Spencer Garage

I’ve been the captain of this mad ship for damn near three decades, and in that time, I doubt a week has gone by without someone slinging the same infernal question at me: “What is a traditional hot rod?”

I’ve always believed that if you have to ask, you’re not steeped enough in the glorious madness and you need to dive deeper… for longer… To some, that might come off as arrogant. And they might be right. Everyone’s got their own take…

Throughout my entire career, however, I’ve wrestled with putting traditional hot rodding into any kind of coherent words. Over on the HAMB, we try to pin it down with pictures, but really, traditional hot rodding is so much more than the end product. It’s the process. It’s the dreaming, the scheming, the scavenging, the goddamn grueling work. It’s an entire ecosystem of parts, processes, feelings, and intricate complexities that, in the end, culminates into something deceptively simple. It looks as easy as Sunday morning.

This epiphany hit me like a freight train last night while I was catching up on RyanAK’s build thread. The man’s been hammering away on a pre-war banger car for a couple of years now. His thread is a gem, a testament, because he lays bare his dreams and inspirations as much as his build. The end result?

The essence of traditional hot rodding. But don’t take my word for it. Instead, dive in for yourself.