Great Cars: HOT RODS

Hot Rods zoomed on the front pages of American newspapers in the 1950s a speed crazed teenagers turned streets into impromptu racetracks we'll see what happened when the public the police and the press launched a campaign to stomp out this menace it takes us back to the start of the baby booming youth culture and Rockets us forward as hot waters push the limits of speed [Music] hot-rodding has spawned a multibillion-dollar industry of sanctioned drag racing aftermarket car parts and accessories and specialty car builders who create high dollar custom cars for people with a need for speed it's become an ingrained part of American culture that has attracted fans all over the world hot-rodding like surfing skateboarding and so many other American cultural phenomena got its start in California it started in the late 1920s as automotive at speed enthusiasts began to race on the dry lake beds of Southern California's high desert we had a unique feature in Southern California there were several areas where whole Lakes had dried up and left an alkaline hard surface on them these dry lake beds were about a two-hour drive east of Los Angeles this was close enough to make weekend speed trials accessible for local amateur races there was El Mirage and Muroc in particular were where the young men it was close enough to loss and as they could drive out there strip their cars down race him and then drive him home hopefully but it was it was a legal testing bed and and you know the fellas just went out to see how fast they could go the first cars to race at the lakes were mostly stripped-down model T's these cars were inexpensive plentiful and could be easily modified to go fast actually my first Model T that I bought cost me $4 I bought it in a local used-car lot and they didn't have any tires on it that we told his home and I started from there to build it into my own personal version of a street rod this was an underground endeavor that relied on the native intelligence and resourcefulness of a legion of young Speed crazed backyard tinkerers well most of them were just kids that wanted to work on a car had some mechanical ability and would go to the junkyard and find parts that would that would make their own car go a little faster I think the first thing we did with the Model T was to manage to get some tires for it and about the next thing was to take off the fenders and running boards the clean findell islook became the trademark of a hotrod the cars appeared ready to race that that made it look like something a little different right away as soon as the wheels were exposed it was pretty much a hot rod by that time like scientists they relied on trial and error experiments to prove their speed theories the lake beds were their laboratories and by the early thirties their souped-up model T's for attaining speeds in excess of a hundred miles per hour more than double a stock Model T's 45 mile-per-hour upper limit the price of entry into this speed Academy was fairly low if you had a few dollars the inclination to scour a local junkyard for parts and the enthusiasm to transform some abandoned Hulk into a racer you were in was a lot of research and development if you might say going on at junkyards because it's amazing you could find axles and heads and pistons that would be interchangeable with another engine to make your car go faster this was an era when your basic backyard guy was convinced he could build a better looking faster car than Detroit and hot-rodders went out and proved it the scene that the tri-lakes continued to grow but growth had its downside as it became more popular and more cars ran up there it got a little dangerous because sometimes unfortunately the guys would run into each other there's a situation where if you're out in the front you can see if you're not out in the front you're just in a world of dust to clear the dust five Los Angeles hotrod club's organized at the Southern California timing Association they SCTA in 1937 the first item on their agenda was to bring order to the chaos the clubs worked out racing rules that made it safer to run at the lakes the rules came as speeds for starting to increase dramatically this was partly due for the introduction of Ford's flathead v8 engine in 1932 it replaced the Model T as the car platform dujour it's what everybody wanted some of the best early hot rods for 32 Ford's the 1932 Ford Roadster or deuce with a modified flathead v8 became the poster child for hot rodding stripping off the fenders breaking the windshield and putting fat tires on the back and the little tires on the front was good for racing and it looked great gradually the 32 roadster finally became the generic hot rod there's no question about that and today it's still that way the lakes continued to attract bigger crowds but the fun was about to stop the world was thrown into war and the young racers turned their attention to the fight many of them ended up applying their mechanical skills to fixing jeeps tanks and airplanes during the war all skills that they could use once they returned home [Music] the pent-up need for speed propelled the returning GIS to head for the lakes when they were discharged they started to try things they've been thinking about while in the service well I think a lot of the technology that came out of World War two added a lot to hot rodding and and I think you know a great part of that was centered here in Southern California during the war an awful lot of airplane mechanics were from Southern California we ran into each other wherever we were and I don't know we were just mechanically oriented out here for some reason Alex Exodus and his fellow lake stirs had spread the word about the glories of hot rodding to their fellow soldiers while in the service the stories of their racing exploits planted the seeds of enthusiasm for hot rodding around the country at the end of all - there certainly was a lot more interest in all parts of the countries and this type of activity because the experience had been shared in military services and so forth that Southern California guys spread that word of course in the barracks at night they would show pictures of their roadsters and stuff and after the war though that's when it really started big big time after the war thousands of young men were getting out of the service some would must earn out pay all of them was a big ambition to get going on their cars not all the new racers wanted to make the trek to the dry Lakes they were happy to cruise the streets and hang out at those quintessential Southern California gathering spots the drive-ins the tiny nailers the Mel's you know all those drive-ins were a meeting place just I suppose in the Midwest and the East you know they had the root beer stands and the Fosters fries and so forth but all those places were were places that young people could go they were you know they could legally buy the drink they could drive their cars there show them off and it was just kind of a meeting place come on Jack jump in we're going down for malt in addition to going fast he also had a great deal of pride in the appearance of your car you did a lot of stuff for a parent's only and the the drive-in was the place to show the car off and enjoy that part of the hot rod as soon as you invite the gals in and you get a bunch of people together then it's you know who has the fastest car and I think high school probably a lot of races came out of high school to I mean it whenever you get the guys together and hot rods are hot you know you want to enjoy him boy will you look at the Speed game come on gene let's have some fun with him most of them were just there for the show and for the fun of being together but no there was definitely races developed out of the drive-in that was a good spot to go on find somebody's used to want to race certain drive-ins were close to streets that could serve as impromptu racetracks ideally they were away from congested areas something still easy to find in the early 50s well when you when you talk to guys who drove fast on the streets in that era they remind you that there weren't a lot of neighbors these long boulevards were nearly deserted and some of the ones and what now our inner Los Angeles suburb was like a Culver City in those days it was the boonies and they're worse than anybody on the road it was relatively safe and they could they could test their cars most people weren't bothered by the occasional speed duels but there were accidents and even deaths eventually the police the press the public and the politicians began to crack down on street racing they would have raids out in Sapulpa where they would block off both ends of the highway and the kids would just dash out through the fields and everything to try to get away and it became quite common to have these roadblocks and things of the favorite racing areas [Music] hot-rodding was getting a bad name it was clear something had to be done Robert Peterson a young man with the necessary PR skills and vision to see how to turn things around was also interested in hot rodding talking to people at car shows and of the dry Lakes convinced him that hot rodding needed a newsletter or magazine oh I had been going to the lakes and of course my dad was mechanic I grew up in a garage and then I was out racing with the guys when we all were kept talking about we really need a magazine something where the people can talk to each other for help and advice he turned to a friend's father who published a magazine the result Hot Wok magazine hit the newsstands in 1947 that gave us an opportunity to extend the exposure of what we were doing in other parts of the country we had a platform now that would reach hotrod enthusiasts all over the country some thought using the name hot rod with its outlaw street gang connotations was risky well hot rod we discussed that many times whether that was the name two years but we always came back to it a lot of us didn't even like the name hot rod because it was sort of dreamed up by the newspapers to mean car racing on the streets and stuff so we didn't particularly like it but eventually something had to be done and you know nobody wanted to call it galge magazine or something so hot rod became the generic term hot rod took off from its first issue the magazine became a platform from which Petersen and editor Wally Parkes could reach the whole country the magazine helped the sport grow it reached the older hot rodders and a new group of readers the post-war teenager these kids didn't want to be seen in Dad's dowdy whole sedan they wanted to soup up their own cars some of the new converts started to join in the street-racing the public clamor increased it was time for someone to find a way to safely harness the urge to go fast quite a few people were very down on hot rods and they were all trying to ban hot rods do what they could to stop them and I guess you can't blame something the IRA but roll added quite a few problems 10 for support Hollywood wasn't worried about the recklessness of youth it provided perfect fodder for mindless exploitation films that were designed for date night viewing at the drive-in drag strip girl a teenage tantalizer with a chassis that'll make every man's motor roar a little dizzy trying to remember which is my turn and which is friends there's a girlfriend I just brought her for a few minutes girls too fast becoming women who are those men teasing death to win the favors of trikes Walli parks and peterson worked to change the image of hot rodding they reached out to the clubs the group that was the the SCTA realized that they've got to do something to go out here and create a better public image so they organized not only the dry Lakes events to run more safely and more efficiently but they joined their members joined the National Safety Council and mass and pledged that they would become safer drivers on the street and try to influence their friends to do likewise the initial effort helped but it would take much more to channel the hotrod racing energy into something positive parks and others slowly hit on an idea why not encourage officially sanctioned races in every community across the country the National Hot Rod Association the NHRA was born one of his first tasks was to find venues for traces they noticed there were a lot of air strips around the country that had been abandoned after the war these seem to be perfect for a speed event they soon called drag racing the idea sounded like a winner right from the start drag racing was just perfect as it was local most of them were you know like I said yeah the first one was right here in Santa Ana and then in Pomona and they were short quarter-mile courses you could drive your car out there he wouldn't get all trashed driving out it was it wasn't like you were running it flat out for two or three or four or five miles so it was a quarter-mile burst and most people wanted to see by a quarter of a mile who had the fastest car and that that kind of you know satisfied everybody's need for speed the quarter mile length of the drag strip came about because that was the length of road needed to accelerate and safely stopped we sat down one time and I had a mathematician figure how fast a hot rod could go theoretically by the coefficient of the drag on the tires and the the engine and the power and in those test Mo's experience experiments with lots of different types of cars while we found that a quarter-mile was about the farthest distance you could go and still be safe initially the cause that showed up to race at the drags were the same ones that was being driven at the lakes or on the streets when I was growing up in back in the 50s I mean we'd all take our cars you know you know the our daily ride to the drag races we'd you know pull off the hubcaps uncork you know the exhaust and and run it and then drive home but as I say the guys that were more serious about it started building cars just for drag racing and that's where it kind of developed into you know dragsters by 1950 hot rodders were running stripped-down vehicles that were more full-time tractors than daily driving street rods the bug is the forerunner of the modern dragster it's driver dick craft piloted his bare-bones engine on Rails through a hundred and sixteen miles per hour by the early 1960s the top Fuel dragsters were setting unbelievable records on August 1st 1964 Big Daddy Don Garlits broke the 200 mile per hour barrier in a quarter mile the fans who loved it Peterson parks and others had one they lured the street racers to the track strips and calmed down the public however things were changing the traditional hot rod was no longer able to thumb its nose at Detroit's stodgy behemoths starting with the v8 powered 55 Chevy and on through the GTO the GT 350 Mustangs and all the muscle cars hot rodders had choices like they'd never dreamed possible there was no longer a need to build your own car you could order a super fast car from a dealer they didn't care as at the 55 Chevy a 57 Chevy or a mo para or GTO those cars just were quick I mean these were right out of the box these were 14 and a half 14 13 a half-second Treisman they could do our 100 and a quarter and you could tweak them a little bit thank you even go even better and you could buy them for under $4,000 so there was really no contest to mean guys are looking and saying I don't want a fast car I can buy one now the traditional hot rod world was somewhat adrift some turned to custom cars these cars caught the attention of writers like Tom Wolfe who dubbed them the candy colored tangerine flake streamlined babies while pundits and television shows loved the cars many hotrod purists had no use for the customs [Music] these weren't hot rods in my opinion custom cars were just like a whole nother diversion I think they kind of split at that point and and hot-rodding was more you know high performance even though some of the customs had high performance engine and they weren't really built to go they were built to show mass-produced high performance cars the delians with custom cars then gas shortages combined with fuel economy and environmental regulations changed the automotive landscape by the 1970s all this slowed the growth but never really diminished the spirits that gave hot-rodding its hearts as the boomers aged they began to long for simpler times and search out the cars they admired when they were young one of the early leaders of the hot rod resurgence was Pete chip Horace a hot rod builder who turned heads with unique designs and high-quality craftsmanship I'm basically a car builder I mean if if if you want to know what I do I'm a really good Healy arc welder that's I'm a welder I like to create things in fabricate and I was blessed with having a lot of really good friends that I hung out with that we're able to take that need for speed and turn it into a business chef Flores was able to turn his Need for Speed into a business that attracts rock stars like Billy F Gibbons of ZZ Top classic car collectors like Bruce Meyer and a number of well-heeled baby boomers who want the right hot rod for their weekend cruise their doctors by now are their entrepreneurial or even if they've had a really good job at Lockheed and they've you know they've graduated up the ladder their kids are out of college they had a 44 when they were a kid in high school and they're coming in here looking for a car and if the car is a hundred thousand dollars that's fine you know that's the way it works here are guys in their 50s so we can have what they really wanted when there was 17 years old and they're going after it they're they're either restoring old cars or they're building new cars from scratch hot-rodding has even reached into the upper realms of the automotive world Chrysler's former vice president of design Tom Gail is an avid fan I can remember when I was a young man I I wanted to buy a chopped and channeled 33 coupe my dad just didn't have any enthusiasm for this at all and I think that's probably the one thing that that kept that driving passion because I always said someday I'm gonna do that and and this is really that culmination or a combination of that effort this interest has pumped new life into hot rodding weekend rallies historic races at the dry lakes and car shows have helped to spread the enthusiasm around the world people like Bruce Meyer who'd collected classic cars like Packard's and Mercedes became interested in hot boys Maya was determined to see these recognized at the most exclusive Classic Car event in the world the annual Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance held near Carmel California this was not typical hot rod territory this was where Jay Leno jokes the billionaires came to compete with the millionaires over who had the most important car Meyers was persistent and convinced the organizers that their champagne sipping would not be interrupted by hooligans the invited eight historically significant hot rods to compete for the honor of winning a trophy at Pebble Beach and it was hugely successful and I congratulate him for their open-mindedness and I think it really again just moves hot rods one step closer into you know acceptance so to speak Maya entered the dunes Spencer roadster restored by ship horas and asked him to come along we were treated tremendously well by all of it it was awesome as well it was just really really cool we had the Packard guys came over they were asking me about the paint job on her car at first I thought they were shining me on and I thought they were and they were really interested because their cars didn't look as good as this car did it appeared that the hot rods outlaw days were over it had broken into the very center of the core of civility but it hadn't lost its streetwise charm and allure anything that can bring a specialness anything that can bring a unique quality to our sense of living our day to day life is embraceable and I think hot rodding is just one great way to get it real real quick the hot rod to me the middle of the day you know away from it all going up highway five running with the Porsches you don't need a kick in the ass I loved it it's it's a it's it's better than therapy there is something special about these American icons that appeals to everyone I have Ferraris and bet lathes and other things too but I am myself I'm working on building a 32 roadster [Music] I am so grateful for the fact that I somehow stumble into this thing and that even more so I stayed with it and helped to build it to where it is today hot rodding has become an ingrained part of the American culture it's inspired clothing designs television shows movies and songs it's launched an industry estimated to generate more than 25 billion dollars a year all this from a few kids who had a need for speed [Music]

Channel: King Rose Archives

Views: 82,001

Rating: 4.9035368 out of 5

Keywords: Hot Rods, teenagers, road racing, drag racing, drag strips, Hot Rod Magazine, Dry Lakes, speed trials, Bob Petersen, Petersen Publishing, SCTA, Southern California Timing Association, Bonneville Salt Flats, Ken Gross, Pete Chaporis, So Cal Speed Shop, Billy F Gibbons

Id: J20rLbfruwg

Length: 25min 6sec (1506 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 24 2017