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Please see my store for other great items: http://stores.ebay.com/Kool-collectibles Top hat skull solid type very cool Drill yourself aperox 2." tall No Reserve NR A lot has been written about the origins of the hot rod and the development of the culture that gave rise to them and then grew up around them. and I'm sure others with more detailed knowledge (including the many who were there) might well disagree with my thoughts. With that caveat, I place the defining origin point for hot rods and hot rod culture as the end of World War II. A number of factors came together at one time -- the period between the end of the war in 1945 and the begining of the 1950s -- and mainly in one place -- southern California -- to create a unique environment in which the hot rod and its culture were born. At the end of the war, a legion of young men returned to America with a wad of demobilization cash in their pockets and a sense of freedom and excitement bred by their experiences in the war. With a period of peace and the steadily increasing prosperity of the country as a backdrop, these young men had a "can-do" attitude and a desire to express themselves in ways that their time in the military had stifled. And, all of a sudden, there were a lot of inexpensive used cars available. For five years Detroit had basically been in the business of supplying the military. Now all that production capacity was turned to creating a stream of new cars to satisfy the pent-up demand of a civilian population that had scrimped and saved throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s and the sacrifices of the war years. Men who'd stayed behind to work in America's offices and factories had a lot of savings and they were ready to ditch their aging cars from the 1920s and 1930s for gleaming new models offered by the Big Three (and the others who are now gone, like Wilys and Kaiser). Their trade-ins became the starting point of the hot rodders, and came to define the way they were built and how they looked. These factors dictated the core aesthetic of the classic American hot rod. It was the later Model Ts and the plentiful early-30s Fords and Chevys that became the raw material for the young men who created hot rodding and hot rod culture. Here's a picture of a '32 Ford Roadster, a contemporary car, but one built on the style of those first hot rods. The basic performance and engineering elements of the hotrod came together in these cars: More power, less weight and a look derived from these things leading to chopped tops, channeled bodies, pinched frames, dropped axles and, eventually wide tires. And why southern California? Again, a lot has been written about the question of why southern California became the seed-bed for so much cultural change in the second half of the twentieth century. Part of it was Hollywood, part simply that the western part of the country had reached a critical mass of prosperity and population sufficient to establish itself as a new center of culture distinct from the old center in the northeast. But a few factors made southern California the right place for the birth of hot rodding. One was the climate: with year-round perfect temperature and little rainfall, young men of little means could work outside on cars that had few creature comforts themselves. More important, Los Angeles was the first city truly shaped from its beginnings by the automobile: There were more roads, and new ones there. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, was "the lakes," the dry lake beds just east of L.A. that became a magnet for the chopped and stripped-down speed machines. Here the hot rodders found miles and miles of hard, glass-flat surface upon which to run their machines. We are committed to customer satisfaction.Victorian to deco to the future, 1880's to the 1950's ,1960's ,1970's A development of hot rodding, the change in name corresponded to the change in the design of the cars being modified. The first hot rods were pre-WWII cars, with running boards and simple fenders over the wheels. These were modified by removing the running boards and either removing the fenders entirely or replacing them with very light "cycle fenders". The object was to put the most powerful engine in the lightest possible frame and body combination. The suspension was usually altered to make the car lower; the front was often made much lower than the rear. Much later some hot rods and custom cars swapped the old solid rear axle for an independent rear axle, often from Jaguar. Only rarely was the grille of one make of car replaced by another; one exception was the 1937 Buick grille, often used on a Ford. The original hot rods were plainly painted like the Model A Fords from which they had been built up, and only slowly begun to take on colors, and eventually fancy orange-yellow flamed hoods or "candy-like" deep acrylic finishes in the various colors. With the change in automobile design to encase the wheels in fenders and to extend the hood to the full width of the car, the former practices were no longer possible. In addition, there was tremendous automotive advertising and subsequent public interest in the new models in the 1950s. Hence custom cars came into existence, swapping headlight rings, grilles, bumpers, chrome side strips, and tail lights, as well as "frenching" and "tunnelling" head- and taillights. The bodies of the cars were changed by cutting through the sheet metal, removing bits to make the car lower, welding it back together, and adding a lot of lead to make the resulting form smooth (hence the term "lead sled"; lead has been replace by Bondo). By this means, "chopping" made the roof lower; "sectioning" made the body thinner from top to bottom. "Channeling" was cutting notches in the floorpan where the body touches the frame to lower the whole body. Fins were often added from other cars, or made up from sheet steel. In the custom car culture, someone who merely changed the appearance without improving the performance substantially was looked down on. Paint was an important concern. Once bodywork was done, the cars were painted unusual colors. Transparent but wildly-colored candy-apple paint, applied atop a metallic undercoat, and metalflake paint, with aluminum glitter within candy-apple paint, appeared in the 1960s. These took many coats to produce a brilliant effect -- which in hot climates had a tendency to flake off. Customizers also continued the habit of adding decorative paint after the main coat was finished, of flames extending rearward from the front wheels, and of scallops, and hand-painted pinstripes of a different color than the rest of the car. The latter, most often a single coat, would be expected to be of a simpler paint. Flame jobs later spread to the hood, encompassing the entire front end, and have progressed from traditional reds and yellows to blues and greens and body-color "ghost" flames. Painting has become such a part of the custom car scene that now in many custom car competitions, awards for custom paint are as highly sought after as awards for the cars themselves. Once customizing post-war cars caught on, some of the practices were extended to pre-war cars, which would have been called fendered rods, with more body work done on them. An alternate rule for disambiguation developed: hot rods had the engine behind the front suspension, while customs had the engine over the front suspension. The clearest example of this is Fords prior to 1949 had Henry Ford's old transverse front suspension, while '49s had a more modern suspension with the engine moved forward. However, an American Museum has what could be the first true custom, built in 1932, amongst its exhibits. With the coming of the muscle car, and further to the high-performance luxury car, customization declined. One place where it persisted was the US Southwest, where lowriders were built similar in concept to the earlier customs, but of post-1950s cars. Recently, as the supply of usable antique steel bodies has given out, a new trend to fabricate new steel and fiberglass bodies, closely based on the styling of the pre-war cars. Bodies of this type can cost over $100,000 before the running gear is added. California's "junker" (or "crusher") law, which pays a nominal sum to take "gross polluters" off the road, has been criticized by enthusiasts (and by SEMA) for accelerating this trend. Starting in the 1950s, it became popular among customizers to display their vehicles at drive-in restaurants. Among the largest and longest lasting was Johnie's Broiler in Downey, California. The practise continues today, especially in Southern Ca
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