and normal of our world is horror.
the Spencer roadster could be a 4 door DeSoto with the roof cut off. The Hirohata Merc could be a Divco milk truck. Revered by the multitudes.
Charles Manson a TV preacher.
Worlds where circumstances or it’s history are infinity reflecting the limitless algorithms of happenstance.

 

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/the-story-of-tommy-lee.436014/

...Love it!!

...Tommy Lee and no it's not that Tommy Lee

It's a sad story at the end of the day but he did some really cool stuff...

for real...the Late Hamber @Rockerhead raced a Cord at the Dry lakes but it was full fendered...
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Screw that Fine Arts crap...I was there for the Applied Physics

 

All those cars you mention were Hotrodded or otherwise Hopped up and customized prior to said movement......and that's a great word to describe that movement...

 

This is like asking the question what NHRA fuel racing would look like if there were no Chrysler Hemis...Another iconic deal....

 

Everything has been done, true, but, in the absence of the Icon cars, it would resemble the rat rod world more. When is the last time you saw a Star? A Studebakers Dictator is a pretty car, would it replace the 40 Ford? I'm just BSbbs ing my thoughts here

Cammers and Rats?

 

Everything has and had been done, true, but not in quantity, as the Pinnacle cars

 

I don't know why they would resemble Ratrods...1965 and down some stuff was a bit hacky but many were quite well done...and don't forget many Pinnacle Rods and Customs are one offs...







...All 4drs and Canadian Bacon...

Credit to Photographers, Owners


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This is what is either forgotten or ignored these days by those with a "rose colored glasses" view of hot rod history. Most of what was built was budget based, and what was readily available as a starting car, or what the wrecking yards were full of. Nothing to be embarrassed about. Just the way it was. Our roots are in the less affluent end of town.

Certain cars became 'iconic' along the way for certain reasons. Mostly it is as @Squablow says in post #6, because they are landmark models. '32 Ford with the flatty V8. '55 Chevy with the small block V8. Etc, etc, etc......

 

Let's just hope in that parallel universe nobody has to buy their parts from ACME!

 

LMAO. The parts were good, the builders vision was the issue.

 

But in a parallel universe, wouldn't the company be EMCA.

 

Reminds me of the time I wired my horn backwards and it went "KNOH!!!".

 

Dyslexia would be a universities observation.

Parallel, Polarity???

 

So I guess in that parallel universe I'd be rich, single, thin, full head of hair and my hot rod would be shiny. Where'd you say that vortex was?

 

And that is the defining proof, for you and I both, that it is just not possible for parallel universes to exist............

 

Well, it wouldn't be at the stem of a bong. More like the cerebral cortex after one to many hits.

 

Last time I went to the vortex, I was guided there by my sherpa, Bong Rippington.

 

I saw a Star radiator in Chattanooga two weeks ago. Does that count?

 

I see a lot of value in counterfactual thinking. That we'd have no design, invention, or art without counterfactual thinking should be obvious: but we wouldn't have tort law either. The question of the position a plaintiff would have been in had X not happened rests on a counterfactual, and that is the entirety of tort law. If "if the tree you cut down didn't fall on my house" could simply be reduced to "if pigs could fly," then no loss could be quantified and no relief could be had.

I posted on Facebook recently about the trouble people have with counterfactuals, and a friend of mine commented, "[centrist critiques] generally assume a society that is exactly the same as the present one in every particular except for the policy under consideration. It always makes me think of Ralph Kramden, contemplating some scheme or other, saying 'Norton, when I'm a rich man I'll have a phone put in on the fire escape so I can discuss all my big business deals out here when it's hot in the summer!'"

A lot of the trouble people have is distinguishing which of the contextual factors are simply natural and inevitable, or otherwise random and adventitious, and which are actually contributing causes or effects. People generally tend to underestimate the latter, in extreme cases tending towards a sort of Leibnizian monadism in which nothing causes anything and everything exists in parallel independence to everything else. Unfortunately a lot of conventional morality derives from this: I won't be more specific than that on this forum.

An interesting speculation would be from Hilaire Belloc's analysis of the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII in The Servile State (1912). The implication of Belloc's analysis is that, if Henry hadn't distributed huge amounts of monastic land among his favourite aristocrats after 1536, the motivation for the Inclosure Acts from 1773 would not have existed, and the form taken by the Industrial Revolution would have been much different. We can't say what might have happened instead, but factors which take their specific shape from specific causes would most definitely have been different. So, had something like the automobile emerged, the technological basis of its manufacture, the patterns of its use, and the trajectory of its technological evolution would all have been very different to what did in fact happen.

I regard the year 1934 to be pivotal in the development of the automobile. The industrial policies of Fascist Italy, the Third Reich, and the New Deal were established in 1921-1933, and all drew heavily on then fashionable Taylorist principles of organization and management and were therefore widely lauded as manifestations of "industry of the Future." Had this not been so, the automobile would have developed in an entirely different way: in that the development of the automobile was determined almost wholly by the organizational form of the automobile industry, itself determined almost wholly by policy. A lot of my automotive daydreams are about reconstructing what the automobile might have been had this not happened.

But I'd say the "pinnacle cars" are pinnacles after the fact. Their use for whatever reason informed the subsequent development of an aesthetic, so that people believe that the 1932 Ford is beautiful because it looks so much like a 1932 Ford. The problem is that some get the causality backwards and believe that there is some kind of independent quality of "beauty" or whatever at work in that.

 

Hmmm. Maybe I HAVE been to that alternate universe...but was just too wasted to realize it

...and I was driving THIS...

 

Pinnacle cars , is all dependant on what you consider a pinnacle car .

The 67 vw bug is considered a pinnacle year for vw enthusiasts. So is 73 .

77-81 rabbits are also considered pinnacle

the IROC is pinnacle

a multitude of euro snd Japanese cars are considered pinnacle depending on what your into , performance , luxury , or simply cars that defied styling and luxury options .

the stupid mid 90’s Ford Taurus with its “George Jetson” inspired styling can be considered pinnacle .

I was and still am a big 50’s - 70’s land yacht lover , I’ve always like low n slow and just cruise baby , not low ryders , but I nicely sorted original example with lower stance and upgraded wheels .
63-69 Lincoln’s “pinnacle “
63-65 rivieras “ pinnacle “
50-59 Chrysler products “ pinnacle “
70’s Lincoln’s “ pinnacle”
50-59 Buick’s and oldsmobiles “ pinnacle “

lots of cool stuff that the majority of hot rodded would not give a second look to . But in differing automotive circles simply top shelf .

to be honest I always thought anything older then 1940 way a little silly , primitive in operation and not all that practical !
That all changed about 15-20 years ago amd I’ve gained a great respect for the engineering and what these “primitive “ cars can do and become .

no matter what , when , and where , there will always be a “pinnacle “ car

 

Can you describe these daydreams? Now that we know the theology behind them, I'd like to know what those guesses look like. Especially as it pertains to our hobby.

 

At the end of the day Dodge will have to step up to the plate...

 

"What's all this talk about pinochle cards?" "Oh...never mind" ......Emily Laitila

 

If Ford introduced the 50’s Canadian models in the USA.. I’d be driving a Dodge…to me most were butt ugly.

 

Look at it this way...

 

The 1957 BMW 507, was one elegant, kick ass roadster, it dam near put BMW out of business, only 252 of the cars were built. If you can find one for sale, the price is astronomical now!

 

Where would women be without Monroe, Russell, Mansfield, etc?