Thread: What is your definition of a Hot Rod?

Tweet

I am a baby boomer, born in '48, and discovered models and car magazines by '58.

While I have always heard a wide "generalization" of the term "hot rod" to describe a car modified for performance ....I grew up with the magazines and hot rod organizations clearly defining it as a '48 or older model.

Newer cars, like '50s models and up, looked far different, and were consistantly referred to as "street machines". If it had giant rear tires, it was a "pro street", and if it was a bigblock detroit performance car, it was a "muscle car".

I would have backed this opinion up with my magazine collection of 6,000 mags, dating back to the late '40s, but I sold most of them. I am proud to say I read them all cover to cover!

These guidelines were consistant up to about the '90s, when younger guys started using some of the terms more widely, and dropping others.

I guess you could say that each person has their own perception of what the term means. However, when it evolved, and was used one way, from about 1965 to 1995, it rubs me the wrong way when young guys are telling me that they know the "truth" of it.

I guess it is up to the majority of a group how they want to define something, and they can also change it when they want, but I will probably use the old terminology that has been with me so long.

I guess I will have to be tolerant of the younger "peeps" sending "tweets" to each other, discussing the new meanings of car hobby terms. :-)

I grew up with the same idea of what was a true "Hot Rod" & street machines, But I still call them newer cars hot rods some times when just talking about them, but Not meaning for show or facts.

Pat

WOW!!!

Like everything else, the description of a Hot Rod has changed dramatically over the years.

Originally anything pre 48 eas a hot rod, after that you could call astreet machine, muscle car or whatever you wanted, BUT not a hot rod.

Over time the more accepted use of the term hot rod has become that "simplified" version, any car modified for more power and speed.

But, is that a new definition? Isn't that exactly what hot rods were originally?

Cars modified for more power and speed? Now a lot of hot rods are old cars with new engines and updated suspensions. Is that bad?? Of course not!!\\I consider my 76 Seville a hot rod, what the he--, its got 540 HP and 586 FtLbs and it accelerates "briskly".

To me (at 70 years of age) it represents a hot rod as much as any of your projects.

Everyone on this board has, or wants to have, a hot rod.

If we own a vehicle modified to suit are needs, that performs better than when it was new then damn it, it's a HOT ROD!

Whaddaya think?

I'm with you Geezer2 and I'm 4 years(66 in August) younger.

To a certain extent, we are all products of our environment. Whether you’re old enough to remember “Stroker McGurk” or cut your hot roddin’ teeth on the family’s ’71 Impala all that really matters is that we share a common love for all things mechanical as they relate to automobiles.

In the ‘50’s we lived in the San Bernardino area and my earliest memories of cars bring to mind old Plymouths and forty something Fords. My father, like many, worked on our cars as much from necessity as anything as we were a blue collar family of five. I remember the kid up the street had an absolutely wicked car (with flames?) that he had fashioned after one seen in a James Dean movie. My father had a “rich” friend and he always had “really neat” cars like a ’53 Ford two door with exhaust cut outs and later on a ’58 Chevy with “lake pipes”.

We always had pretty basic cars – but for whatever reason, dad and I always were drawn to the fast ones and loved to go to the drags at Fontana and Santa Ana but better still, the “Winternationals” came to Pomona in the early 1960s! Ahh, the smell of alcohol and nitro and burning rubber in the air!

It’s something that’s in the blood. Over the years I’ve met a lot of people who get that “deer in the headlights” look when I start talking about T-10 four speeds or high compression heads. Oh some of them have had a car or two that qualifies, but they were never really infected with hot rod fever to a point that they dreamed about a nine second quarter mile or building a killer motor that pulled 500 plus horsepower and gobs of torque. They say things like, “Chevys were 350’s and Mopars were 383’s. I think you got your sizes mixed up!” Whatever – they wouldn’t know a stroker from a doorknob.

If you have it, you just know. It’s being able to tell the difference between 10W-40 and 80 weight by the smell – it’s knowing that 18436573 is not a phone number, rather a precious piece of information intrinsic to all small block Chevy aficionados. It’s allowing the kid next to you at a stop light in a high-revving Honda Civic blowing nitrous out the tail pipe blast away from the line knowing that you could squash him like a bug and not laughing when the local police ticket him three blocks down the road.

I had a T-shirt with a picture of a Harley-Davidson with this simple message, “If I have to explain it - you just wouldn’t understand”

Regards Fellow Hot Rodders - God Bless Us All!
Glenn