Art & Inspiration Why do folks my age love hot rods? Here's why...

An older kid across the street built a lawn mower powered go-cart. He was probably 16-18. Me and my other friends wanted “something”, but knew that a gas powered kart was out of the question as we were probably around 11-12. So, we started cobbing up something in my basement. My parents had company, but my dad came down to see what we were up to. He dropped everything, and helped up until we were finished. It wasn’t much. Some rope to steer, and a broom handle used to push it around. I stopped talking to him after my parents got divorced, but it’s one of the few fond memories I have of him.

 

Jeez, I think I'm older than most of you. Hot Wheels didn't come out until 1968, six years after I graduated high school. I was introduced to hot rods at the age of 12 when I met a fellow who had a '32 chopped and channeled pickup. I couldn't wait until I could get one just like that. My father promised me his daily driver, a 1941 Chevy pickup, when I got my license. He sold it to a buddy who needed transportation more than he thought I needed a vehicle. He promised me his next DD, a 1950 Mercury that got totaled when he tried to breed it to a Buick. When he left, my DD was a motorcycle. Between that and the cost of living, there wasn't any money left over for a hot rod. Fast forward a few years and I was able to afford to race dirt cars until the price of a set of tires was more than what it cost me to build my first racecar. Life and family took precedence over spending money on cars. It wasn't until I was about to retire that I finally started to think about a hotrod. The project is still in the garage, waiting on me to get back out there when I'm done dealing with my late wife's estate, cutting the grass, replacing broken stuff in the house and so on. I can finally see in my mind what the car is going to be, I just have to all this other stuff done first.

 

Ya, them little Mouse engines sure woke up then old Fords back in the day.

 

Damn! Forgot all about underdog! Lol!

 

I grew up with Matchbox, Hot Wheels, Tonka, Corgi, Dinky, Hubley, and Husky toy cars. I did build many models and I had the Cox gas-powered Dune Buggy. My bike was just a Schwinn full size with a 2-speed rear hub, but my best friend at the time had a Schwinn Apple Crate 5-speed Stingray.

My father had just a mild interest in cars but he encouraged me to tinker, for which I am grateful. And before I was old enough to build my own models, he bought and built the Ed Roth Beatnik Bandit kit for me.

 

Lots of model cars; my favorite was the AMT "3 in 1" kits, stock, custom, or drag. Plenty of spare parts! Also, lots of Hot Rod comics. I wanted to join Clint Curtis and the Road Knights.

 

Any body have a '50 Ford COE plastic truck? mine had a metal trailer van, I chopped the cab, then REALLY SCREWED IT UP, with my wood burning tool I sectioned it, Overall cab and trailer was about 16-20 inches long.
I have never seen one since.
this would have been 1957-58, I would have been about 13 or 14...

 

Hot rods were all over TV/old movies when I grew up in the 70’s and Street rods were a a big deal. I was born in 62. As the years go by, kids are less and less likely to catch the spirit.

 

Half the kids in my high school drove rods or customs around 1955. If you didn't have Dual Pipes it was "Mommys Car"

 

Mighty Mouse, Tom Terrific, many of the Disney shorts - all terrific cartoons!

My time frame was more 60s than 50s but the 50s and earlier cars stuck with until I got to my turn …..

 

I chopped the top of my Mercury gasser in 1964

 

Well for me, it started with the noise.
I lived in an ancient country farmhouse in the early '50s.
On the other end of the field next to us was a flat straight road.
It had no houses for a stretch.
Summer time at night, windows open was a treat to hear the short pipes roaring and rapping.
There were quite a few guys who must have had plenty of gas money.
My grand parents worked nights past 2AM.
Mom was ill and slept shut off on the other end of the house. Medicated, I'm sure.
By the time the Grand folks came home the action was dying down, and it was sleep time.
When we moved to the city, ( '56 ) there were tons of cars everywhere.
Then I was treated to a show of mild customs and occasional pre war rods. Ever present 'Glaspaks' big influencer. BIG.
My father had left by now, but while he was around he would turn up driving various Model A's
Upon leaving the state for a few years, He handed me a copy of HRM.
In the city I would note A's with fancy paint work, loaded with teenagers.
I found ways to earn pocket money by grass cutting and ADvert. circular deliveries.
While looking for ways to spend it I found AMT at the hobby shop.
( Spray paint a razor saw, plastic wood. Need I mention Testor's glue and paint? )
Made 4 versions of a 'Deuce' a '40 2 door and T's etc. Revell, Monogram, Lindberg, Hubley.
Stepdad and Uncle were 'petroleum distribution engineers' mainly Gulf oil.
One day during a long distance bike ride I stopped for a coke at a drug store.
There I spotted my first copy of Car Craft July '62. soon after I subscribed.
My neighbor then learned of my enthusiasm. He ran a salvage business.
Every Friday he'd stop at my door with 3, 5, 8, copies of car mags of all publishers.
He would grab them off the paper sorting line whenever He'd see one.
My fate was sealed. The mags would be studied every night, instead of text books.
By the time I stopped going to school I had found the coupe in my avatar. Me at the tow bar.
Well Hey you asked

 

I apologize for the above. The question was about folks of an age.
I went off on my story. Here is a theory I've had about the population at large.
When the Second World War was fought, we had to interupt manufacturing the auto.
The cars that were here had to be preserved to last those years.
Ford, due to parts interchange-ability led the pack for survival.
During those times though, many things had to be overlooked and most of the autos were run to pieces.
With the war over everyone wanted new models. They were glad to let go of the old rattletraps.
As we have heard before the, soldiers from SoCal had spread the word about racing there Rods.
With a heavy supply of pre-war used cars the younger crowd and ex servicemen took to saving those cars for the hot rod sport. They were plentiful enough to get the attention of the boomer kids. They, We, in turn provided the cash to build the industry of speed parts.
While Detroit made more powerful V8s to give us our kicks.
The supply was on time for the demand.

 

Tom is right. Fords were the most common and least expensive. They had the flathead V8 and had good styling. The interchangeability of parts was a huge factor in Fords popularity. Almost all traditional hotrods were Fords. It is bizarre seeing people pushing the idea of offbeat brands like International trucks being called traditional hotrods. International pickups were slow and stogy with poor styling and were not considered as hotrod material.They must have been great logging trucks because thats what most pictures of that era show them doing. Off brands were not part of hotrodding until streetrods showed up in at Peoria in 1971.

 

Thanks to everyone for all the reminders' of our early years, especially flynbrian48 for creating this thread. Fun to see by each others posts, you can almost guess each others age bracket! I've always been envious of the Hot Wheel era, so much I have my own collection. lol

 

https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=Awr...1LKJ0SQw/RK=2/RS=o3EGlwmsZ8oSeQC5NL2kHR2aHyA-
Hot wheel I had about 350 of them

 

A friend of mine has 11 totes of unopened hot wheels dating back to '67-'68 original$

 

Remember, it's the journey, not the destination. I've been working on my '29AA for 49 years, 50 weeks and four days (not that I'm counting). Is it possible to start it up for the first time before I've had it 50 years? I don't think I can make it. Will it fire to life sometime this summer? Don't bet against me! You, too, can see progress. Just enjoy each step of the way.

 

Wally Gator and Ricochet Rabbit and Banana Splits they had those cool 6 wheelers atv. Remember gentle Ben and the swamp buggy's

 

Not cartoons. Not Hot Wheels.
I can remember around age 3.
The Chicago Auto Show was in town. The Chicago Daily News had rows of little photos of the new models, below the fold. My mother cut the page and mounted it to a piece of cardboard.
Our home was on Illinois Route 19, the main street through town. It was two lanes wide and paved.
She would sit with me on the front step and I'd name the car makes as they drove by. We used the newspaper photos to help with the newest models.
By age 10 I was buying the R&C little pages at the drug store for 25 cents.
From age 8 to 18 I spent at least part of 90% of the days just hanging around and observing the repairs at the one bay gasoline station that was two doors over from our home.
The rest is hot rod history.

 

Swamp buggy !

 

The answer to the post title is...... We Can Fix Them..

 

My dear ol Dad was an all in hot rodder and circle track racer. If a cartoon like that was on he'd make sure we didn't miss it. And it wasn't just the car stuff. Pop culture of the time too. Can you draw some of that from this one? Think Bobby Darrin and the others easy to spot by us elders. Enjoy...

 

I was '61 good times .I don't think kids of today could do half the crazy shit we did in high school ? Like a brake stand in a '67 421 4 door Bonneville at Burger King drive up?filled it with smoke, lol

 

This has always been my favorite! Describes me completely. Your avatar would be my avatar if you wasn't already using it! around 1980 when my parents got a VCR My mom recorded this cartoon for me and I about wore the tape out watching it. Prior to that it was just the luck of the draw if it would be on TV or not.

 

I loved Mighty Mouse cartoons. This is a good one, except for the last five words spoken by the narrator.

 

I read everyone's comments about what got them started in automobiles hot rods my story isn't much different other then my time frame is later.
Being born in 1978 my first memories are the early 1980s, I still watched the same cartoons that are in the previous comments but they were old when I was a kid (I liked them more then stuff like he-man or gi joe)...
Out of all the gifts we get as young children the only ones I really remember were the toy cars, it could have been Tonka trucks or Ertel or majorette but it was definitely matchbox with some Hot Wheels thrown in the mix (I liked matchbox they were more realistic Hot Wheels always looked like toys and the matchbox were built in England back then with great quality) all my 1/64 scale cars got the paint scraped off them from playing hours in the dirt on the side of the house (that ironically I now own and I occasionally find a toy car I had when I was a kid buried in the dirt). Some of the toys were the TV shows I remember, the A-Team when I was a really young kid coming out and those guys would build neat stuff out of junk and Mr T's van was awesome... Then there of course was the General Lee and Daisy Dukes awesome Jeep CJ and even though I wasn't a big fan of The Munsters because it was black and white Grandpas dragula was awesome and I remember watching it intently when I was probably eight or nine. All my bicycles were hand-me-downs, I wanted a really cool BMX but I got had me down 1970s huffy bikes (a 10 year old bike was not cool when you're a little kid) I would strip the fenders off them and make them BMX like I would make franken bicycles putting 10 speed forks on 20" frames or vice versa ... By the time I was 12 I was a master at bicycles from cast off parts. I started buying bicycle parts at a yard sales or from friends and would build bikes, none of them were really good but all of them rode fine. I then I moved on to RC cars along with the bicycles of course I saved a lot of money up when I was a young kid and bought an expensive rc10 (which I still have squirreled away in a closet because I paid so much for it I've always taken care of it) it was my introductory of how car suspensions actually worked and it was the introductory to how electronics work... my old man (RIP) helped me put the car together and I was in 5th grade when I got ball bearings for my birthday to replace the crappy bushings and a wound up electric motor that made the car crazy fast for the era. My father being an electronics engineer and a former car guy (he pretty much got out of cars when he got a family for some reason) was all about this stuff, I think he lived vicariously through me.
This stuff for me was A great gift for a young blossoming gearhead. So fast forward a year or 2 and of course as Junior High age came along gasoline was firmly in my veins so I managed to get a hold of a wore out mini bike with a two horse bricks and Stratton... I had no idea how the engines worked but being that it was a two horse Briggs & Stratton it was pretty easy to bring back to life and I was told how to take the simple carburetor apart and clean it and put it back together. I rode that thing for probably two or three weeks until my father saw me doing 25-30 down a main drag (I was told it was not to go on the streets) then I lost my mini bike because of course I did not listen but that short taste of mechanical propulsion absolutely cemented my love for a machine that could propel you. Around that same time I started learning what a hot rod actually was by flipping through some Old Rod and Custom magazines that my pop had bought when he got back from Vietnam. The magazines were 1969-1971 era and I literally wore the cover off of those magazines (I still have those too I think I'm more sentimental about those and pretty much anything else I own because they were his and they were my influence to hot rods and street rods) to this day I want a non HAMB friendly early 1970s style C Cab T and one day I will scratch that itch, currently I am scratching the T-Bucket itch but I'm doing something a little different than the 1970s running a banger. From that point of those magazines meeting my hands I was and am a hot rodder. From 14 years old on I've had probably 200 cars at this point maybe more I've hung on to a handful of them but most of them got fixed then driven for a few weeks and moved on. I earned my ASE by the time I was 19 (and then let it expire because who the hell wants to be a mechanic working on The late Model junk but I digress). And to this day there is still a kid in me that loves cars, a middle-aged man looks at me in the mirror but in my head I'm still that same guy I was at 13 thinking about hot rods and the next project. A lot of the gearheads and influences in my life unfortunately have passed on but I keep their memories alive every time I'm wrenching on a old car.

 

Nice read