Hot rod
Encyclopedia : H : HO : HOT : Hot rod
- For other uses of 'hot rod' see Hot rod (disambiguation).
Encyclopedia : H : HO : HOT : Hot rod
Hot rods are modified older — even historical — cars. Originally the term was used to the practice of taking an old car, usually a Ford, and improving its performance by reducing weight (usually by removing roof, hood, bumpers, windscreen and fenders), lower it, change or tune the engine to give more power, add fat wheels for traction and paint it to make it stand out. The term may have originated from "hot roadster" and the term was used in the 1950s and 1960s as a derogatory term for any car that did not fit into the mainstream. Other sources indicate that the term was derived from replacement of connecting rods in engines to allow higher RPMs to be reached without parts failure. When hot rodding became commercialized in the 1970s, magazines and associations catering to "street rodders" were started.
Hot rodders, including Wally Parks created the National Hot Rod Association NHRA to bring racing off the streets and onto the tracks. The annual California Hot Rod Reunion and National Hot Rod Reunion are held to honor pioneers in the sport. The Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum houses the very roots of hot rodding. Nowadays people who own hot rods keep them clean and try to make them noticeable. Those who work according to the original idea of cheap, fast and no frills are often called rat rods. There are many magazines that you can look at to see real hot rods, including The Rodders Journal, while commercial magazines that include Hot Rod Magazine, Street Rodder, and Popular Hot Rodding cover street rods. There are also television shows like My Classic Car, and Horsepower TV. Hot rods are an important and iconic part of American culture.
Author Tom Wolfe was one of the first to recognise the importance of hot rodding in popular culture, and bring it to mainstream attention, as described in his book The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby.
Construction of a hot rod required skill with mechanical work, welding, and automotive paint and body work.
The "classic era" of hot rod construction ended around 1965, in part because the supply of vintage tin had dwindled, but mostly because new cars were equipped for greater speed and power directly from the factory with little or no modification required.
There is still a vibrant Hot Rod culture worldwide, especially in the United States. The hot rod community has now been subdivided into two main groups: hot rodders and street rodders. Hot rodders build their cars using a lot of original, old parts, and follow the styles that were popular from the 1940s through the 1960s. Street rodders build cars (or have them built for them) using new parts.
Hot rod builders such as Jesse James, who is also famous for his motorcycle modifications (choppers), have profited through their exposure on sensationalized TV shows. The Discovery Channel airs several shows dealing with modern interpretations of kustom kulture such as Monster Garage, American Hot Rod, and Overhaulin'.
Juxtapoz Magazine, founded by the artist Robert Williams, has thrived as a recent extrapolation of kustom kulture art. It has also begun to garner respect as an exhibitor of contemporary artistic talent that transcends kustom kulture's bounds.
The culture is still going strong in Sweden where there are a lot of automobile enthusiasts, also known as raggare. Clubs such as Wheels and Wings in Varberg, Sweden have established themselves in Swedish Hot Rod culture. Since there is very little "vintage tin" the hot rods in Sweden are generally made with a home made chassis (usually a Ford model T or A replica), with a Jaguar rear axle, a small block V8 and fibreglass tub, but some have been built using for instance a Volvo Duett chassis. Because the Swedish regulations required a crash test even for custom-built passenger cars between 1969 and 1982 the Duett option was often used since it was considered a reengined Duett rather than a new vehicle.
On April 7, 2005, Boyd Coddington, famed hot rod designer and star of American Hot Rod, pleaded guilty of perpetrating a "Ship of Theseus" fraud. Coddington's hot rods had been registered as antique automobiles in order to avoid emissions and tax liabilities. However, many of the vehicles no longer contained any parts from the original cars, and some were entirely unrelated to their supposed donor vehicles. Interestingly, most of his cars were hand built one offs, complete with hand fabricated aluminium bodies. Technically, they were often late-model cars with copies of 1930s-'60s bodies on them.
A hot-rod appears on the clip “Gimme All Your Lovin’” of the rock band ZZ Top.
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