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Junk is junk. Period. No arguments. No making excuses about costs and access. I am referring pointedly to the so-called rat rod craze.
In the last three years there has been a massive clean-up of those cars, and for that a huge sigh of relief. As presented a few years past, the entire rat rod thing was about lifestyle, not really about hot rods at all. While some Americans think the entire thing was invented here, it actually started as a lifestyle/music thing in England. It was way off the mark back then, and in the minds of too many would-be hot rodders, it is still far afield from any historical reality.
Back in the day, we called such abortions Shot Rods. They were extremely rare, and held in such disdain that said vehicles (and the builders) quickly dissolved into the woodwork. Back in those days, such cars weren’t built because of the lack of funds, since none of us seemed t have extra discretionary income. We built good hot rods because we knew what was needed.
Oh, I can hear all the snide comments already, about how the “real rodders back then did things”. I was there, and I was building, right alongside such people as Gene Winfield and Don Garlits and the wizards of Detroit, ad neauseum. I hear rockabilliy wanna-be’s today distort history by explaining how the old timers used to do things. Bull hockey dude! We did things with very little money, hard work, no aftermarket, gas welding, and perserverance.
These schlocky rat rods are exactly what the misinformed public thought hot rodding was about, back when. And the entire emerging hot rod movement worked overtime trying to straighten out this image. We worked hard, very hard, in behalf of the car sport, and we succeeded. And we did it with loud music, slicked back ducktail hair, Levi’s and white T-shirts. And we have carried it over into the world of today, no thanks to rust buckets.
It was because of this that I put together a book on Basic Hot Rods a year or so back. A BASIC HOT ROD IS NOT A RAT ROD! I cannot emphasize this enough, but somehow it is not penetrating the brains of all the wanna-be’s out there.
What many aspiring rodders mistake for basic is a pile or rusty junk that is immediately, on “completion”, simply a mobile pile of junk. Am I getting my point across, bucko?
To help things along, I am discounting the book Basic Hot Rods a huge amount, just in time for Christmas. For the next couple of months you can get this guide for just $ll.50, if ordered with any other available Tex Smith book. To get in on the deal, ring my new distribution center out in Oregon, at 441-997-1802. Or, send check/MO to Tex Smith Books, PO Box 11,000, Florence, OR 97439.
You’ll see immediately that the effort with this book is to appeal on a less sophisticated level to every kind of gearhead. No glossy paper, no snazzy studio photos, no misleading ads. Simple and straight forward.
While you have the crew on the phone, ask about the range of books still in print. I see where the ongoing best seller “Hemi” is selling on Ebay for $75, which amazes me since we still sell it for under twenty five.
But, back to my harangue about contemporary rat rods. As we predicted when these abominations began to appear in England, it would be a short lived fad. Already, here in the States, the real hot rodders have taken the idea from the very conception and turned it rapidly on its head.
If such a car is necessary because of cost, consider this. I built my personal transport for the past two decades from a pile of castaway mechanicals and an outlay of under $2000. Lots of personal effort, but for me this is the very essence of hot rodding…adapting whatever is available, but doing it in a safe and sane way. No effort to appease a perceived lifestyle that never existed.
In my book, I cover the building of this iconic roadster in one session, it appeared before only in Hot Rod Mechanix as a series.
Today, there is a full and well-guided movement of building basic hot rods. These are cars that are well designed, well engineered, and thoughtfully built, even though they might appear from afar as rusty hulks of rat rods. They are everywhere, some even coming from long-time professional street rod shops. They are not crap, they are not dangerous, and they belie the belief that junk is where it is at in hot rodding. They are basic hot rods, which is what BASIC HOT RODS is all about. Call in your order right not, Linda Doreen and the crew in Oregon are standing by!
While you’re at it, order my new fiction novel, l320. It makes a great gift for any gearhead, and it doesn’t refer to junk heaps anwhere…
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