Hot Rod and Custom Books: The Essentials

If your a hot rod nut, chances are your a bit of a collector, too: Vintage parts, black t shirts, and old stuff in general. How about books? Me too. For car book geeks, Amazon.com is a dangerous place. They know what you like to buy, and kindly “suggest” new material for your library every time you log on. I just looked over the vertical stack book case, dedicated to my non-vintage car & motorcycle books, and thought about the essentials to buy. Since the early 90s, there have been a ton of great new offerings each year for the traditional hot rod and custom enthusiast. Thinking about the one’s I cherish or refer to most often, here’s my top 10 picks, in no certain order:

1. Don Montgomery’s Hot Rod book series. The gasser and funny car books don’t do much for me personally, but his collection street and race hot rod & early custom photos from the 40s and early 50s are an amazing resource for how the cars were actually built. I pour over those black and whites in all 5 books over and over again.

2. Mike Bishop’s “How to Build a Traditional Ford Hot Rod”. This is the THE book for building a correct A-V8 on A rails. Period. My copy is plum worn out from studying each chapter as I built my own car years ago.

3. Barris Custom Techniques Vol. 1 – 4. These books came out in the mid 90’s and did a great job of breaking down many of the custom techniques the Barris Bros. used on customer cars. These are not technical “how to” volumes, just great reference images and stories.

4. Tad Burness American Car Spotter Guide 1940 – 1965. As a young lad, I would grab the classifieds section of the paper every Sunday, and study the classic cars for sale. If I wasn’t sure what a 1960 Dodge looked like, no problem, I could look it up in the Burness book, getting a clip art image, the basic specs and model names. My original copy eventually split in about 6 pieces, as the janky masking tape binding I made for it in Junior High gave out. I just bought another copy- gingerly used. On Amazon, of course.

5. Ultimate American V-8 Engine Data Book 1949-1974. This handy engine guide breaks down engine & motor part codes for every major US V-8 motor,  year by year. Say you find a crusty Rocket Olds motor at a swap. What year is it? What displacement? Factory horsepower rating  for the 2 bbl model? Its in there!

6. The Birth of Hot Rodding Robert Genat/ Don Cox photos. Man, I flipped when I saw the Kodachrome images in this baby. What a gem of a resource for how the cars looked at the lake beds and back yards of early post-war America.

7. Edsel Ford & E.T. Gregorie If you appreciate Ford styling from 1928 – 1940, then you need to appreciate these two guys. This was put out by the S.A.E. and it thoroughly documents factory models year by year with large, clear images. The story of how these iconic car designs came to be is fascinating.

8. The American Custom Car (Ganahl) / The American Hot Rod (Bachelor)- Well done, well photographed. Great content in coffee table sized books. It may seem like a cheat to list them together, but they go hand in hand to me.

9. Hot Rod Milestones (1999 Gingerelli & 2005 Gross/ Genat)- Two different books- Same idea. Looking at the iconic hot rods- Spencer, McGee, Brown, Navarro, Neikamp, etc., that still hold up today. Many of us are still trying to emulate some of the style in those very cars.

10. Andy Southard’s Hot Rods of the 50s/ Customs of the 50s- Fantastic late 1950s color photos shot by shutterbug Southard.

I took some quick, blurry (crap camera) snapshots of my hot rod book tower, just to give you a flavor of whats in the stack:

Of course, there are many more great hot rod books out there, with new ones coming out almost monthly. Whats your favorites?