History Was beater culture a thing in the past?

They were called "Fishing Cars" when I was growing up. There was even a classified section for "Fishing Cars". Imagine fishing pole holders attached to the drip rails.

 

Why are some trying to explain a beater as a hot rod? The beater that the OP is talking about is a worn out beat up clunker that got you from point A to point B and costed very little money. Something that you kept running on a very slim budget. Something that was needed.
It has nothing to with hot rodding and shouldn't be confused as a hot rod.

 

So after three pages + it is easy to see this is just another subjective, ill defined term...for what in today's vernacular, is a hooptie.

 

HAHAHAHAHAHA

 

Hipojoe, you're right Mate - a lot of us have been there, and I truely believe we are all only three bad decisions from going from the penthouse to the shithouse - what we do is a luxury, we should never forget that. I drive a "beater" by choice, thats me, thankfully I can make that choice and I dont judge others (except those in pastel and plaid!!!) for what they drive as someone will always have a better car and conversely some will drive a worse one than me.

 

The number of oil burning cars when I was young were quite high. I drove a few that left a smoke screen behind them. We used all sorts of tricks and additives to keep oil in them.

Always on the lookout for cars for sale if we needed an engine. I go with my brother to look at a '67 Biscayne. Hearing it run, obviously a dead cylinder. Despite this, he buys it for like $50, little more than junk money. We get it home, he listens to it, pulls a valve cover. Busted rocker arm, an easy fix. That 283 went into his old GMC and ran well.

We knew a few guys that flipped decent cars for a decent price, so we started doing it. Friendly junkyards were good to know.

Everyone I knew worked for a living. If their car was down, we helped friends get them running, even in winter... engine and transmission changes on an exposed driveway below freezing.

 

Hello,
Your topic is based on times later than the HAMB limits on photos from 65 or earlier. No one called cars not finished beaters in the 50s and 60s. Slang has its own roots and those that use it are too lazy to understand or see the early culture. Most think what they read in the 90s and 2000 years is what it was back in the 5os or 60s. primer painted cars were a fact of life for most as a step in the next direction or final step in the build process.

But, no one in our neck of So Cal had a primered car very long as the step to get it finished or at least repaired was tantamount to having a nice looking car for high school events and activities. Not everyone had a nice show quality hot rod for daily driving to school and work. Actually, the term was not around to label those early hot rods and sedans while they were being used during the building process.

Most wanted a nice car they could be proud of when parked in front of the high school or cruising around in the local drive-in restaurant parking lots. As far as other hot rods during this time period 50s-60s, the primer paint was a first thing a body got to preserve the surface while the rest of the build was continuing. Some just kept the primer paint until they were absolutely positive about the final paint.

As far as my brother and I were concerned, our 1940 Willys Coupe with the 292 SBC and its 671 supercharged motor was not a fully finished project for the C/Gas class at Lion’s Dragstrip. we painted it a nice red primer on the pristine body and had plans for finishing it later in the summer.

My brother’s idea was to finish the power train, get it to run competitively, go for a national record and show up at the U.S. Nationals in Detroit with a finished hot rod. Full upholstery, nice paint and a set of Halibrand Wheels all around to match the larger M&H slicks in the back. We had them in a warehouse in Los Angeles, but things happened along the way…

Jnaki
QUOTE="6sally6, post: 14444868, member: 243551"]Quick answer.........Any of you fellas remember RE-fined motor oil? Burnt oil that was filtered and sold. I bought it 5 quarts for a dollars many a day! There's your answer!
6sally6[/QUOTE]







My 1940 Ford Sedan Delivery was powered by a Flathead motor. It was using a lot of oil, without showing any signs or leakage. No blowby, no drips or drops sitting around on the concrete parking surfaces, and no smoke coming out of the back. So, what was a kid with little money to spend per quart of oil going to do to solve the necessity? A full rebuild was out of the question on a limited budget or no budget.

Why, gallons of reclaimed oil at pennies per gallon for those long 120 mile jaunts to South Orange County or San Diego for pristine waves. A fill up at the beginning and a new gallon container for the fill up back home at night. Now the cost of a regular quart of oil was used for some fine hamburgers at lunch. My sedan delivery was a Salmon Pink color, not a top show quality hot rod, but did its reliability thing for the years that I owned it and drove it thousands of fun miles from 1960 to 65... YRMV

 

Beater or not... Look at the smiles on every ones faces from the young, to the old, to the HOOPTIE rappers!. They all new their rides would appear to be subpar, but it didnt matter. It was theirs and thats all that mattered! GOOD TIMES FO SURE.

 

Beater = Car near the end of its service life.

In the ‘70s when I was in school, that meant a dirt cheap 10-to-15-year-old American gas hog with 120K+ on the odometer. We’re talking $100 cars. Not worth fixing when, say, the timing chain failed, and not old enough to have any kind of “collectible” desirability.

I was usually the last guy in a chain of operable ownership, and I kept them running mostly thanks to generosity of mechanics at the gas stations where I worked after school. When I was done with one of these beaters it was generally parted or went to scrap. But sometimes a dreamer would buy it from me and try to squeeze out a few more months. Because that’s what we kids did, jump from cheap beater to cheap beater to stay on the road in some kind of style.

Below: Me (right) and my younger brother and my '65 Sedan deVille. Oh those '70s fashions! Got the Caddy in trade for a $100 Econoline, because my new girlfriend's father wouldn't let his daughter have anything to do with a kid with a shag carpeted panel van. Car looks better than I remember it. Sold it for $250. Score!


I say some kind of style because even if they were beaters, we still had our standards. Each of these cars had to have some redeeming feature that made it cool in our eyes. Something to be proud of as we looked at our cars from 50 feet in soft focus. Stuff like: Hey, at least it’s a 2-door; Alright, it’s 4-door, but it’s a Cadillac 4-door; it’s got a V8 (even if it runs on 7); it's all one color and the dents hardly show; OK, crappy on the outside, but check out this near-mint interior; etc.

Funny thing is, there was better transportation available. Lower mile granny cars could be had for the same money. But they invariably had 4 doors and 6 cylinders and a color scheme only an old lady could love. We preferred to take our chances with the high-mile cool-factor cars. What’s the point of buying your own car if it looks like a family hand-me-down?

Today, improvements in manufacturing have totally changed this equation. Beaters are now 20-30 years old and often fixable

 

It is correct that at first we called are cars work cars. Because that is the kind of cars our dads drove to work at the steel mills, oil refinerys, power plants and machine shops. When I started working at the Buick dealership there is where I first heard the term beater.

 

Times have changed. Now you can't tell a 15 year old car with 200,000 miles from a new one.

 

Everyone I knew wanted a Mustang or an Impala SS, Novas and Chevelles of course. A few in my circle sought out 4-door cars and station wagons. I could and did haul scrap steel in my wagons. I had an Olds 88, a Cadillac that needed work, all 4-doors.

I was usually the last owner of these relics, the next buyers often lacked the resources to keep them going. Some of us could get years out of what most would junk. If the car was real bad, keep an eye out for another for parts or swap your parts into that car.

 

Build a better Bobber beater for the boulevard. Personalized license plate: BlUBYU.

 

My cad has been a beater since long before I bought it in 1985. The next owner can fix it up. But it still drives.

 

Why would we be talking about them then on a hot rod forum?

 

When I was a kid, most of us couldn't afford nice cars, but we made the most out of what we had. I spent a lot of time cleaning and touching up and polishing my $70 Catalina, so if you stood back a ways and squinted a little it looked pretty good.

 

I don't remember anyone referring to a hotrod as a beater during the Hamb era years. Especially here in the northeast where the hotrods were mostly fair weather use vehicles.
We had a lot of "winter cars" and we had "bush buggies" too . When good running junkers could be bought cheap sometimes a handful of friends and myself would buy one. We would all pile into it for the sole purpose of seeing how far we could run it into the woods. Great fun that sometimes lasted an hour or sometimes less than a minute. No helmets, seat belts or inhibitions.
Yeah, we were idiots that thought we were indestructible.

 

so thats how those old cars end up so far into the woods...

 

No shit, right? Some of those guys got far.

 

We called them "woods bombers". One guy I hung out with removed the trunk lid and mounted a boat trailer winch to the floor, get stuck, pull yourself out.

The last one I knew was my late friend Mike. It was upstate NY about 1980 where he went to school. Him and a buddy went in on a '62 Falcon. They were smart and wore safety goggles, there were always branches whipping inside the car.

 

Me too!!

 

There was a lot of good points made here that in one way or another add up to the answer.
With that being said I think something no one has mentioned is the difference in the cost of getting work done in today's culture. In the 50s and 60s from what I've been told people would barter and trade work, getting work done was affordable to the working man etc... Now days it's very much a DIY culture which I'm sure leads to some work not being done in the most perfect way. Also some people just can't afford to have a nice paint layed down so they stick with primer. It's a very different world now days. I've been building cars and bikes since my early 20s and it's only now in my mid 30s that's I've got a solid job and a solid family and I can really spend some money without guilt. When I was in my 20s all my stuff was a little bit ...well....they were POS.

 

Up until a few years back, there was a guy with a devastated '67 Plymouth running around town. It had trailer lights out back, the rear of the car was stove in. It looked like a refugee from a demo derby. I was at a gas pump one day and the guy pulls in across the pump aisle. I heard it run, really quite a difference from how the car looked. My son later found out the owner who also worked at the same school system as he did and he retired.

 

For many many years I always had a good car and a beater. Some called it a beater, ice fishing car, drinking car, bad weather car, work car. I used it for all of those.

 

My '56 150 sedan has all the looks of a car that has been in service as a driver for the last 66 years. I'm guessing it has been a beater, work car or whatever you want to call it for the majority of its life. To me.....there's something kind of cool about that.

 

You have described my Falcon, original faded paint, nicks, rusty rear bumper, but I like it that way. I did pay $700.00 for it 51 years ago.

 

We also would get beater cars and add glasspacks, second-hand mags/cragars/Rally wheels and drive them into the ground. When they got too beat, out to the woods for "NASCAR Practice".
We survived...

 

In New Zealand in the 60's a large percentage of Hot Rods were by todays definition...Beaters. They were anything from a 30's-40's cars/ trucks with a souped motor or just twin exhausts or some custom work. Very few were finished and even less would be be called show standard. They were not beaters, they were Hot Rods and the term beater came along in the 70's or so when someone needed to give them a label. JW