Hot Rods For Debate: When Did Hotrodding Take Root?

We all know hotrodding -- as we define hotrods -- pretty much cranked up after WWII, right? That's what I grew up being told.

In recent years, I've come to believe the old addage that THE FIRST DRAG RACE occurred when the SECOND U.S. automobile was invented & rolled out onto the street. The two guys AUTOMATICALLY just had to find out which car was faster, right? In our blood.

Increasingly, from decade to decade, in the early years, automobile owners WANTED MORE POWER & SPEED . Oldsmobile had a famous ad showing an Olds racing the 20th Century Limited train, years of contests were held to get from Point-A to Point-B , Graham-Paige was called down by the SEC in the '30s for ads proclaiming the super-charged Grahams to be "America's Fastest Car," on and on.

So, the QUESTION : DIDN'T COMPETITION, SPECIAL FACTORY EQUIPMENT, ALTERED/ADAPTED CARS -- THE DE FACTO ROOTS OF HOTRODDING --ACTUALLY GO WAY BACK TO THE EARLY DAYS OF U.S. MOTORING???

 

I'm pretty sure hotrodding took root about 30 seconds after the first car was made. Hell, ever since people figured out how to ride a horse they were racing those.

 

When the very first wheel was invented,,Goober turned to Snoober and said......sheeet maaan, mine be faster than yourn and we were off and running. But Goober was caught cheating and WAR was invented................

 

1st INDY.

 

Soon as two automobiles got side-by-side...!

 

I don't know, but I did a search for first automobile race and came up with this.
Larry T

The following year, Frank developed a second car with a more powerful two-cylinder engine. It was this car that he drove in America's first automobile race on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1895. The race was sponsored by the Chicago Times-Herald and ran a 54-mile course from down-town Chicago to Evanston, Il and back.

There were five entrants in addition to Duryea: 2 electric cars and 3 gasoline-powered Benz machines imported from Germany. The race started in the early morning in snowy conditions. A little over 10 hours later, Frank Duryea was the first to cross the finish line having survived a journey punctured by numerous breakdowns and repairs. He had averaged 7.3 miles per hour and took home a prize of $2,000 ($49,500 in today's money).

 

Joe said to Bill.. WATCH THIS !

 

OKAY, guys, SOUNDS like we're OFF & RUNNING here!!! LOL

(Hell, why shouldn't it be humorous? Having a good TIME is what making a car go FASTER is lal about, isn't it?)

 

Right after Rock Slag and Gravel Slag got their own cars!!​

 

Shit, Slick-Willy, YOU are probably RIGHT. Maybe Fred & Barney WERE the first two rodders -- right there in Bedrock.

(BUT, BRAKES really SUCKED back then!!!)

 

EVOLUTION ????

 

I think hotrodding was born the same day that Adrenaline was discovered.

 

The earliest example of 'Hot rodding' is probably Count Zborowski,
who in 1920 had Clive Gallop modify a 1907 Mercedes to take a 23 litre Maybach engine.

I suspect that the real hot rodding crazy did not really take off until much later,
the arival of lower slung, running boardless European cars from the 1930's onwards is likely to have sparked the idea of chopping and channeling to achieve that same sporty look.
The lack of money to buy the import in the post depression years would have made many look at modifying ten to fifteen year old domestic product which could be obtained cheaply.
The prohibition years may have been another factor with 'moonshine specials' being crafted to outrun the law.

 

The term Hotrodding seems first to have appeared in the late 1930s in southern California where people would race their modified cars on the vast, empty dry lake beds northeast of Los Angeles under the rules of the Southern California Timing Association. America's first automobile race was on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1895. The race was sponsored by the Chicago Times-Herald and ran a 54-mile course from down-town Chicago to Evanston, Il and back. There were five entrants in addition to Duryea: 2 electric cars and 3 gasoline-powered Benz machines imported from Germany. The race started in the early morning in snowy conditions. A little over 10 hours later, Frank Duryea was the first to cross the finish line having survived a journey punctured by numerous breakdowns and repairs. He had averaged 7.3 miles per hour and took home a prize of $2,000 ($49,500 in today's money). Or perhaps we should look at chariot races during greek and roman times. A chariot race was also said to be the event that founded the Olympic Games; according to one legend, mentioned by Pindar, King Oenomaus challenged his daughter Hippodamia's suitors to a race, but was defeated by Pelops, who founded the Games in honour of his victory. The chariots themselves were modified war chariots, essentially wooden carts with two wheels and an open back. Thus began the world of customizers.

 

you forgot the "hold my beer" part.

 

A bit OT but my take on that:

 

Racing may have started after the second car was built.

Hot rodding started after the first car ended up in a junkyard.

 

Lotsa FUN stuff here! BUT good faccts & theories, too!!! -- WHICH is why I asked the question. So, GREAT!!! I like the opinions & analysis -- and you guys back up your positions with historical facts.

THANKS in particular to 1950Jax, ThunderRace & For-Thirteen, in that department. Keep up the great input, guys! Practically a SYMPOSIUM on the ROOTS OF RODDING!!!

 

...

 

Okay, thanks to LarryT, we know the first OFFICIAL auto race was 1895 (AND a nearly $50,000 prize, in modern dollars!).

And THANKS, Rootie KaZoootie, for the 1908 newspaper reference to the term "Hot Rod." This is more than of mild interest, too, BECAUSE the reference does not seem to be a casual accident of phraseology, either, but INTENTIONAL. Could it be that "hotrod" was ALREADY becoming a pretty common catch-all term for any cars that were much altered from STOCK, especially with speed, aerodynamics, etc., as the goal?

 

That is from a article in a 50s Speed Age magazine, the term 'hot rod' was theirs I suspect.

 

Rootie, okay-dokey. Then, would they possibly be referring to the hopping-up of the 1907 mercedes using a 23-liter Maybach engine? Still sounds like we are onto SOMEthing here.

 

ThunderAce wrote: I suspect that the real hot rodding crazy did not really take off until much later. The arival of lower slung, running boardless European cars from the 1930's onwards is likely to have sparked the idea of chopping and channeling to achieve that same sporty look. The lack of money to buy the import in the post depression years would have made many look at modifying ten to fifteen year old domestic product which could be obtained cheaply.

And Four-Thirteen added: Racing may have started after the second car was built. Hot rodding started after the first car ended up in a junkyard.

Jimi: Okay, so it really seems thought moves toward TRUE "hotroods" as, yes, influenced by early racing and human nature for competition, COUPLED in the Depression years in particular when young guys with NO dough just sought to build the coolest-looking, low-slung speed wagons they could, mostly out of stuff from junkyards. (Notably, the New York Times reported in 1930 that over a MILLION cars a YEAR were being junked in the United States!)

I might add that during the Depression, most luxury cars died out, so the remaining companies had to build more down-to-earth cars people could afford. SPEED and FUEL economy were still two available selling points during the Depression.

Finally, you add to the existing DESIRE for speed all of the automotive & aeronautical tech advances during WWII. Lots of guys got hands-on experience working on engines & trannies in the service and came back from the war with ABILITY to go with the DESIRE for speed.

So, though I think the roots of rodding go practically to the beginning of the American (even European) auto, the movement got rolling all during the '30s and rocketed after WWII. The basic my-two-cents picture there.


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"........The following year, Frank developed a second car with a more powerful two-cylinder engine......"

First factory musclecar?? (G)
Larry T

 

I don't think the term 'hotrod' came until much later. I would think he was what we consider a hotrodder though: just a average guy fooling around making his car go faster without any affiliation or support of mfgs. etc. Here's the rest of the article:

 

ThunderAce, I'm not much of a mathmatician. Was the Maybach engine 23 liters or 2.3 liters? If 23 liters, wouldn't that make it something over 1,000 cubic inches? But 2.3 would make it around 140 CID -- still respectable for such an early motor.

 

There is a danger that we just start to argue the defintion of 'hot rod' here,

I was prepaired to accept that we are talking about taking a car that is already from a bygone era, fitting an oversized motor that does not belong, and some reduction in
C of G height and frontal area.

So yeah fitting an aero engine from a bomber to an Edwardian motorcar in 1920 would be very much in the spirit of hot rodding in my book.

When the term 'hot rod' was first coined is a whole other debate.
my guess on that would be at least 30 years further on.

Yes Jimi'shemi 23 litres not 2.3, just over 300bhp
You got to remember back then a model T had a 2.9 littre engine ( 177 cubic inches ) and made all of twenty bhp

 

I always thought the term 'HOTROD' was coined by a certain dirt track promoter in 1940s California. There is a thread debating the actual phrase.

If you wanna credit someone with starting the modification of a vehicle then we'll be here for a long long time, eventually accepting the fact that there is no answer.
If you wanna credit someone for starting motor racing and that also includes the non commercial use of the term, drag racing, then thank the French. They started everything in 1894 and were the benchmark for many years.
Thinking about it, you really have to accept that modifying or 'hotrodding' a mechanical vehicle really belongs to the early bicyclists.

Pic of the first official race on a closed circuit in America.

 

According to TRJ and the new collection of 'Throttle' magazine the words 'hot rod' weren't used pre-WWII. Not one mention in any of the 12 issues of Throttle covering the dry lakes and car scene in LA and surrounding area.

 

1984.