The Perfect Av8 Roadster

I live in a quiet place, where any sound at night means something is about to happen. You awake fast thinking, “What does that mean?”

Usually, it’s nothing. But sometimes…

It’s hard to adjust to a city gig – especially in a place like New York where the night is full of sounds and all of them are comfortably routine. Cars, horns, footsteps… the sounds of Yankees and their obsession with getting shit done at all hours of the night. There’s no way to relax – not for me anyhow.

So twenty minutes ago, I fired up the laptop and covered the screen with the sheets hoping I wouldn’t disturb sleeping beauty beside me. And then I got anxious thinking if I did wake her, she’d see my attempt at being discrete and assume I was hiding some kind of dirty business. There was no winning. So, I accepted the ‘L’ and logged on to the HAMB.

No reported posts to attend too, so I hit the traditional forum and clicked on Lodaddyo’s build thread. I hadn’t viewed the thing since this summer and figured there must have been some progress. There was… over five pages of progress in fact, so I laid my head on my pillow, propped my laptop on its side and started down the familiar rabbit hole of speed taking notes as I went planning for an eventual feature.

• Nothing contrasts better with any color than black
• Dove grey is the ultimate neutral
• Dash layouts and gauges MAKE roadsters
• The ultimate interior compliment for a hot rod is “I didn’t notice it.”
• Reserved/conservative hot rods should have no exhaust and be as loud/obnoxious as humanly possible – paying no matter to legalities
• Stance is still important. Most important.
• Shit is perfect.

***

I woke up the next morning to find my laptop half closed on the ground, cursor still blinking – waiting to input more notes.

***

To be honest, I had kind of laid off of my plans to write up a little feature on this car. Not because it’s forgettable, but because I sometimes wonder if people get tired of me writing about casual, ultra-traditional hot rods… But this morning I wondered aloud why I should give a shit. I couldn’t come up with a reasonable answer and here we are.

Do yourself a favor and read THIS ENTIRE THREAD. This is what hot rodding is all about.