As children who grew up in car-crazy households, maybe we dreamed of hot rod parts under the Christmas Tree instead of toys. They personify a certain breed of person.įor most of us, this drive to modify our cars starts early. Thanks to our freedoms, hot rods are more popular in America than they have ever been. Cars called "derelicts" are designed to look like unrestored vintage cars on the outside, but house modern suspensions and high performance fuel injected engines underneath. Today, we use words like street rods, rat rods, restomod, custom cars, lead sled, and gasser to describe variations of the hot rod genre. The terms used to describe a hot rod have changed some. The term street rod refers to any antique vehicle with upgraded suspension, brakes, a retrofit engine, and upgraded interior. What is a Street Rod CarĪ street rod is a modified passenger car or pickup, usually those manufacturered before 1955, that's made to be a roadworthy antique car. Songs were even written about them. One of the first rock-n-roll records produced was about a factory hot rod - Rocket 88 by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats in 1951. Hot rods and fast cars were part of pop culture. You could see the gleaming chrome hot rod parts for sale on the shelf. When you walked in to a hot rod parts supply shop, you could smell the rubber tires and the honing oil of the machine tools. These became the go-to places to get hot rod parts and street rod parts. Early speed shops were a cross between an auto parts supplier and a machine shop. The accessibility of bolt-on street rod parts birthed numerous speed shops which sprouted up all over the country.
It wasn’t long before the big three were offering hot rod accessories you could buy for your brand new car. When stock car racing and drag racing came into vogue in the early 1950's, Detroit took notice and horsepower became a factory offering. Hot rod performance in those days meant being able to hit 100 mph on the street, or even faster on dry lake beds like El Mirage or Bonneville. Guys like Fred Offenhauser, Ed Iskendarian, and our very own “Speedy” Bill Smith. Many of the hot rod parts supply pioneers of this time staked their claim in this new hot rod parts industry. Many Model A Fords and '32 Fords were built into custom “jalopies” as some called them. This included having a cool car with hot rod accessories. The greatest generation was eager to live their best life. When World War II ended, the hot rod performance craze exploded. From the earliest days of the automobile, hot rod parts were used to make them go faster. They took an old ordinary car and made it better than new: lighter, faster, quicker, and easier to work on. Many hot rodders choose to get their fingers dirty, just like their fathers and grandfather’s did. Hot rod parts are used to make a car look, sound and perform at a higher level than it was originally designed to. A hot rod can be modified to look more pleasing to the eye, to be distinctly different from what it used to be. They reflect one’s ability to take something ordinary and make it extraordinary.
Hot rods are the product of a person’s ingenuity. A hot rod does more than just going fast. We, as people who love hot rods and what they do for us, might conjure up a few more thoughts. We might say that it’s not quite that simple. That’s how the dictionary describes a hot rod. Hot Rod: (noun), A vehicle rebuilt for high speed or acceleration
0 kommentar(er)
