Art & Inspiration Why traditional?

60 years into full size hot rods/early customs,,
Take a good look at a dropped axle see the curvature, that's the "smile' lookin' back at me..

Hot Rods make me smile, and feel good. >>>I like to smile and feel good !!!

 

Well said. ....

 

I like old cars.

And by that I mean pre war.

I like them stock, I like them modified, but I don't like old cars trying to be new cars.

 

Well...
my dad grew up in a working class family....as did I
my dad grew up hotrodding from his first car to present...me too
my dad married at 17 to one woman and stuck by her until the end...EXACTLY as me
my dad raised his children on a mechanics wage...ditto for me
my dad is still hotrodding at 81... me too at 63
when we get together, which is often, he reminisces the 40/50s
me the 60/70s. but we understand and appreciate each other fully.

all this being said, I believe I come by "traditional" honestly thru my dads lifetime of attempts to build cool cars with what he could afford and still keep the wife and kids upright. Billit barges and $30,000 paint jobs just were not in the cards for him and growing up around all this has made me appreciate the simpler side of rodding. Our times together will, sooner than later, be a memory for me, and I will miss him sorely for sure, but I will always be thankful for the traditions my dad instilled in me.

I am currently in the middle of a V8 flathead build, and my dad comes over every couple days to check the progress. He's more excited about it than me.

For me, it dont get anymore traditional than this...thanks for a lifetime of hotrodding, its kept us close...love you dad.

 

I started reading car magazines when I was 12 and the "traditional rods and customs are the cars I saw in the magazines and at the car shows that my dad took me to then. In fact several of the cars that are in the programs I still have from shows in the early 60's are still running around and showing up at car shows in the PNW.
I appreciate almost all hobby or special interest cars and am a big fan of the older Indy cars.

As far as being into traditional rods or customs over others one factor for me was that about 15 years ago I hit total burn out on hot rods and customs because the push was to have the latest newest and trickest items on your rod and what was the hot lick one month was out of date two months later. The truck was so wore out it finally wouldn't run due to low compression and I parked it and bought a sailboat. A few years later I discovered a group of guys who thought that still having your rod or custom in the same condition with the same wheels or hubcaps that you put on it 20 or 30 or even 50 years ago was just fantastic and even encouraged it. You didn't have to change things every season to keep up with the trends and no one looked down their nose if your paint was 25 or 30 years old and faded more than a bit. I found a home with like minds and developed a plan to redo the 48 to appear as what a custom shop owner may have done on his own truck in the late 50's. This is the last redo on this truck in my lifetime and I want it to be pretty well timeless.

 

I cant really say that I AM into "traditional" hot rods as defined by the HAMB. I am into period-correct hot rods from the mid fifties on through about the late sixties, and I have been since the early seventies. I am also HEAVILY into sixties era cars modified with a heavy straight line performance focus, and italian motorcycles. I am not really a "proper" hamber. Hell, I am pulling a flathead out of my '39 convert to replace it with an olds....

 

To me it isn't nostalgia or anything like that. I reached a point around the turn of the century when I just lost all interest in new cars. Reflecting on why that was it struck me that it was the direction of technological development the manufacturers took, as opposed to all the other possible directions they could have taken, which had begun to offend me. And I realized that the reason for that is that the manufacturing establishment has tied up control of the direction of automotive technological development through political means, in order to make its position of power unassailable. It's a process not a million miles away from what is called the Enclosure of the Commons.

I am into "traditional" not only because I prefer the world in which that process was still incomplete, being counteracted by all kinds of countercurrents, but also because I never got to experience the alternatives which could have happened by now if things had been different. And on top of that I am interested in tradition as a process in itself: developing things by lots of people making clever improvements to something generally known to work. There has been a lot of thought recently around human stigmergy without much awareness that tradition is a prime example of it.

 

It wasn't traditional when I started...

 

hotroddon nailed it.Snowman

 

I like old stuff. Built by people who care for people who care and are willing to look after it. Old cars, old guns, tools etc. New stuff is mostly cheap plastic junk that breaks after a short period of time.

 

Another thing we have in common!

That is traditional!

 

I like my cars how I like my blues, traditional....

Seriously, there are a lot of parallels between hot rods and blues, and I know a lot of guys will be rolling their eyes right about now, but that's OK. Within the realm of "traditional" hot rods there are a lot of different styles and a lot of different directions you can go, but keeping a period correctness with a car is important to me. Same thing with music, within the Blues genre are many different traditional styles (West Coast Blues and Jump or Swing being my personal favorites) but it is important to keep a period correctness to the music.

With both cars and music, it is important to take the time to learn about the traditional styles first before taking them and adding your own personal signature and developing your own style. It is the guys who skip learning about the past and just jump into building cars (or blues) thinking they are improving on what was done before who ruin things. No, sticking 20" modern wheels and rubber band tires on a classic 50's or 60's car, or grafting a Mustang II IFS onto a 30's Ford is not improving on traditional (and neither is shredding rock riffs over a 12 bar blues improving on traditional blues). There is a lot in common between Street Rods and Blues Rock, they both suck! Sorry, but Joe Bonamassa isn't an improvement over Hubert Sumlin.

 

Yes, yes!

 

Saw my first hot rod ( a chopped and channeled Model A coupe) while sitting in the back seat of my parent's new 55 Buick, I was 10 years old, now I am 71, loved the look, still do, it's all about traditional hot rods! My avatar has a 322 Nailhead, same as the family car back in the day.

 

What do you have? I have a '73 Ducati 750 GT, but it needs a resto. If Harry Miller had built motorcycles, they would have been bevel drive Ducatis.

 

Blues4u, I always thought Lennons "eat your heart out Elmore James" was hubris of the first order. Like Elmore ever would have played some sweet, lilting throw-away, girly crap like that....

 

I'm at the ripe old age of 21 so older cars shouldn't be my thing but they are (I've got a new car I drive round daily though) and as I'm from the UK you rarely see something old around, mainly because 99% of British Leyland cars have probably rotted away by now, but for some reason I've always liked the older American Cars, I can't put my finger on why, I just do. My dad has always liked older British Leyland cars but has never had the money to buy one, but anyway, life goes on and I got made redundant from my job and got a large payout, so I thought whilst I'm young I'm going to buy a classic otherwise it would have been one of those jobs "I'll do tomorrow" so I ended up buying a '71 F100 with a 390 (not as old as 90% on here I know). I never thought in my life I'd get to own a V8 (not a common sight here). I think what draws me to them is the mechanical side of things, there's just something about a pure mechanical engine rather than these modern ECU fed ones (even though I drive one daily)

 

For me, I guess it was a natural progression. I grew up reading HRM in the era of Pro Street and Cadzilla. About 5 or 6 years ago, it got into my head to build something. Being on a shoestring budget and out of the loop, I started looking into Rat Rods and I liked some of what I saw, but the more I digested it, while there were certainly some interesting ideas and some very cool cars, the majority of it started to seem like a cartoon of a hot rod or some sort of anti-art reaction to the hot rod. It was during this time that I also discovered the HAMB and was exposed to the idea of period builds. My first idea was to do a post-64 treatment concept to my build. This idea fell away when the idea of TROG and maybe actually getting to run in it came into mind. I'd still like to do some OT builds, but now that I've been working with the old stuff, it's grown on me and will ever be my primary source-influence in how I approach design.

 

I grew up literally around hot rods....nothing real expensive or over-the-top....just simple fenderless coupes and ragtops, with lots of primer spots and a cracked window or two. My dad always had a car torn apart under the shade tree in our yard, and often parts were strewn out upon the kitchen table, or on the back patio, with me as a toddler scraping away the grease and listening to doowop music on the turntable, while my dad sang and looked for constant lost tools.
With me, it's just the simple history and what has come to mean a lot to me, of the past, and my dad, and his buddies standing around or hanging over the hood of all their cars, talking and going for a cruise, honking at each other and waving at everyone. I miss the old times , and it kind of keeps me connected to a period of happy memories and times of the persistence of my father 'trying' to keep a car running, and listening to my dad mutter, and finally seeing him smile when it actually ''did'' run correctly....we'd go for a soda with the radio turned up. I like old hot rods, and it's a part of my personality, and old hot rods give me a reason to smile, because I'm bringing the past into this modern age, best I can, with the stories and 'how it used to be done' ....and enjoy the whole aspect of driving a real hot rod I built with my own hands....my dad would have been pleased knowing I figured out what he was muttering about all those years ago....now my son is looking for my lost tools!!!

 

First off, hotroddon definitely hit the nail on the head.

I am also of the younger-ish crowd of 30 yrs old, been into this scene now for close to 5 years. I grew up with a father as an automotive technician, and always had a love and appreciation for cars. Hell, I was putting exhaust and dual exhaust and painted wheelcovers on my daily drivers (1990s Dodge Intrepids, Chevy Malibus,...BORING) but I wanted to be different. I got into muscle cars, with a 1973 El Camino being my first car, then onto a 1974 AMC Javelin that I was going to build into a pro-touring car...yadayadayada.

Then I drove my first traditional car - my buddies dad's 1955 Oldsmobile 88, freshly built 324, dual exhaust. We were in Northern MI at a car show, getting ready to drive the car back to Southwest MI, and he said "let Charlie drive!" So off we went, my pops riding shotgun, me behind the wheel, with some rockabilly tunes playing, cruising the backroads of MI, no timeline, no rush, just the music, the V8 rumble, the journey, the cruise, the company. Here is the picture my dad took of that moment.



Moments later, I looked at him, and said, "dad, I am selling the Javelin, and buying Brian's 1964 Cadillac!" (a car of a family friend I already had a lead on). And that was it. Hooked.

To this day, I can't get enough. There is a certain atmosphere and a presence about this kulture, the music, the shows, the cars, authenticity and genuine-ness. Yes, some people love to stick tradition HARD, but it is well intentioned in trying to keep something from yesteryear to falling to the wayside in today's scary world.

I love seeing how everyone has there spin on their car, no single one is the same. It keeps it real, fun, fresh, exciting. Not just another ponycar with factory rally wheels and shiny paint (which I can ABSOLUTELY appreciate the quality). But rows on rows of the same cars with feather-duster owners - well, where is the uniqueness in that? All our cars show a bit of who we all are and tell a story. And that is kool, and what this whole "thing" is about.

 

Does that 39 run


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I mean the flathead


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Another important point : Whatever "traditional" era or period we choose helps us keep within a 'baseline focus' so we don't build something like a 'high boy'/ 'billet'/ 'low rider'/ 'rat rod' ! (now that's about as 'gross' a concept as I could come up with!) I don't mean in a 'rigid' way, just as a 'standard' to work by.

 

I have a wannabe Duck. LOL, it's actually a very nice bike, with a very small following stateside, and a pretty large cult following in Europe, it's a Yamaha XV920 (called a TR-1 in Europe). It kind of blends the sportiness of a Ducati with the long legs of a BMW. I bought it new in '84 and have put many, many miles on it (including a couple hundred on Willow Springs big track). It is an almost ideal sport touring bike, great low rpm torque to pull strong out of the corners, and narrow for great lean angles, it loves tight twisty 2 lane roads, the tighter the better, but is comfortable enough to drone along the freeway all day too.

But I love Italian bikes, I have it bad. Ducati's, Moto Morini's, Moto Guzzi's, oh my! My love for those bikes is a strong as it is for early Fords. 73 Ducati 750 GT is a bitchin bike. Bevel drive desmo! 40mm Delortos! That is the stuff dreams are made of. I could talk about that shit all day.

 

Yeah, no shit! But, that comment caused me to go look up who Elmore James was and learn about him. So, it's not all bad. But yeah, who did John think he was kidding with that line? Elmore James was bad ass!

 

this thread makes me want to grab my fiddle and head for the roof.........

 

All agreed except, the quote was "Elmore James' got nothing on this baby!"...AND, it was George Harrison that said that-

 

I love traditional.......hotrods, stockers, bikes, muscle cars, sports cars, foreign, customs, trucks.....and so on. But when I see a young guy beating the crap out of his four banger, folgers coffee can muffler car with absolutely no respect for it. Then I have none for it either. I'm building a traditional 1930 Model A sedan.....but I'm keeping my eye on a cherry 1979 Corolla 2 door sedan (call me crazy) that may get the mild road racing treatment. And yes, I have a wonderful wife. Gary

 

I like the seat-of-the-pants driving style. Just about everything on my rides is manual except spark advance and starter. Windows are always open and no music, just the sounds the car makes. I constantly monitor all sounds, vibrations and smells with my old Mark I senses and agonize for hours if I detect anything out of place. Oddly enough, all this gives me pleasure.

 

This answer resonates with me. I was 13, the year was 1956, and hot rod magazines were small in format and delivered to the United Cigar store in town once a month showing us the cars from the west coast and big cities that were unimaginable in our little town of 1200 in upstate NY. So to me, tradition is a way of trying to return to my childhood, I am pushing 74 now, when things IMHO were a hell of a lot better than they are today. Riding my Schwinn bike delivering the weekly paper for 3 cents a copy, I could only dream of some day owning one of those louvered candy painted chromed chariots! They talk about old men entering their "second childhood" and in my case that is true, I am seeking those wonderful times back then when the world seemed full of possibilities and opportunities. A time before the infirmaties of old age rear their head and the thought of mortality looms. And now I drive my time machine every chance I get, dropped axle, unsplit wishbone, dropped tie rod, and flames and I am, like Mr. Peabody, instantly transported to somewhere else!