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High Roller Hot Rods

Ken Gross

August 4, 2003

Hot rods and customs began largely as a working class effort in postwar Southern California to transform plebeian Fords, Mercurys, and Chevrolets into fast, beautifully restyled, personal statements. The movement quickly spread nationally, fueled by special-interest publications, such as Hot Rod and Rod & Custom magazines. From the outset, there was a dichotomy. Hot rods were most often pre–World War II roadsters and coupes, stripped of anything not essential to acceleration and top speed, and raced at California’s dry lakes or on one of many drag strips that sprang up around the country. The rod definition popularly extended to cars built before 1949. Customs, meanwhile, were typically early postwar cars that were dechromed, reupholstered, fitted with appearance-altering grilles and taillights from other models, radically lowered, often chopped (meaning the roofline was cut down for a sleek appearance) and creatively repainted, sometimes with flames. Unlike hot rods, customs were for cruising, not racing. The popular lowrider culture began in East Los Angeles as a Latino adjunct to the predominantly Anglo custom craze. (Click image to enlarge)

Interest in rods and customs reached a first peak in the late ’50s, and the older cars were temporarily sidelined during the ’60s muscle car era when, for affordable great looks and high performance, enthusiasts needed to go no farther than local Ford, Chevrolet, or Pontiac dealers. But interest in hot rodding never truly went away, kept alive by enthusiast magazines and affinity groups who encouraged large gatherings of like-minded spirits and their cars from coast to coast. Today, a plethora of speed and performance equipment suppliers, including the automakers themselves, provides everything from obsolete parts to complete new, ready-to-run engines (called crate motors, because they arrive in a crate), available with the flick of a credit card and delivered right to your door via UPS. And like Chip Foose, there are renowned builders who will cheerfully create a turnkey new car for you, or restore a vintage hot rod, if you’re fortunate enough to find one. (Click image to enlarge)