Interesting comments...   and you are correct....   Hot Rods are generally as you described....       

I always thought that Hot Rods are cool   but bring born in 49, and getting my driver licence in 65....  Muscle cars are my 1st love....   

I always figured they (muscle cars) were included in Hot Rod magazines over the years, and presumed we had late model Hot Rods as well as old    

I guess if Harry started the site for old school Hot Rods only    

then there a lot of us who better find a internet home somewhere else...

 

 

I can agree to a point, hot rods are of the older genre. However, with that said, I also respect the time and ingenuity of just about any mechanical project.
My personal interests lie in everything from steam engines to GT-40's. I love the old hit and miss engines and absolutely think there isn't a sweeter sound than a nitro car when the pump first comes on, pulling the rpm down a little and hearing every cylinder fire.
I've been through it all with my current build, a tupperware 34 Ford. My come back to all the critics is that when I was drag racing FC's, all the fast cars were fibreglass.
It takes all kinds to make this world go around and the hot rod/old car hobby is in jeopardy with most of us old guys getting....well....old. My kid isn't interested in old cars, he can appreciate them, but they just don't do 'it' for him.
So while we like what we like, there is some common bond in all of us.

i don,t think thr site owner takes his site name to be to strict...coming from b.c. i pmed him about joining the site and he said all were welcome even thou it said ont. rodders

Well according to flatblack I would not be welcome here. I am a Corvette guy. I would not think of coming on this site or the something like the HAMB and talking about my car, it is not the place nor the audience.

However, at one point in time I was very much a "hot rod" guy and while I don't have as much to share with you folks in terms of technical information anymore I am here to learn a little and recall the "glory" days of drag racing and hot rodding in Ontario. For some those glory days are now and I guess that it is a generational thing. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what is a "hot rod" anymore, the term means so many thing to so many people. John Force calls his funny cars "hot rods" and for a long time NASCAR guys used that reference as well. I do agree that it is probably pre 49 but the younger guys have a tough time relating to those cars, for many they are unobtainable.

So without any drama I enjoy this site for what it is. I am sorry for what has happened and the loss that some of you guys feel, I believe it is very real. As we get older friends are a dear commodity, we don't want to lose them. I get that. But I hope despite that I am categorized as a "Corvette" guy that will not be held against me.

I do enjoy this site very much.

well lets see

flipping to H
h-a , ... h-e ... h-o ...
h-o-t ... hot rod ... ok here we are lol

www.google.com/search

-- Edited by DJD on Friday 11th of July 2014 07:55:43 AM

-- Edited by DJD on Friday 11th of July 2014 09:02:12 AM

X2 Fleet !!!!

An Old timer once told me Hotrods were 1936 and down,he stated when Henry started putting headlights into the fenders.. they were not hotrods.
ha ha ha

 

Harry,

Since this is ONTARIO RODDERS, and everyone is welcome. maybe remove the HOT in   "THE PLACE FOR ALL ONTARIO HOT RODDERS"

 

As some have stated it's your car, you call it what you want. Drive the wheels off it. If mine were on the road, I'd sure as heck would be driving it and wouldn't give a crap what others think/call it.  

soo .. IF I were to build a 32 ford and stuff a brand new efi 5.0 boss coyote motor in it , it wouldn't be a hot rod ???

with 440 horse and purring like a kitten I think that would be one hell of a hot rod myself

my buddie's 2012 boss 302 is stupid fast - if it was half the weight it would be just nuts

hot rodding is all about improveing the vehicle - not so much what you used to do it

40 years ago I suppose someone could put forth the argument that a 32 with a hemi isn't a hot rod compared to one with a flat head

but they'd probably be sitting in a cloud of smoke and dust all by themselves while complaining 'cause that hemi car would be long long gone lol

I think before calling only something like a 32 highboy a hot rod you might need to add the word traditional in front of it

I can tell you this
an omni with a 200 HP turbo motor in it -- yeah , THAT's a hot rod
(remember real hot rods have four cylinders - anything else is a "modifyed")

Well said Fordy....

I always thought that they guys who started this sickness were building cars with what ever they could get cheap and that was available. Trying to make their junk faster and cooler. They probably didn't even call  their cars "hotrods" but were labeled that after the fact by people who didn't like them...LOL

I wasn't there so I'd be interested in hearing / reading the true history.

-- Edited by slab on Friday 11th of July 2014 06:23:02 PM

As the second member of this site it was never a sworn SET IN STONE HOT ROD SITE. It was a idea that came from the Rat rods of Ontario site. It was started because alot of people didnt want to post on a RAT ROD site. If any of you guys want go back and look at some of the early posts. Like Ryan on the HAMB says please do a search and find the history.

How about this article ?? Any truth to it??


A Short History
of Hot Rods

Hot rods make a statement about power, performance and freedom.

By John Warde of MSN Autos


The term hot rod became popular in the 1940s. But the first examples—called gow jobs or soup-ups—were built during the Depression by young enthusiasts, usually with little or no money, who were eager to tinker with what then was still a novel piece of machinery.

Many of those early hot rodders also wanted to show-up their wealthier cohorts; to prove to them that money wasnt the only way to gain automotive status. So, despite its emphasis on power and performance, a hot rod has also always been a social statement, having to do with self-reliance, ingenuity and ultimately independence. It is this added emotional resonance that separates hot rods from mere homebuilt racers, and gives them a deeper definition not addressed by dictionaries.

How it all began

California, especially the dry lakes region in the southern part of the state, generally is regarded as the birthplace of hot rods. There a cult of backyard mechanics, working with junkyard parts, created streamlined, no-nonsense racing cars for competition against each other over straight-line courses laid out on the nearby desert salt flats. In those days nothing but open country lay between the flats and such small towns as Pasadena, Glendale and Burbank where hot rodding began; and since few rodders had more than one vehicle, it was essential that the cars used for racing could also be driven to the sites, as well as back and forth from home to work during the week.

Most early hot rods were Ford Model T or Model A roadsters—cheap, plentiful, and lightweight, having no top and only a single seat. Standard procedure was to strip off all nonessential parts—fenders, running boards, ornaments, even the windshield—to achieve maximum weight reduction and aerodynamics. Eventually coupes and sedans joined the ranks. Typically, these heavier models underwent drastic surgery to chop their tops lower and slope, or rake, their windshields backward.

Large rear tires were installed on all hot rods to raise the gear ratio for high speed, while standard-size or smaller tires left on the front helped lower the car and rake it forward to decrease wind resistance. Rows of slots, called louvers, were cut into the hood, body, and rear deck lid for engine cooling and to release trapped air. Sometimes flat aluminum discs were fitted over the wheel hubs for further streamlining.


Ford flathead V8 engines were the power plants of choice after their introduction in 1932. Mass-produced in the millions, they too were cheap and plentiful, and their design permitted relatively easy—and nearly limitless—performance enhancements. Developing 85 horsepower in stock configuration, the earliest modifications usually consisted of removing the muffler, straightening the exhaust pipes and adding multiple carburetors. The results more than doubled the original punch, producing an engine that often could propel a soup-up at better than 100 miles an hour over a lakebed course.

Hot roddings golden era

World War II put an end to early hot rodding but not to the hot-rod craze. Indeed, California servicemen leaving their dry lakes roadsters and chopped coupes behind on blocks or in the dubious care of younger brothers took pictures of their cars with them and spread tales of their exploits wherever they went to whoever would listen—mostly young, male servicemen like themselves from every area of the country. When the war ended, in 1945, hot rodding exploded into the public consciousness, becoming one of the strongest fads of new postwar America.

With money in their pockets, mechanical and metalworking skills gained in the military and burning desire to build dream cars, hundreds of hot rodders and fans now flocked to the dry lakes races in southern California. Elsewhere in the state and across the country dangerous—often fatal—street racing caught on, and with it the practice by many youthful hot rodders of gathering at local hangouts and cruising up and down avenues at night, showing off their cars—and themselves. Hot-rod activities became an easy target for public attention that focused increasingly on what were perceived as frightening new national problems: juvenile delinquency and teenage gangs. Along with rock and roll, hot rods and hot rodding became symbols for the darker side of American youth.

Of course the result was soaring popularity for these phenomena, at least among young people. In an effort to reverse hot roddings negative connotations, the first Hot Rod Exhibition was held in January, 1948, at the National Guard Armory in Los Angeles. Emphasizing positive qualities like craftsmanship, engineering and safety, the show was attended by some 10,000 spectators. Two years later, Robert E. Petersens newly-formed Hot Rod magazine, whose first issues were sold on the steps of the Exhibition, boasted a circulation of 300,000.

Enthusiast magazines like Hot Rod and organizations like the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA), founded in 1938, and the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA), founded in 1951, led in defusing the image of hot rodding as a national menace by fostering civic-mindedness and cooperation between hot rodders and police, and by creating organized straight-line courses—called drag strips—to replace clandestine street racing. Many enthusiasts turned to building cars exclusively for drag racing. Others continued to build so-called street rods—hopped up cars that could be raced (illegally) at traffic lights but that usually served chiefly as stylish transportation—and still others broke new ground by modifying cars primarily for looks rather than performance.

The new appearance-oriented cars were called customs. Like early hot rods, they evolved from lower-priced production automobiles—Fords, Chevrolets, Mercurys—but unlike the soup-ups they were relatively late-model cars, and seldom came from junkyards.

Customizing did for bodywork what hot rodding did for engine performance. Favorite techniques involved severe top-chopping, lowering, or channeling, the entire frame to within inches of the ground (raking the front end forward was out for early customizers; if a car was tilted at all, the direction of slope was toward the rear), seams were filled, or frenched, to smooth them, and streamlined fender panels called skirts were added to cover the rear wheel openings. Chromed parts were much in abundance, from spare wheel covers—called continental kits—to side-mounted exhaust pipes, called lakers or simply lakes, and no expense was spared on fancy paintwork. As the era progressed, details like pinstriping, scallops and flames were brought to the level of high art, and custom cars became striking—and still to some people disturbing—expressions of individuality.

But by the end of the middle 1950s, competition both in hot rodding and customizing had grown so fierce that top cars seldom saw daylight except at the drag strip or in the exhibition hall. Despite its icon status among youth (which would last about another five years) hot-rodding activities around this time began to wane in popularity among average car buffs. Once again these enthusiasts found themselves financially disadvantaged; and junkyard parts could no longer fill the bill.

The 1960s saw the advent of muscle cars, Detroit's bid at performance hot rodding in the form of plain-looking automobiles stuffed with huge-displacement engines like the Chevy 396, 409 and 427; the Ford 390 and 427; and the Chrysler 440 and 426 hemi, so-nicknamed for its racing-engineered hemispherical combustion chambers. Later in the decade came smaller pony cars—Mustangs and Camaros—which arrived only to face the challenges of the early 70s gas shortages when the doubling of prices at the pump opened the door to a wave of upstart econoboxes (and Volkswagen bugs) from Japan and Europe. The primacy of the V8 ended then, and the golden era of traditional hot rodding and customizing was over. But was the pastime really dead?

Hot rodding, part two

By the 1980s the fire that had been amateur hot rodding had indeed died, but the flame had not gone out. Two core groups—one charmed by nostalgia for the past and the other charged with the rebellious creativity of youth and the independent spirit of the disenfranchised—kept the spark alive. Thanks to them, hot rodding and customizing (albeit in a 90s guise) survives today and even flourishes.

California, naturally enough, was the site of the resurgence. In the nostalgia camp were two small car clubs, the Los Angeles Roadsters and the Bay Area Roadsters, who began a tradition of long-distance cruising en masse along the states highways in their otherwise languishing chromed show cars, mostly stylized reworkings of 20s, 30s, and 40s open-top single-seaters. These cruises, which began in the 1970s, were popularized in car magazines as rod runs and as the trend continued they spread to other states and took on trappings of large-scale family picnics complete with concession stands, portable toilets and sometimes carnival rides augmenting the show-car competitions and swap meets that were the heart of the events.

In the other camp were young men from southern Californias Chicano culture, whose bent was refining the craft of customizing to produce probably the most singular of its iterations, the lowrider. Initially limited chiefly to 1963 and 1964 Chevrolet Impala models, lowriders reflected an epitome of ritualized—even symbolic—showiness that included meticulous candy paint jobs, delicately air-brushed murals, crushed velvet upholstery, and tiny, thin whitewall tires mounted on deep-dish chrome or gold-plated wire wheel rims. Their name derived from their unique component: hydraulic suspensions that could lift and lower the car or rake it forward and back instantly—even make it appear to hop—at the touch of a control by the driver.

Creating lowriders still is virtually the exclusive province of Latino customizers operating within strict, trend-dictated design parameters. There is no doubt that the existence of these cars has brought increased recognition and added new creative spirit to customizing in general, and especially to the more extreme examples of ultra-customizing that appear at contemporary exhibitions.

What now?

Today hot rodding in all its faces is both popular and big business. What began as a way to achieve results without money has become a way to spend it, and a way for marketers of every stripe to accumulate it, sometimes in vast amounts. The National Hot Rod Association has turned drag racing into a nationwide spectator sport generating millions of dollars annually from events, television coverage, and advertising. Robert E. Petersen spun off Hot Rod (which still exists) to form Petersen Publications, an automotive magazine empire. Rod runs frequently attract thousands of participants to single events, which are often held over three-day weekends at regional fairgrounds, campgrounds, and other public arenas.

Speed and custom parts industries thrive, producing every kind of hot-rodding and customizing component conceivable, with new products arriving regularly. These days, it is possible to build complete automobiles using newly-made reproduction parts, including frames, body panels and engine blocks. If you are wealthy enough, you can even commission a designer-built, one-of-a-kind hot rod or custom ready to capture first honors at any show or take you joyriding down your very own boulevard of dreams.

Clearly, one might argue that hot rodding is making a bid for mainstream acceptance, especially with the arrival of the Plymouth Prowler, Panoz AVI and hot-selling Chrysler PT Cruiser. However, from all appearances hot rods seem to be retaining at least some of their outlaw charm, not just for the young but for the young at heart. And they probably always will, thanks to those deeper elements of their definition, the ones the dictionary leaves out.

I like the pre war stuff the most. My next era was up to 1958ish. After this the whole car thing got to commercial. I like off brand and different build styles. I cant allow myself to call any thing post 1934 a hot rod there are so many ways to describe a car build but hot rods are pre 35. As for any 1934 or earlier with a non traditional build style are Street rods.Kustoms, Street Machines, Street Freaks and Low Riders. Muscle cars are a name of store stock rebuilds or survivors to me. Lines can blur from style to style but I can usually tell where the builder was going if they were building to an era or build style. Some builds just confuse me but hey the car was built for the owner not for me. Open mindedness goes a long way. All rules have exceptions.

slab wrote:

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"Clearly, one might argue that hot rodding is making a bid for mainstream acceptance, especially with the arrival of the Plymouth Prowler, Panoz AVI and hot-selling Chrysler PT Cruiser." 

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 Great find Slab, but CLEARLY this article was written some time ago!!! LOL!!!

Hard to hold a limit on what goes on with cars, everybody has their own idea of what a Hot Rod should be. To me you can find good and bad parts on any vehicle. I can get excited about a new car dash, or a fancy interior lamp, that would be cool somewhere else. As for new cars and old cars, to me if it has wheels and a motor, then it has something to look at. Of course, we all know if it has wheels or Ta ta's it will sooner or later give you problems.......................
I think we have to have an open attitude in order to make it all work, there is room for a lot of different ideas and concepts.
As long as people keep posting and reading,all will be right with the world.

The HAMB is the place for you flatblack. They use your definition and don't stray from it at all.

Personally, I'm more interested in local builds of any sort. I'm a 'car guy'. That term has no limitations.

A Hot Rod is just that, a Hot Rod, it has always been reputed to be no newer than 1948, a custom, or Kustom if you are a follower of
the church of Barris is a car modified typically in body design from 1936 to 1964, both have been established for years,no sense in starting
arguments over it, if you feel you like the gang here, stay and enjoy the group, if you have issues and like to start fights over it, may as well
go to your own room and sulk. I agree with Ed that the hot rod has it limits, I also agree with many of the rest of you that it's OK to post
your family project of the awesome sedan such as the clean little Malibu featured here in the past few days. We all like a little effort from
anyone and when they wish to share it ,we are all for the better when we get to see what's going on..Lets just keep the proper terminology
for each type car, after all you wouldn't call a transmission a transmission for fifty years and then decide to call it a distributor now, after all it
could technically be called just that .it distributes power from the engine to the differential... All I ask is that we please don't get wrapped all
up and let the rice cookers start posting here with their Civics they have great forums of their own..
Chris.

Chris Stapley wrote:

---

A Hot Rod is just that, a Hot Rod, it has always been reputed to be no newer than 1948, a custom, or Kustom if you are a follower of
the church of Barris is a car modified typically in body design from 1936 to 1964, both have been established for years,no sense in starting
arguments over it, if you feel you like the gang here, stay and enjoy the group, if you have issues and like to start fights over it, may as well
go to your own room and sulk. I agree with Ed that the hot rod has it limits, I also agree with many of the rest of you that it's OK to post
your family project of the awesome sedan such as the clean little Malibu featured here in the past few days. We all like a little effort from
anyone and when they wish to share it ,we are all for the better when we get to see what's going on..Lets just keep the proper terminology
for each type car, after all you wouldn't call a transmission a transmission for fifty years and then decide to call it a distributor now, after all it
could technically be called just that .it distributes power from the engine to the differential... All I ask is that we please don't get wrapped all
up and let the rice cookers start posting here with their Civics they have great forums of their own..
Chris.

---

 Yep.

the 31 is definitely a Hot Rod and the 52 GMC is , as you say, a cool old truck " under construction".

In the 40’s guys took what they could afford and make it theirs.

Some wanted faster so they lightened things up, dumps unwanted sheet metal and cut them down to cut the wind. Hopped up the motor… Hot rod.

Others made them cool looking, changing parts out with other models and re molding the body’s to be different / cool, ….the custom.

Now today young guy buy what they can and do what they can afford to speed them up with what is available.

 “Same mind set” with different cars / parts available.

We years ago could buy a car for $100 and put it on the road.

Now there are laws, safety checks, and high cost cars, built so you can’t run fender less.

Fn computers

Kids can only work with what they have. Poor kids!

I like the older stuff (blame it on Ed ROTH)

So you see everyone is wrong, unless they drive 55 56 57 Chevy. :0

Woops that’s a shoebox or gasser or street machine. Never mind!

Hot rodding is ingenuity, smarts, inventiveness, creativity. Useable art.

But the older the better like fine wine.

You guys are all forgetting about the term "Street Rod" which came about because of this argument. I personally think it's a joke. Any vehicle that's been modified for performance is a Hot Rod in my mind. How about some of Big Daddy Roth's creations are they Hot Rods? Customs (maybe Kustoms?) I never use the term Street Rod when referencing my cars but every one of them has been a Hot Rod to me

427CARL wrote:

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Rocketman wrote:

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In the end...... it is all just in a name, and Hot Rodding is the act of modifying a car to improve it's performance.

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         agreed          if you had a site for your original description of what you (FB55D) prefer     there would not be many old Hot Rodders left

 

        When we old Baby Boomers are gone     whats left?   Tuners? Monster trucks? Diesels?   

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 hey carl - wanna help me stuff a 500 caddy into a smart car. lol