Customs What are 1950's period correct custom touches?

As one who was first into hot rods 55-60 in the Seattle Tacoma area I can only give you a Pacific Northwest response. Candy Apple paint started appearing in about 58, expensive but really wanted by the custom guys. Shorty lake pipes behind front fender to mimic those who drag raced. Get your car as low as you could and a slight rake was popular. Wide Whites, Tuck and Roll, multi carbs, necking knobs, dual exhaust, stick shift, nosed and decked, dice hanging from the rear view mirror and graphic name of your car painted on the rear fender or trunk. Cops would stop you if your car was too low (had to be able to slide a pack of smokes standing vertically under the bumpers). Would also stop you if your pipes were too loud. And, you had to have fenders (many high boy and roadster owners used motor cycle fenders or cut a continental kit in half as a solution). Most popular V-8 conversions were the 265 and 283 chevy's and the nailheads but flatheads ruled.

Most sought after cars were the 49-50 Merc and the 40 Ford coupe. Most guys drove either Ford's or Chevy's.

 

Certainly there were, but if they were chopped or channeled they could not run in the stock category, they had to run against other cars with body modifications including cars modified strictly for racing.

Stock cars, from the earliest days of racing, were allowed to run stripped. That meant you could remove anything bolted on, like fenders, running boards, headlights, top, and windshields. I have seen pictures of stock car races from the twenties and thirties with stock roadsters stripped this way.

 

The Felson book Street Rod was 1953.

 

So putting a name on the car is something that was done back then?

 

Very much so. In the late 50s a large part of Ed Roth's business was painting names on cars. Along with striping, flames, etc. No doubt other painters were doing the same. You could even order decals from the back of hot rod magazines with popular names on them.

 

Read Rod and Custom magazines from the 50's