There's no doubt that today's hot rodding scene is overflowing with talent. Builders from around the globe are constructing rods and customs with an artistic eye and painstaking attention to detail. Much of this can be credited to the abundance o... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
Great article!! Functionality is a style all to itself. I like a car where I can look at it, and see exactly what everything does, and what the builder was thinking when he built it that way. Beauty is subjective, function is not. Something either works, or it doesn't.
I'm digging where you're coming from here, Joey, with the "let's be aware of it all." But just as classic beauty is timeless, so is butt ugly.
I hear ya ! Whether it was in1963 or 2013, rolling one of these machines off the trailer would garner some questionable looks. Im not condoning returning this rudimentary look to the street or strip by any means. Quite to the contrary. Im just making sure that all aspects of the hobbys history are rememberedthe good, the bad and the crude. Lets see some of the less attractive examples of machines that have been lost to time. You know it's funny, if someone posted a pic of something like that and said " hey lookie what I did " , the thread would be out of control and quickly deleted. It happens all the time.
What is the white car in the last pic.....heavy chop, nose up? Mopar? It's badass! The "sparrow" is pretty cool too. Nice read, thanks.
Upon opening the blog and gathering what the contents were about and looking at the first pic I imediately thought of the Dri-Pwr car and low and behold it was on the pic list.!!. I remember it strait from HRM and the caption stated that the tank up front was wrapped in burlap......
Ironically, the "science" back then was equally questionable. Without CAD/CAM, you pretty much had an idea, built it out of whatever you had 'round, then took it out to the coastal airstrip and see if you were right...or if you ended up dead. In the end, it was meritocracy--you proved you were right, or you "learned how not to make the lightbulb", to paraphrase Edison's response to those who pointed how many times he failed. Heck, how many times do we decide a certain "look" is right simply because we've seen it done that way so many times (say a '62 Vette with a California rake)that any other attempt at a style doesn't look right?
sorry, but I think several of those should be filed under "just because you can doesn't mean you should"......................
Some guys just turn their noses up at stuff like this, but like what was said "they have the luxury of learning from our forefathers." Sombody's gotta do it once, if for nothing else, so we can see what not to do.
Great read...........Chatting with a local 'roundy round' race car driver/legend, the stories that he told me about stuff they did while trying to "bend" the rules and trying to innovate. He told me that when the 'winged' cars started showing up at the track, him and some buddies went to the airport junkyard and purchased a wing piece and put it on top of his race car and the first lap around the track, the down force from the wing blew out all 4 tires. Lesson learned. Chris Oh yea, that Sparrow car is neato'.
While it may be butt ugly to some, I see this car as an icon because it was factory backed and a sneak peek at the future of funny cars.
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