Art & Inspiration Pics: 1974 Street Rod Nationals

Thanks for posting, Graham!

Fellow-Ohioan, Barry Lobeck built the '40 coupe with the "1940 TV" plate. It was featured in the December '74 Hot Rod Magazine, written by Gray Baskerville.

I was just 13 years old, but still have the dog-eared issue buried somewhere in the attic...

 

I should have known that, Gary.

 

Awesome pics! I'm amazed with the quality. Thanks for posting!

JC62

 

Boy, mag wheels ruled then, yes!

Great pics!

 

Thanks for posting those pics. That was my first nats, got out of Navy and moved to Red Wing, MN in '72 to work at the nuc plant. Bought a '40 Ford tudor at that swap meet at that event.

 

Soon as you put it in gear its got you in a Stranglehold baby. You best get out of the way.

 

74 Nats was my first and I went to see the famed Butera/Brizio build-off. Don't have pics of cars, but here is a write up I found:
HERITAGE
By Drew Hardin
Photo Courtesy Petersen Archives

The Great California Street Rod Civil War

At the 1973 Street Rod Nationals (or so the story goes), rod builders Andy Brizio and Lil’ John Buttera got into a, shall we say, friendly discussion about which end of the Golden State produced the best street rods. Southern Californian Buttera ribbed Brizio, who was from South San Francisco, about how the Bay Area cars were “average” mechanically but were topped by outstanding paint jobs to make them seem more special. Brizio, in turn, said L.A. turned out trick show cars that couldn’t be driven very far. One thing led to another and (so the story goes) the discussion devolved into a “my new car will be better than your new car” challenge.

Whether this exchange really happened, we don’t know. What we do know is that Hot Rod Editor Terry Cook used it—fictitious or not—to set the stage for a four-part tech series called the Great California Street Rod Civil War. The idea was to pit Brizio against Buttera to see who could build the better car, and showcase the build steps and finished products for the magazine’s readers.

Their approaches couldn’t have been more different. Buttera chose to build a ’27 Model T Tudor, using a real steel T body he bought in Arizona for $600. He fabricated a tubular space frame, built an independent front suspension from scratch and adapted Jaguar independent rearend components for the rear suspension. “John wants his new T to ride like his Cadillac when it goes down the road,” wrote Cook.

Brizio, on the other hand, built a fiberglass ’32 Ford roadster, using as his inspiration a concept illustration called the “Street Roadster of the Future” that had appeared in Hot Rod a couple years before. Not just any fiberglass ’32 would do; Brizio commissioned Steve Archer to splash a brand-new replica using “a cherry Deuce roadster body” that Andy’s son Roy had been working on, said Cook.

Early on, it looked like Buttera would easily finish first. The initial two articles in the series showed photos of the Tudor only; no Brizio roadster in sight. Writing in the second installment, Jim McCraw said, “Andy Brizio is gathering the pieces together for his highboy Deuce, assigning tasks to his staff of craftsmen, and getting ready to explode into action to produce yet another complete car in about five weeks’ time start to finish, the traditional way things are done at Andy’s Instant T. Meanwhile, back in Cerritos, Buttera and his troops have a considerable head start over Brizio.”

And then, things changed. Two issues went by without an update on the Civil War. When it did appear, part 3 was all Brizio, with a note that “Lil’ John started off well but pooped out in the backstretch.” This installment showed off Archer’s fiberglass body pieces, the car’s tubular frame and its power source: chromed twin Mazda RX-2 rotary engines.

The Civil War’s conclusion appeared in the June 1974 issue of the magazine. On its cover was a see-through view of Brizio’s Twin Mazda Instant Deuce, and inside was a photo of some of Brizio’s crew, sitting in the yellow roadster, ribbing Buttera for his still unfinished T.

This photo of Brizio’s roadster is an outtake that was not published in the magazine. It was shot by Hot Rod Photo Editor Mike Brenner at Buttera’s shop in Cerritos. As Roy Brizio remembers it, “These were your typical last-minute deadline photos for the article. They were not staged. My dad had to bring the car to L.A. for the shoot. They then took the car back to San Francisco and finished it, and brought it back to L.A. for the final photos.”

Gripping the firewall to lift off the body are Andy Brizio, with his back to the camera on the driver side, and Buttera, facing the camera on the passenger side. Terry Cook is in the dark shirt at the back of the car.

Andy Brizio recently talked to Dave Wallace at Hot Rod Deluxe magazine about the Civil War and the yellow roadster.

“We finished first, and my yellow car made the cover, but I had to truck it to L.A. for the photoshoot,” he said. “We never did get that roadster running right with the dual Mazda rotaries—a real nightmare. I replaced them right away with a small-block Chevy. That car turned up at our Sutter Creek picnic two years ago, looking pretty much the same.”

 

Kool Pix.
Your Dad had a good Eye.

VR&C.

 

I'll bet that very few if any of those cars were trailered to the event..
Back then, trailering your car to a rod run was highly poo-poo'd.
Come to think of it-for some of us-it still is

 

My parents were there with their newly finished T bucket.
They have photos of the twin blown c cab

 

wow! GREAT thread, lots of famous cars, really cool! Thanks for posting.

 

Cool pics, thanks for posting them.


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Lots of memories there for me too. One car in particular was an early feature car in Hot Rod, late 50's IIRC. Still have the issue somewhere, the car has a Lincoln engine, twin blown by McCulloch's and some custom fenders and 'boards. Pretty sure it was originally green with dark green fogging, but in the Nats photos from Graham's dad it is dark maroon.
At the Jefferson, WI swap back in the eighties a guy was selling Jim Lytles frame from Quad Al. We finish talking and he hands me his card- Cy Kubista, the guy that built that T!

 

I actually got a ride in Buttera's T at the '75 Nationals. He stayed at the same hotel.

 

Thanks for posting these great pictures, I was at the 74 Nats....I was 10 years old and had a really big roadster hat but still remember the show. My Dad's photo album has a few from the show some of the same cars too.

 

cool photos thanks for posting

 

Oh man those were the days.I dig the trends of the day ,so many rods had there rear tires sticking out of the fenders. My cars also in the 70's. Pretty much before we narrowed rear ends hay guys it was acceptable at the time,lol. Cool photos thanks for the trip back in time.

 

Thanks for the pics


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Brings back great memories. I love the style of the 70's Hot Rods and Customs!

Thanks for posting the pics

 

I also noticed that most of the cars were left unchopped, it might just have been the ones my dad selected to photograph, but i could see only 2 or three cars out of all of them that had gone under the knife.

Personally I lean towards leaving original steel cars unchopped, I am going to leave my dads 34 3w coupe unchopped and make a highboy out of it. I get that in the early days they were just old cars that youngsters messed around with, but these days original bodies are becoming so rare (especially in my part of the world) that I'd rather leave it alone and take the abuse from the "traditionalists" after. That being said, if my 3w had already been chopped I wouldn't complain. I love both looks.

To put it differently, if I really wanted a chopped coupe today I'd buy a fiberglass body, but I'll leave my original one alone if it hasn't been chopped already. This just the view of a youngster still getting into it and still with a lot to learn.

 

Thanks, I'm really glad everyone liked them! Better here than lying in a box for another 40+ years.

The quality of these can be greatly improved, they were scanned on 600dpi which makes each shot only about 500kb. The scanner we have can go way higher than that insofar as resolution is concerned and I didn't play with the settings to get everything perfect, I just scanned them as they came out. The slides were also dirty and most of them had some moisture damage that luckily didn't really come through in the scans.

My favorite thing about them is that the color and exposure and feel of the shots is exactly what instagram and all these photo apps tries to replicate today.

 

Well, youngster, you just weren't there to remember the way we got along perfectly well without chopped rods in the seventies. We couldn't afford them fancy chop jobs, especially on a six-year-old's allowance!

 

That's super cool! An African hot rod from the 1960s

 

I was able to track down the original builder of my Anglia. He said it was at the 74 nats. Still the same paint today. I'm pretty sure it's the one in the black and white magazine picture driving on the road. He ran it in 2 tone primer for a while too.

 

Ed, I remember MANY rod runs in the 70's that we attended with fellow club members of my Dad's club, the Good Timers of Marshalltown. Vaux's Anglia was at most of those events.

 

You might be right there Ed. The Anglia in the magazine appears to have an Iowa plate from county 18 which would put it in the right area that Vaux was from. Had you seen that magazine picture before?

 

Nope the 18 plate is Floyd County. Vaux was (is) from Union, Iowa in Hardin County. Iowa must have been invaded with Anglias.

 

Floyd is only 1 county away from Hardin county. It’s conceivable that Vaux lived in Floyd in 1974 then moved just down the road to Hardin by the time you knew him in the late 70’s. I bet that’s just as likely as 2 Anglias from the same neck of the woods being at the ’74 Nats. @trailer-Ed could call Vaux and ask him if he really wants to know.

 

Wow, traditional looking hot rods in '74.

What % of hot rods were traditional style back then compared to the % of traditional hot rods today? I don't think the % has changed much, but the use of flathead engines and drive trains is way more common now. Probably more "hard core" traditional guys now compared to then.

 

Any more pics of the Ron Morgan C-Cab? I'd like to see the Weber carbed 289!




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