I think it was my dad's brother...My dad told me he put turpentine on a cat's ass and it passed everything on the highway!!
These early race and automobile builders were definitely hot rod pioneers and in some respects show us up as they were the guys making the rules not following...
fiftyv8 is right ,,,think about it ,,in the late 1800's n early 1900's ,,trying to build a so called "car" outa old bicycle & wagon parts .,,,,mostly home made stuff that mostly didn't work ,trial n error for days n months ,,,with NO help ,,,yep ,,those old guys were the true Hot Rodders ,,
Henry ford set a speed record himself in that car. With his rideing mechanic spider Huff .It has been in a lot of books.He built that car to get the record. Look it up he set the record on Jan.12,1904 39and 2/5 seconds for a mile run at91.37 mph. Now if that is not a hotrod.It pays to have a nice old car book library .
The "Isky Roadster" was the first true hot rod, IMHO. It was built by Ed Iskenderian in 1940, and featured a 1932 flathead V8 with Maxi overhead conversion. It was built as a street rod, not a racer. It set the standard for a long time. It was featured on magazine covers. And it is still running today.
>>>>>,Well,, the Stanley Steamer ,,,the fastest car in the world in the early 1900's ,,Speed ,,?? it was "Infanite" ,,how long could you hold the throttle down for more than 3 minutes ,,? ,,nobody could after 100 mph ,,
Henry's wild side was no secret! http://www.landracing.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6&Itemid=20 On January 12, 1904, in a newly designed car, Ford gave an exhibition on the ice of Lake St. Clair, MI with his Ford Arrow, driving 1 mile (1.6 km) in 39.4 seconds, setting a new land speed record at 91.371 miles per hour (147.0 km/h). Convinced by this success, the race driver Barney Oldfield, who named this new Ford model "999" in honor of a racing locomotive of the day, took the car around the country, making the Ford brand known throughout the United States. Ford also was one of the early backers of the Inidanapolis 500. http://www.henryfordestate.org/sweepstake.htm The "race that changed the world" occurred on October 10, 1901, when Henry Ford defeated Alexander Winton, the most accomplished automobile builder/racer of the era. During a 10-lap race at the Detroit Driving Club in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, Ford overcame his more powerful rival in "Sweepstakes", a racing car of his own design.
Oldfield drove it, but Henry built it that way! Sigh, just another car owner getting credit for the builder's work...
AND THE WINNER IS.........................Q!!! Every time this topic comes up (which is often) Fred Flinstone gets the vote!
I am sure 'Tman' has it right. The bible says "spare the ROD and spoil the child". Give your kids hotrods!
The first thing needed to answer this question is a definition of "hot rod". Stock cars, as fast or fenderless as they may have been weren't modified from their factory builds so they are out-even if the intention was to go faster on the roads than any other car. And race-only cars should be left out as well since there has been racing of all things forever and it was only fate that auto makers would race them. That leaves the first guy who took his factory car into his own garage and came out with a car built for the street with the intention of altering it to be faster, sleeker, louder, etc. than the other cars on the street(my definition anyway). And not doing it with the intentions to create a company or whatever but just because he wanted to do it and enjoy it for himself. I know it is all inspired by racing but who did it for the road only? Isky is a good one. Pretty early. Build intention was correct. Well documented history. Someone should ask Ed where he got the idea. I'm sure the debate could go on forever and people were doing it all over the world. But as far as the US and our historians go-who would it be? I'm sure Isky would agree there were a lot of guys doing it by then. He just did it better than most.
Al Gore??????????? Damn it all, I thought I invented the internet. No wonder I don't get any payments...
I think that first the name "Hot Rod" must be defined. I am old enough to remember and it was not used before World War Two. I was a small kid then and lived in a neighborhood where some teen agers had modified cars but they didn't call them "Hot Rods". Some of the older people called cut down roadsters "Bugs". So the people in the early days were making what we would call "Hot Rods" but they didn't call them "Hot Rods". I would guess that Henry Ford's "999 Racer" shown elsewhere on this thread was the first "Hot Rod" by the current definition. One of my uncles built a 1933 Chevrolet modified street driven car before WWII which today would be called a "Hot Rod" but he never called it that. Several Companies made high performance speed parts before WWII, mostly for four cylinder Chevrolets and Fords. I have a Winfield aluminum intake manifold on my 1933 Chevrolet. (Not the same car my uncle built). My uncle spent WWII flying an A20 spy plane over Germany. He is still alive. After the war he was driving our family car which was a 1936 Chevrolet sedan and we got caught in a traffic jam caused by a V8 engined Model T Ford roadster. The radiator had blown up, probably caused by being stuck in slow moving traffic. My uncle said "That is why they call them Hot Rods". I am sure the term originated in the Los Angeles area.
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