Thread: Walker Radiators - Sad News

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The market is pretty much saturated with aluminum radiators now, too. As far as I know, Walker stayed with copper/brass units. I'm not saying that copper radiators are bad, but those materials have continued to increase in price. It was probably getting very hard to compete. Everybody and his brother is selling aluminum radiators, many from China or made from Chinese parts.

Then there is advertising, either paid for or by accident. For as long as I can remember, Walker was the big dog in street rod radiators and they made high quality parts, but you almost never see an article or build thread now that uses a copper radiator, unless it's a restoration. Walker provided a lot of radiators for magazine builds and many feature cars had Walker radiators, but now it's all about aluminum. Every TV show has a line like "We picked up this great aluminum radiator and fan setup from fill in the blank and it's going to do a great job of cooling our project", so the Walker name just isn't as well known to the general public as it once was.

Still sad, though. I expect many of the other companies that helped make the street rod industry what it is will follow Walker in the coming years. I'm 62 and most of the folks I know that are street rodders are older than me.