Art & Inspiration Cars that hooked you with the Hot Rod & Custom Disease

Pretty much everything posted so far for me.

 

Sums up my life story.

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The kid next door to us came home with a 49 Mercury. Never even knew what a hot rod was before that. Later on we started getting into go fast stuff. We even built a 36 Ford drag car as teenagers. Originally flathead powered and later a 327. Attached is a picture from the local newspaper taken at the Westhampton NY Drag Strip in the early sixties. I'm the skinny guy in the middle.
Gary

 

No pictures, but no question there were two things that come to mind immediately - Ala Kart and anything Mickey Thompson did.

 

Hello,
Ever since I saw hot rods in my old, Long Beach, CA neighborhood and in magazines, I have been a hot rod nut. Anything that moved got the “hot rod” treatment, from mom’s lawnmower (header and custom paint), our Schwinn bicycles, to model cars, to modifying our Pee Chee school folders, (flames and scallops coming off of any straight line, etc.)

But, as nice as those hot rods were in the magazines, there was this one Ford F-100 pick up truck that had struck a nerve in me as a little kid. It could have been the whole truck as a custom car, live and in person, every time I went by the guy’s store near my house. He always parked the custom truck in front of his store…probably to keep an “eye” out for vandalism. (eye…play on words as he was our family optometrist) We were always inside his store because of three people in the family that needed glasses, I somehow lucked out and did not need a pair.

The Ford truck had Tahitian Red, show quality paint, radical chopped top, wood bed, chrome wheels, with white tuck and roll upholstery, etc. That lowered, truck was the epitome of custom cars and trucks in our neighborhood. It may have been in a magazine from that time period. Because it was always so near to my house and our favorite snack buying store, we always walked to where it was parked. We sat in front eating snacks and drinking our cokes, drooling over that F-100 custom truck.

Finally, I got a ride in that truck, not from the owner, but from a mechanic that was a friend of my dad. He had just finished working on the truck in the neighborhood gas station work space and it was sitting on the lot. He asked me if I wanted to go for a ride to take it back to the owner. I knew exactly where it was going and who owned it, so, I jumped in for the ride down the street.

Jnaki

It was a dream come true ride. How cool it was to ride in a truck with white tuck and roll upholstery. The lowered truck rode well, despite being so low to the ground. It was my first ride in a custom truck or hot rod. On the walk back to the gas station, I was talking to the mechanic about the car and what he thought of the custom stuff. It was some conversation between a 11 year old and an older mechanic. It was right on the topic of that cool looking, 56 Ford F-100, pick up truck.

I found out that this mechanic loved hot rods and customs, but with his salary as a mechanic, he told me that he could not afford to build a hot rod or custom. But, he loved working on them. He probably thought I was this crazy little kid that loved hot rods. He was right...

 

I would say that the '40 Willys, early Anglias, and the '33 Willys all contribute to my disease; I've always been accustom to real gassers, even as a kid. But I would have to say that T-buckets/pickups, early Mopars, and late '20's/early '30's Ford roadsters are the real culprits.

 

First. Milners Coupe.

Then, at the end of that summer, I saw a chromed out T Bucket (didn't even know what it was) in an ad in Hot Rod magazine. I still can't find that pic. I was 14 at the time and since that summer, Hot Rods have been my addiction. NO help needed.

 

Durso's Dream did it for me when I was a kid.
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/charle-durso-radical-built-custom.97125/

 

Same for me.


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At the tender age of 11 in 1958 my soul was robbed of all remorse about being totally and irredeemably in love with cars - and here's the photo that did it.



Bob Palladino's Bailon-built '57 Buick appeared on the cover of Custom Cars Magazine and is still one of my favorite customs. My preferences have evolved to roadsters since then but I'll never forget my youthful dreams about someday owning a custom car of my own...