Defining the real Gook Wagon

If you look up the term 'Gook Wagon' on the internet these days, it's referred to as a derogatory term for an Asian automobile. That's not the racist definition as I know it whatsoever, and to give a little auto history, I'll quote the Ultimate Hot R... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.

 

It's never been anything but derogatory. Guys coming back from Korea and other places saw stuff like this and brought the term back to the US...

 

SO a traditional Rat Rod?

 

That extremely rich, colourful, figurative aesthetic seems similar to traditional Hindu religious architecture:


It isn't widely known that this tradition developed in constant contact with ancient Greece, though it is less fanciful than it might at first appear if one considers that Greek classical architecture was originally quite colourfully painted:


Certainly a "maximalist" aesthetic isn't unknown in Western culture:


or:

 

That front bumper on the deuce is somthing else, Hard to believe that look never took off. The first time I ever heard about gook wagon was in an old Henry Gregor Felson hot rod novel as a kid. There are still a few late models of the type around with plastic chrome Wal-Mart accessories attached to them. Indy

 

I think this is a prime example of one.

every possible accessory

 

Even if it started out inoffensive, it is now. It was a word specifically aimed at me when I was told to leave a "white only" restroom when I was a child. I seriously doubt the racist bastard was referring to a car.

 

all icky except those truck wheels

 

What the hell is this thread about. Is this an open mic free verse exercise?

 

bunch o crap to me....

 

Wrong.
The term Gook Wagon precedes Korea.It was just a term for a car that was slathered with a lot of "gook" and other ill chosen encrustations.
That being said, it's probably a term that should be retired along with words like "niggardly". I ain't a PC douchebag, but you do have to adapt with the times

 

I always thought as a kid, the term gook was meant like goop, or glop our even junk, referring to the crap on those cars...never even knew what a gook was when referring to any thing else, like people. (The guy who ended up wth my flamed highboy model A found it neccessary to drill into the hood and mount those dumbass chromed "hotrod" gookey things.)

 

Well stated.

 

Also well stated.

 

While I agree with all that is posted here, language is always changing. Take the word 'gay' for instance. It certainly means something different now than it did in the 40's. That being said, I don't think I'll be calling anything a 'gook wagon' anytime soon. "JC Whitney catalog cover car" is a suitable substitute.

 

Also always thought it was pronounced like cook, = gook.

 

Over here "gay" is now used by young people to describe something of poor quality or not fit for purpose. The various gay pressure groups talk of reclaiming the word for its "traditional use". Language changes over the generations.

 

I'd like to believe that. The US was involved in Indochina/SE Asia/Korea, from 1945 on, and I don't think the term is older than that. I think this is a term best left to the history books, we're in agreement on that.

 

...Then that spelling was 'Gouk'. The Allies took it up, BUT the term was one of Asian vernacular, meaning "foreigner".
Another word that got 'turned around'.

 

The term is pre-war. There was an old Andy Hardy movie that he drove one in.

 

GOOK WAGON has nothing to do with nationality! So now we even have to think the PC bullshit here too? How about member Bobwop should he have to change his name because someone of Italian descent may be offended? Heck my minister is of Dutch heritage and just last Sunday he referred to his Hollander upbringing.

Went on Google and found this besides the reference to Asians.

&#61709;
By the 1920s, gooks were French- and Creole-speaking black Haitians and Spanish-speaking Nicaraguans. Marines, as we have seen, made the Haitians into gooks. They also, after the 1926 invasion of Nicaragua, were responsible for so naming &#8220;natives&#8221; there. Into the 1930s in Costa Rica, goo-goo described the citizenry, at least to Americans. Such a term, in the Philippines or Latin America, could hardly have failed to conjure up an image of an infantilized subject population.

By the time of the Second World War, the identity of the gook expanded again. The West Coast&#8217;s brilliant amateur student of language, Peter Tamony, took notes on radio commentator Deane Dickason&#8217;s 1943 comments on gook&#8212;the Marines&#8217; &#8220;word for natives everwhere&#8221; but especially for Arabs. The latter of Dickason&#8217;s conclusions is likely closer to the mark than the former. &#8220;Natives&#8221; of France, or of Britain, or of Holland, were not gooks, but people of color were. In particular, the mainly Arab population of North Africa acquired the status of gook. Indeed the usage spread to French colonialists so that, even a decade after the war, panicked settlers reacted to Algeria&#8217;s national liberation struggle by indiscriminately slaughtering villagers in &#8220;gook-hunts.&#8221;

 

Lowriders are a different breed altogether.

 

That's the way I hear it pronounced... If I had ever thought about how I would have spelled the word I might have put it together, but I thought it was like goop...

Never correlated it with anything or anyone Asian.

I always thought it was "jury" rigged, like it was done by committee, until I was corrected and told "Jerry" rigged, like in German... Doh!

 

Jive bomber why in hell would you even post this??

 

It's traditional. It was very much a part of the car scene in the 40's and 50's. Only in recent times with all the PC crap has it become wrong in some minds to say such things

 

Oh yeah? Read post number 8

 

All this PC bullshit is getting out of hand. Guess what? The term in question was used, in the way showcased in the article, long before the vast majority of the people on this board were even alive. It was used in the mainstream.

I have been accused of being a racist because I was refering to one of my floor coverings as an Oriental Rug. By the way, it is an Oriental rug. From the orient, ie the French for Eastern.

And now at work we aren't alowed to call a Jig, a Jig. It is a "Holding Fixture", because some jackass took it as a derogatory slang for Jiggaboo. For fuck sake. I guess anyone that used that term is automatically a racist, even if they never the term Jiggaboo.

 

You should read post number 8 too.

 

I did. I've been called a kraut, which, if you don't know, is derogatory term for someone of German decent. Did I consider it a hate crime? No.


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