Always wondered if the special movie cars such as these were owned by the studio, or leased from individual owners & what fate they may have met,......like where are they now ?
I have a stack of these old hot rod B movies on DVD, are they cheesy? you bet they are but it's all about seeing the actual cars. HRP
Great cars! Sub par dialog, a really terrible hat, nice tight sweater, super bad acting! But a lot of fun to watch! Have fun over there on the extreme west coast !
Ryan. Cool stuff. ... but since when does channeled, full fendered hot rods, or big motored Hawaiian dragstrip projectiles .. ever "wear thin" ? Not enough of it. Please saturate.
As they say these days... "I know... right?" Never could believe they actually did that with those nice roadsters. So close to the light poles. Yikes. Harder to judge in the McGee/Scritchfield car. As far as Hawaii goes... Whatever. Some people know how to live. LOL
Again...the power of the H.A.M.B. ...at least one 32 identified. Not one to do the T.V. thing unless late night or worth the time to watch, but do get hooked on 'B' grade black/white period flicks for some reason, not so much the usually over done modern day back in the day kind of versions....
I agree, I'll take the old B movies anytime over the new cheaply made films. Because as we all know (according to modern day interpretations) all the guys wore black Converse shoes and black leather motorcycle jackets.
The old guys in my area said they used to play "boxcar" in the early '60's. At night, lights off, touching bumpers, up and down the mountains, at speed. As many as 10 cars on a good night.
Hello, In our old days, "ride the curb" was only done when there was an emergency underneath the car and we needed access without using the jack. (or get a ticket for loud exhaust and/or removal of the offending modification) Our teenage sedans did ride the curb, but only until there was enough clearance to do some work, like steel wiring up a unbolted down tube exhaust outlet that lost its wing nut coming loose or other maladies. On our 58 Impala, we had installed two down tube exhaust outlets welded onto the stock pipes for access to our drag racing performance. Later on, a custom made spot to bolt on a set of dual chromed scavenger pipes that ran all the way under the car past the rear axle. dual downtube exhaust outlets At first, we crawled under to unbolt the caps for the drags. Then we capped them up for the eliminations as required by the stock rules. For the teenage drive-in parking lot conversations, the outlets provided some sounds of high performance sounds to go with “the talk.” At the drags, we threw down a canvas tarp and crawled under the Impala to cap them back up. For the scavengers, we finally decided that hand tightening wing nuts were easier than having to use wrenches. That made changing the caps on or off simple and fast. But, we forgot that vibrations do wonders to wing nuts and sometimes they fell off at the most inopportune times. So, we used curbs to make one side go up high enough to easily crawl under to put on new ones or just a nut until we got home. Jnaki Curbs are for emergencies, not joy riding. So, as movies go, it was a Hollywood idea, for lack of a better common sense thing to do for teenagers and 20 somethings. YRMV NOTE: In other times, "ride the curb" was a time to get our early skateboards to go down the driveway and up the little ramp to fly off into the street. Crazy teens... Somehow, we knew about those mini ramps as smaller kid days and our orange crate/roller skate scooters. But, never used them to jump off the end. The old wooden scooters lived to tell another story, while the early teenage skateboards usually broke. Duh!!!
I remember us teens doing a lot of kind of crazy stuff in the late 1950s n early 60's,but "Ride-the-Curb" was not one here. Yes,movie stunts were talked about a little,mostly as how they did that or funny BS. I was in 3 car clubs,had two show cars that I put in a lot of Florida shows running around Fla.,I did pinstriping an names on cars plus airbrushed Wild Car T-shirts,point being,I was very into what was going on around me 50s n 60s=Maybe a bit more then most: No one ever said they did this on a curb in Florida, it was regarded as a movie stunt. Yes ,we Cracker's,thought the west coast was crazyer,but not at all better* in any way then our east coast way of doing things. In the over all,a lot of things were the same game,just not every thing though! Fun to hear about an see,in the end each desides what was cool or just crazy. As always enjoyed,thanks for the fun read. Merry Christmas
I believe the dark roadster is the Pete Henderson/Ralph Guldahl roadster, owned by Mr. Guldahl at that time. It is the roadster made famous by beating a quarter horse in the quarter mile. Has been restored to the Pete Henderson build. Mick
About 36 years ago I had a off-topic car that had an accelerator pedal stick. Couldn't turn it off because the steering would have locked. It was either populated or heavily ditched on the berms. I rode the curb, and a rock wall for a bit until it stopped. I will leave future adventures to the movies.
I must have missed something. Can someone explain what the riding on the curb is all about? I get the "Miss Girdle Buster", ( not politically correct now a day's), but narrowly missing light poles and denting hubcaps is beyond me. That might be one reason that Mercury hub caps are so rare.
Bumper pushing at high speed in 1960's NJ...Get up behind a friend in a slow car like 50's 6 cylinder, make contact and push him so fast he could not accelerate to get away. Yes it was dangerous, our cars often had worn suspensions and brakes but no one I knew crashed..Not to say that others didn't wreck...
I may be confusing this roadster with the one that was in the Hot Rod girl movie. If so I stand corrected!
@dirt car - I was about to answer your questions when I read further and saw that @Dan Hay & @lurker mick already beat me to it! As for your "where are they now ?" question: The Bob McGee / Dick Scritchfield Roadster was restored to its "McGee configuration" by Pete Chapouris III and his crew at SO-CAL Speed Shop (including @Pete Eastwood) for @Deuce Bruce Meyer: The car remains in Bruce Meyer's collection ... either on display at the PETERSEN AUTOMOTIVE MUSEUM in Los Angeles ... or in "Bruce's Garage" in Beverley Hills. The Pete Henderson / Ralph Guldahl Roadster was restored to its "Henderson configuration" by Chuck & @MikeLongley: The Longley's "Henderson Roadster" at the 2007 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance image by @A32Flathead Ralph (@rodster) Whitworth purchased the car from the Longley's in 2007. After Whitworth's death in 2016, the car was purchased by Ross Myers (at the October 2017 RM Auctions Hershey - "The Ralph Whitworth Collection" auction). The car currently resides in Ross & Beth Myers’ Boyertown, Pennsylvania "3DOG GARAGE" collection.
Here's a couple of pics of the "Henderson Roadster" when Ralph “Digger” Guldahl Jr. owned it (circa 1955 - 1957): In addition to appearing in the HOT ROD GANG, the "Guldahl Roadster" also appeared in another 1958 B-movie:
Thanks, have indeed seen the well documented film clip, & to say well done would be an understatement as the vintage black & white footage has created an even deeper appreciation for true hot rodding & the storied history with which each owner played a significant & dedicated part. Correct me if I'm wrong but is this not the drive test vehicle that Jay Leno as well featured ?
Ryan, The "white roadster" as you call it in hot rod gang is actually yellow. Just looks white in the movie. Dick Scritchfield traded for it that way. He was from our area here in Kansas city and it is funny if it had not been for Hawaii fender laws. The roadster most likely would have went with him to Hawaii when he retired there. I think that the Mcgee/ Scritchfield roadster was in almost all those cheesy hot rod movies. It was even the black roadster in Van Nuys Blvd.
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