Welcome John. I think you will find picking a style of rod that suits your taste will be the easy part.......picking of GOOD one in that style may take a bit more doing.

There are a lot of wonderful cars that go across the block at Barrett -Jackson, Russo-Steele, and being sold by individuals. There are also a lot perfumed pigs that go across the auction block, are sold thru Dealers and change hands privately. In many cases while the cars look beautiful and bring home a bucket load of trophies, reliability and drivability issues can relegate them to being more of an art form than a means of transportation.

Hand in hand with picking a style of car that suits your taste you will also need to look at how you plan on using the car. Something that that gets trailered to the car shows and makes an occasional trip to the Pavallions Saturday night gathering will have a lot less required of it than one you would want to take on the route 66 run or actually drive to Tombstone in July. The heat, altitude and poor gas in Arizona will definitely present challenges for both cooling and fuel systems.

Hot rods are cars that are generally one off from what everybody else drives and from one another. The amount of thought and workmanship put into the systems people don’t see will make the difference on whether the car lives up to expectations or not. If you don’t already have a competent mechanic chosen who can check these things out, I would strongly suggest that you find one prior to exchanging a lot of money.


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