love em, or? picture this January, 1975, 3.45pm ,cold very cold getting dark, walking down to Kmart. Thru the slush tools a 64 polara, Kandy orange, 440 six pack,Cragars and outsiders, the gap in the side glass lets you hear Led Zep,You stop and stare.The blond chick in the caftan riding shotgun winks at you thru the misted window, the half light now envelopes the tail lights. The exhaust note still resonates even though the car has gone.... You realise for the first time, you like Cars....
He was a rich one, all I could afford on a teenage shoe seller's salary was a pair of Phantoms, they would rust the second the northern air hit them. They were on my parents Datsun Laurel, somehow they let me put them on, my mate hooked em up with steel water pipe.....yep I love cars. Those guys in the jacked up Pontiac convertible with 10 inch tires on the back were my heroes, no one was cooler than them, riding through Lancashire in the cold and the rain, top always down, I doubt it even had a top, probably fell apart like those Phantoms.
Didn't like em then, don't like em now. The Thrush side pipes, both the outsiders and the ones with the aluminum tips just always looked to gaudy to me. If you were gonna have side pipes they needed to be BIG, One Piece and No heat shields - so they looked like you meant business! Liked Black ones the Best! BUT, too be honest didn't really like them on most applications - They were OK on Cobra's naturally, Vans (Hey i started driving in the early 70's when vans were cool), El Camino/Ranchero's, but a whole lot else I can think of. Oh yeah my buddies Spitfire with the Buick Aluminum V8 (currently For Sale)
Getting thrown back into the seat and kicked in the ass on the 1-2 shift and again on the 2-3, and hitting 130 m.p.h. in a 1970 Fargo Pickup with a built big block mopar that just wailed and howled in all the right ways when both AFB's were kicked open was what cemented the fact that I was a car guy. I can still hear the lumpy idle and smell the burning rubber as his foot crushed the pedal into the rubber mat and back of my head hit the back window. Sucking the headlights out of the local hero's Chevelle was the icing on the cake. The inadequate drum brakes and straight axle just added to the thrill as my big brother tried to regain control and slow it down. Ah, good times.
not about the outsiders but that story reminded me...i was 7 years old and my dad found an ad for a VERY original 1965 galaxie500 convertible that was some little old lady's dead husband's car. 51k miles, second set of dealer installed bias ply tires still on it and a new top. we went to pick it up and there she sat, light blue with navy top. we hop in to take her around the block and my dad fires up that 352 and i hear the sweet song of an engine burbling through some old glasspacks for the first time and i got chills. my dad puts it in gear and we take off, smooth as glass and i listen to the sound waves coming outta those cans. $4100 later we took her home and i hung out while my dad tuned up the engine and kept interrupting him to ask what everything was and what it did. ever since then, i've had the bug bad. it just took another ten years for me to really do something about it and it's all been downhill from there
I had a guy I worked with years ago tell me side pipes were like pickles on a cheese burger. If it had them he wouldn't take them off but he wouldn't pay extra for them.
Yep, It's about that tingly feeling that let you know things were never gonna be the same. Kind of like bio-mechanical puberty. But this usually hits you all at once.
Ahh sidepipes. Some things just make an impression on a testosterone rattled teenage brain. Why else would anyone think a bright green 71 Z28 with slot mags is dreamy? sigh........ Flat black side pipes, that's why. Gawd I wish 70s style pipes were traditional for a 50s car, I'd frickin put em on anything.
Ahh yes... air shocks, 50 series bias ply, garter on the tach and glasspacks. I remember all of that stuff from my early teenage years, but the thing that really did it was those old Hot Rod books at the school library. I'm looking to get back there with the project I'm working on now. Definitely more to this post than just side pipes.
But you see that's what the title was. And I have to go back further than anything that would have had side pipes for the "discovery" moment. Sitting at a red light with pops in his 1954 MG TF1500, feeling for all the world like these British sports cars are the shit. It's 1964 and we're on Route 66 in my home town. All of a sudden there's a rumble next to me like I've never heard. It turn my head and there sits the nastiest looking excuse for a car I've ever seen. It's got no fenders, the motor is exposed and making all kinds of racket, the top is chopped so that the windows are only about 6" high. The black paint glistens and the Torque Thrust wheels just look so fast sitting there. The light turns green, I have no idea what just happened and the guy with the white T Shirted arm hanging out the window is gone, but the smoke off the tires is still lingering. I look at my dad and ask "What in the heck was that". He chuckles, says "that was a 32 5 window coupe, a real hot rod. Kind of like the guys I ran with in the Sidewinders before you were born". I don't say a word the rest of the way home. Can't get that car out of my mind and I don't have that feeling again till I kiss my first girlfriend. I haven't looked at cars, or my dad, the same way since. (And still don't like the Thrush side pipes)
side pipes hooked a bunch of us...my barber whenI was a kid ad a 63-66 vette with side pipes damn I loved that car,ended up when I was in high school puttin pipes on about 3 different cars because of that damn vette.......may end up with a set on the montego Im doing as a driver now.....kinda leaned towards the hooker style,but yeah it helped set the hook
I remember my first encounter, still haven't recovered and don't plan on it. Mine was when I turned 15 and began looking for a car. What I found changed my life forever a 1970 Challenger with 440. Now that I am in college all I think about is cars. I eat one meal a day, drink tap water, and never go out, all so I can save money to spend on my A and hemi parts are not cheap easier. I would hate to think of what my life would be like without hot rods.
In Albany NY in the early seventies there was a bad ass looking yellow 58 vette with a tunnel ram and n-50's on the back. It had some aftermarket sidepipes that said corvette on them BUT they were mounted backwards? Maybe so the word Corvette went the right direction? Never liked sidepipes after that.
side pipes...........everything had them in the 70's...my wagon's pipes throw back to when i was in school............. for me the car thing started when my mom's kid sister was watching me when i was about 9 or 10...mom worked late and my aunt Stell and her boy friend ( later my uncle!!) ,,they took me with them,,,,to Edgewater Raceway Park, the local drag strip...i was half asleep in the back seat when we pulled in...i was awakened by a sound i never heard before,,,sat up and peeked out the side rear window and saw a guy tunin a aa/fa topolino..said "Banderio Brothers " or some such on the door...it was dark, the zoomies was poping blue flames a couple feet into the air...and the smell of the raw fuel it was spittin out was overly sweet...scared the hell out of me...lil later i watched as it staged along side of the "Pure Hell" altered...and the lites dropped.......2 altered's hoppin every which way but straight...........next day i was buggin uncle John the boyfriend about his new 62?? 409 chevy.........
Hey the California Kid had them in the 1970's movie that was set in 1958, so they must 50's traditional...right?
For some reason that story brought me back to 1982 or 83, when I was living with my dad in a trailer down in Pensacola, Florida. I was very young, but I remember listening to his white Trans Am with a 455 with tinted glass and cookie monster fur shag interior bubbling at idle outside the trailer door. My Aunt who was watching me at the time wouldn't let me go outside. The car sat there for what seemed like hours, and I could just hear Journey and Bad Company and the like barely behind the thum-thum-thum of the exhaust. After an eternity for a 4 year old, the passenger side door opened and out steps my dad's girlfriend, tall, tanned and brunette, still pulling up her daisy dukes with frayed edges. A waft of bluish smoke followed her out. It smelled kind of strange but also held a hint of strawberry. She sneered at me and pushed the bucket seat forward so I could hop inside. My dad threw the car into reverse throwing gravel all over and scaring the neighbors chickens, then burned a somehwat sideways streak out of the driveway and up a sunbleached stretch of Florida asphalt. I remember being pushed hard into the back seat and unable to hear the music from the howl of the engine and vibration of the glasspacks underneath. It would be years before I could identify the blended aroma of rich exhaust, pot smoke, strawberry pine tree air fresheners, burnt rubber and female musk, but I would say my appreciation for loud fast cars began that day. Some might say that's bad parenting on my dad's part, but to have such a lasting impression and the fact that I turned out alright, well...
Must be because I'm younger than you guys. 1986, I'm 8 years old and my parents have always had little Japanese cars and a Chevy Silverado. Never paid much attention to other cars before. Then my neighbour bought a lightly used 1981 Z-28, Blue with powder blue decal package and a healthy motor with matching exhaust. I was hooked, I never knew that cars could look or sound like that. I loved staring at that camaro, that was the start for me. Now I've got three Trans-Ams, a '48 chev, a '58 pontiac and more. Shawn
We were on our way up to Manchester to see some punk rock band when a 56 Chevy two door sedan pulled up next to us, a beautiful red and white thing on slot mags jacked up at the ass, NO side pipes, I said, "wow, that's a 56 Chevy isn't it" to the young guy driving, well he was older than us teenagers, maybe 35 , he replied, "Yup, it is, do you wanna hit of this doobie?" I said "no thanks" but I was high as hell thinking that that dude offered me his smoke, I was stoked, this long haired hot rodder thought me worthy of smoking out with.......wow!
Our neighborhood was full of crazy people and cars.. lots of burnouts in the summer time and different cars flying up and down the streets full of partying people... first car I remember with side pipes was a primer gray 68 or 69 Nova, air shocks, jacked up, mags on the back, brand new chrome Hooker tubes on the side... four speed. Looked like one of my Hot Wheels. The thing that REALLY got me.... dusk, warm summer night, I'm about 7 or 8.. we are at the edge of the road by the driveway playing hot wheels using the little patches of grass as "roads". Down the street comes a car I recognize as soon as it crests the hill: A '57 Chevy. I was a Five-Seven freak... This one rumbled like thunder and in the low light I can see that it is blue... with flames... and Cragar mags, and I jump up and I'm hooping and hollering and giving the guy a thumbs up, but something is wrong... he keeps slowing down, slower and slower, I think time is standing still or something and then it pulls IN MY DRIVEWAY.. I told my buddy Kenny I felt like I was in a dream.... this guy and this hot chick get out and are friends of my parents and the girl tells the guy she "thinks" I like his car and he needs to take me for a ride. Hell Yeah! It was a blur, but I still remember the black diamond tuck interior and stick shift, windows down... just awesome. I haven't been right since.
I'm 8, playing in my aunt's backyard and all of a sudden I hear this thunderous noise coming down her street. I run to the fence and it is my cousin in an early 70's vette, black with flat black side pipes. It's hers of course (family rebel) and she is all dolled up ready for a night on the town. I stare at the car the whole tiime she is in the house talking with her mom. She comes out, takes one look at me, and asks me if I want to go for a ride. 8 years old, doing about 85 down side streets as she rows the gears on the 4 speed 454, windows down and t-tops out. I still get goose bumps even as I write this. Do I want a side pipe car, no, not quite my thing now. But as an 8 year old that car had super powers. One could say it branded me for life on cars, as I still have a little scar where that side pipe burned me getting out!
The Jalopy Journal
