Your supernova celebrity athletes, one-name-only guys like Shaq and Junior, drive rods.
Same for a lot of your need-an-explainer types, such as Cheryl Tiegs (ex-supermodel), Michael Anthony (bassist for Van Halen) and Johnny Mountain (TV weather dude).
Seems everybody who’s anybody (plus a whole mess of everybodies who’re nobody for now but wouldn’t mind being somebody) wants a ride with some history, great paint and way more horsepower than they can possibly use.
You know, hot rods.
All of which leaves some old-time rodders, family-minded folk such as Wayne and Teri Barger of Fountain Valley, Calif., hacked off.
“The thing I hate is the whole, I don’t know, celebrity thing that’s going on in hot rodding right now,” says Wayne, spitting out the word “celebrity” like a rotten peanut.
But Wayne, a former drag racer who has spent more than $100,000 in the last few years buying and building hot rods and muscle cars, gets worked up only momentarily over the idea that people who can’t change a flat drive some of the finest machines on the street.
“The non-car guys getting into this, it’s OK, I guess,” Barger concludes, possibly remembering that he and wife sell cars–new Chevrolets–for a living.
“Hot rodding is sort of an anything-goes sport,” he adds. “That’s part of why it’s so fun . . . and so popular.”
And there’s the rub.
The on-again, off-again popularity of hot rodding is on again. Big time. And this time, hot rodding, once populated by people who wore leather for warmth and cranked a wrench because they had to, isn’t such an exclusive club.
Nationally, there are more rodders than ever, according to the National Street Rod Association, which claims 41,000 members.
Even Detroit is getting into rods. Chrysler’s Plymouth Prowler is the first production car that mimics the look (if not the spirit) of traditional hot rods. Chrysler will make about 2,000 Prowlers next year and sell them for about $40,000 a pop.
“It’s an image car for us,” Chrysler spokesman Chris Preuss says. “We’ve built something that’s a tribute to hot rodders.”
But even as the popularity of the loud street machines threatens to render the world deaf, some rodders worry that their way of life is losing something essential–its soul.
Who’s worried? Only one of the greatest car guys ever, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth.
The creator of famous ’60s-era show cars such as the Beatnik Bandit (now in the National Automobile Museum in Reno) and hot rod-oriented cartoon characters such as Rat Fink (which he once tried to sell to Walt Disney, who, Roth says, declined by saying, “We’ve already got a mouse.”), says today’s hot rodders are . . . old.
“The kids who used to build hot rods, they were rebels. They weren’t, like, mainstream,” Roth says. “But the hot rodders today are rich guys: contractors and movie moguls. They’re loving this trend because it makes ’em cool again.”
Roth, 65, who long ago hacked off his signature goatee, became a Mormon and moved from Maywood, Calif., to the tiny village of Manti, Utah, adds the unthinkable:
“Hot rodding has gotten pretty safe. A lot of people are going to hate me saying that. But it’s true. Today, hot rods are safety vehicles.”
In the Depression, when the first rodders ventured into junkyards for parts to rebuild discarded Ford Model T’s and Model A’s, driving the fenderless cars was a sign you were blue collar and proud of it.
Early rodders formed clubs with names such as The Bungholers and Knight Riders. They raced, and sometimes died, on dry lake beds such as Rosamond and Muroc north of Los Angeles.
“You know, those early guys, they didn’t always buy their parts at the junkyard,” notes hot rod historian Pat Ganahl, laughing. “Sometimes, they’d just, sort of, find ’em.”
In the late 1940s and early ’50s, Southern California’s roads were unsnarled and places such as John Wayne Airport were big, empty drag strips. Rodders would convene by the hundreds for all-night race parties.
“Right after World War II, the Hearst newspapers went on this smear campaign to say that street rodding was a public menace,” Ganahl says. “That’s when the term `hot rod’ was popularized. It was supposed to be derogatory.”
Even in the early ’60s, when hot rodding gained a reputation as a relatively sanitized icon of Southern California beach life, the work of Roth, Robert Williams and other hot rod artists was influenced by nonprescription substances.
“Roth’s Rat Fink is Mickey Mouse on acid,” Ganahl says. “Those guys were plenty subversive.”
But if today’s hot rodders are subversives, their threshold for anarchy is low.
Consider the rules for a typical hot rod cruise.
“No burnouts. If you burn rubber, you get eighty-sixed,” says Bill Southam, co-founder of Cruise Productions, an Anaheim company that organizes hot rod gatherings for retailers such as Pep Boys, Del Taco and Bravo Burger.
Cruise Production events also ban drinking, racing and swearing.
“We try to make sure you can bring your family,” Southam says. “It’s more fun that way.”
They had some fun the other night at Boyd’s Hot Rods & Collectible Car showroom in Stanton, Calif. About 300 people turned out for a party to see the unveiling of RAGEN forty, a 1940 Ford convertible brought back to life by the car designer for the stars, Boyd Coddington.
The vehicle, built in the last 10 months, is the latest to be purchased by Van Halen bassist Anthony.
Sporting a body the color of blood and an interior the color of a slightly aged egg cream, the once-humble Ford was rejuvenated with a Chevy tuned-port injected engine (the same engine that powers Corvettes and some Camaros), custom running boards, a Borla stainless steel exhaust and an Orion stereo. It also got the requisite Coddington-designed shocks and Coddington-designed, hand-built 17-inch wheels.
Estimated value? $250,000.
It was not necessarily the most expensive machine in Coddington’s showroom.
The nondescript warehouse, tucked in an industrial strip behind a McDonald’s, is filled with everything from 1960s-era muscle cars (about $15,000 and up) to hand-built, one-of-a-kind autos that get their own names, such as Shazoom, a ’57 Chevy that Mattel has re-created in miniature as a Hot Wheel.
The price tags aren’t the only things daunting at Coddington’s. Visitors here get no cappuccino, designer water or air kisses. If you’re lucky, you might see head salesman, Jim Stecher, flick one of his cigarettes from the front door to a garbage can about 8 feet away. The stout, no-nonsense man, who used to yank pilots out of the water in Vietnam, seldom misses–puff, flick, swish.
“We don’t have to do much selling, at least not once somebody gets here in the showroom,” Stecher says. “Once people come to us, they know what they want or what they’re willing to spend. They look. They buy.”
Stecher, 50, says a typical customer is 40-plus and interested in “a car they wish they could’ve had while they were raising their kids.” A few, he adds, come “looking for a muscle car for their kid.”
Almost all have money.
“A lot of people just cut the check right here,” Stecher says when asked about financing.
But money is an issue for Jesse Rowe. The 21-year-old had wanted a hot rod, but now he’s a low-rider.
The worlds, he says, are as different as Chevys and Volkswagens.
“I’ve got a ’64 Ford Galaxie, which is rare for a low-rider because almost all the ’60s low-rider cars are Chevys, not Fords. “But mine’s gonna be great.”
Rowe’s car, parked in the back yard of a friend’s house, is light blue with a white vinyl top. But Rowe plans to paint it black, “so it’ll look like a semi-show car.” He bought the car lowered, for about $1,500, so a key part of the transformation is done.
But plenty of work remains. He’ll install an engine and improve the oil-driven hydraulics, critical equipment to make his ride bouncy. Eventually, Rowe might install an all-velvet interior.
By the time he’s done, he might have spent up to $10,000 or so. A similarly decent hot rod would run closer to $30,000.
“I’m just trying to get by with a car that has some style,” Rowe says. “I couldn’t afford a hot rod. “
But money wasn’t the only reason Rowe went low. “When you go to a low-rider show, there are a lot more people closer to my age. “And,” he pauses, pondering his girlfriend. “Well, there are a lot more low-rider girls, you know. At hot rod shows, it’s like there are only a few girls.”
