History Shopping for Speed Equipment in 1953

Jive-Bomber submitted a new blog post:

Shopping for Speed Equipment in 1953

Continue reading the Original Blog Post

 

A set of four of each of these. And still have some left!

 

Love to find carbs at those prices!

 

I'll take a few sets of the SW gauges....

 

There were a lot of Adds from that area but Most of them
were for Dress up items on your ride.
for Hot rod Parts you had to Find Local Speed Shops or
Almsquist Speed Shop, J.C. Witney was selling Both dress up
kits & Hi Per items or your Local Guys that were Playing
with different Combinations to Make the Car Running Better
Just my 3.5 cents

or when the Cow
comes Home!

 

interesting

 

We look at those prices today and say, "Wow". Stuff was cheap back then. Well, not really! At 50cents an hour, how long would you have to work to buy that Edmonds valve cover for your '47 Stylemaster? And still have cash to treat your girl to a Saturday night movie.

 

I would have put the 100 towards a used 49 olds with a 303.

 

Someone made a finned aluminum valve cover for the Nash Ambassador OHV 6? That's wild, I have a dual carb intake for that same engine, surprised there were guys hopping up Nash engines at that time.

But I'd blow my $100 on chromed 97's, since a bill isn't quite enough to get that Harman & Collins ignition.

 

Yep prices are all relative to what folks are earning. I saw a cartoon the other day that showed a guy flipping burgers saying the new $15 minimum wage was a win/win. He was making more money and the $24 burgers kept out the riff raff. lol

 

Those wire wheel discs were pricey. That $109 is about a grand in today's money. And check out those muffler tips, they look just like the ones used on rice machines today. Imagine someone putting those on their 50 Chevy or Ford and getting flak, here on the H.A.M.B, because it's not "traditional" or "vintage"

 

Maximum bang for your 100 bucks back then would probably be a couple of carbs and manifold for the flat head Ford that you could afford. If I was around then I imagine I would be pinching the pennies and an early Ford Coupe would be the one.

 

Well, they didn't have "800" numbers, so I guess it was okay to order stuff from catalogs back then.

 

and they didn't have the "internet"

 

The really scary thing is I remember some of this stuff...

 

X2. First car had a set of $4 port walls, then I stepped up for full set of wide white wall recaps.

 

I'll take 5 of those 97's. My intake cost has increased 5x...the Stromberg 22x.

 

One of the things that people forget about mail order in that time frame was that vendors required postal money orders or at least a month for a personal check to clear the bank before stuff was shipped. And usually, freight/shipping was COD cash!