Hot Rods
History of America’s Favorite Hot Rods
An automotive history of America’s favorite hot rods in the United States is one of the richest in the world. While vehicle manufacturing began in Germany in the 1890s, the United States quickly caught up. Due to the magnitude of the home market and the adoption of mass production, our American automobile industry has witnessed…
Read MoreIs It a Muscle Car or Street Rod?
First, consider a hot rod to be a pre-1948 automobile designed for speed and style. Then, let’s consider a muscle vehicle to be a post-1950s American automobile, manufactured either by the manufacturer or by you at home, that is also designed to travel quickly and look cool. It would be a mistake not to classify…
Read MoreHot Rods Hot Rods Hot Rods
Between the end of the war in 1945 and the beginning of the 1950s, several factors converged, primarily in southern California, to create a unique environment for the hot rod and its culture to emerge. In the history of hot rods, the term “hot rods” appears to have first appeared in southern California in the…
Read More“Rat Fink” Ed Roth
Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, a counterculture legend who brought snarling monsters and wacky fiberglass road oddities to the mainstream in the late 1950s and 1960s, was a kind of patron saint of hot rods, rock ‘n roll, and Rat Fink. Through stickers, t-shirts, posters, and model kits, his style of thick-lined, “weird” art combined with…
Read MorePost War Hot Rods (Part 1)
Since before World War I, hot-rodding as a concept of automobile construction has existed. The early attempts of the pioneers who invented the vehicle bear a strong resemblance to hot-rodding, but they do not fully fit the mold because they were not using used, mass-produced parts. Only until the moving assembly line enabled Ford to…
Read MorePost War Hot Rods (Part 2)
Oldsmobile Super 88 1955 Purchased Rodding Domestic automakers became embroiled in a series of “horsepower wars” beginning in 1949. Manufacturers who offered perhaps two engine options in the 1950s were supplying a multitude of engines with outputs up to 400 horsepower by 1957. Fuel injection, supercharging, and multiple carburetors were no longer exclusively associated with…
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