War Time Hot Rod

It’s the week after the Roadster Show and I all can do is think about this coupe built/restored by Rudy Rodriguez. I know this car has signifcant history, but I don’t know the details. Obviously, it was a race car… And obviously, it was a post war creation. The car just flaunts war time ingenuity…

It was the golden era of hot rods and the period that would forever lock my imagination to traditional hot rods. The guys that built these cars were coming back from a world where functionality ruled. In a lot of cases you lived or died depending on the performance of your mechanicals. No real concern for form here. Your machine simply had to work better than the other guys.

In some natural way this dedication to performance created “the look”. An utter lack of attention towards form created form. Created style. Created what we know as hot rods.

The art was in the details. The sparse fighter plane inspired cockpits, the ultra sanitary powerplants, the focused attention to even the smallest of mechanical details, the wind cheating profiles… When all added up created a real american art form.