If for nothing else, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart will go down in history for his infamously obscure definition of obscenity as it applies to the First Amendment: Instead of the precise and definitive answer any high court judge is expected to pass, he stated, “I know it when I see it.”
While not as contentious, anybody long immersed in the hot rod and custom car scene will likely offer a similar answer when questioned about the differences between the two wildly divergent aspects of the hobby. One look and you know whether the owner would fit in with the Kustom Kemps of America (KKOA) or the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA).
So with such a contrast between the two styles, how are they both well-regarded as scenes within the same culture? Other than the general themes of modified older cars, how do hot rodding and customizing fit under one banner?
We’re likely to find the answer in the histories of the two movements. It’s almost cliché now to begin an account of the genesis of hot rodding and customizing by briefly foraying into, respectively, early American racing-including Ab Jenkins’s exploits at Bonneville and Sir Malcolm Campbell’s land speed records-and early American coachbuilding companies-including Brewster, Darrin and Coachcraft. Most histories, though, dismiss those subjects as pre-history with little correlation to the “real” hot rod and custom movements that began in the early to mid-1930s.
But both movements share the same ideals of everyday men-with empty pockets and dirt under their fingernails-striving to achieve some of the same levels of performance and aesthetics that their precursors did. These were generally men who couldn’t afford or couldn’t locate cars of Cadillac or Bluebird calibers, so they made do with what they had on hand: The simplest and cheapest Fords, Chevrolets and Dodges with the most spartan bodies and drivetrains. Through ingenuity, effort and talent, they transformed their cars into what we now call hot rods and customs.
HOT RODS
Hot rods certainly sprang up first, as an outgrowth of the stock-car/circle-track racing scene that permeated the country, particularly the Midwest, in the 1910s and 1920s. It’s no surprise that the Ford Model T became the car of choice among those racers, so a speed parts aftermarket-based largely in Indianapolis-soon catered to those cars. It didn’t take long for those companies to start selling their equipment to racers across the country.
Nearly every modern take on the history of hot rods focuses exclusively on the Southern California scene as the cradle, if not the birthplace, of hot rodding, attributing the year-round top-down climate, the wide boulevards of Los Angeles and the abundance of cheap, rust-free discarded vehicles. Certainly a good proportion of those speed parts went to California until speed enthusiasts began setting up their own shops there in the early 1930s. Clubs formed and began sponsoring organized races on the dry lakebeds at Muroc and later at El Mirage, where racers wrote much of the region’s hot rodding history.
The abundance of Southern California-based hot rodding magazines that later chronicled the culture and the number of hot rodding journalists based in that area have since created a sort of rose-colored-glasses situation in which we think of hot rodding only in terms of its Southern California scene. But, as Arnie Shuman wrote in his 1998 book, Cool Cars Square Roll Bars, which chronicled the phenomenon of East Coast hot rodding throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the rest of the country by no means ignored this high-speed phenomenon.
“The Golden State may have been the place to which we all looked-through a window and a telescope furnished by California-based magazines,” he wrote. “But the plain fact is the majority of the hot rodding movement’s adherents lived outside the Promised Land. Each region tried to be like it, but-like chili-there were regional renditions.”
For example, while roadsters remained the car of choice for Southern California rodders-the SCTA didn’t allow closed cars to compete in its ranks until about 1950-East Coasters included many more coupes in their ranks. Highboys-fenderless and unchanneled cars-typified the look of the California cars; fendered cars and lowboys-channeled, often sporting no chop at all-became common in the land of snow and salt. Whippet radiators and grille shells were the hot ticket in Orange County, California; late 1930s Ford truck grilles defined cool in Orange, Massachusetts.
Regardless, documentation of the early days of hot rodding in other regions of the country remains slim, yet there seems to be a new book about the early days of Southern California rodding every several months. Even then, many of the details seem to be lost in the murk of history. For example, nobody knows for certain when, where or how the term “hot rod” originated. Many articles on this subject have been written over the years, with many pioneers taking credit for shortening “hot roadster,” but as Dean Batchelor wrote in The American Hot Rod, his 1995 book on the subject, the term appears not to have been used until after World War II. “Soup job,” “gow job” and “hopup” were popular early terms.
Nor does anybody know when the first dry lake run was made. Photographic evidence dates back to at least 1933. Robert Genat, in his book, The Birth of Hot Rodding, notes that Joe Nikrent ran a stripped-down Buick at 108.24 mph as part of an American Automobile Association-sanctioned event at Muroc Dry Lake in May 1923.
Racing for the most part shifted to El Mirage sometime around 1945. The Bonneville Salt Flats, though in use for record-setting runs for the 1930s, didn’t become a venue for hot rod racing until 1949.
World War II brought a halt to racing, but contributed to a tremendous growth in the sport across the country once the servicemen returned for several reasons, not the least of which was the word-of-mouth popularization done overseas. Decommissioned military equipment made its way into the hot rods, and the hot rods made their way onto decommissioned airstrips. Drag racing became the sport of choice for the post-war hot rodders, though dry lakes racing still had its adherents. Where airstrips and dry lakes weren’t available-and even in areas where they were – street racing became a growing problem, thus prompting crackdowns by police and other authorities. Newspapers and respectable citizens used the new term “hot rod” in its most derogatory sense. Laws against modified cars became severe.
Car clubs and civic-minded hot rodders sponsored safety meetings, economy runs and car shows in attempts to erase the bad name given to the hobby. The NHRA formed in 1951 under that stated purpose and advised smaller, more regional car clubs in their goodwill efforts. Whether the NHRA achieved its goal is often a topic for debate, but it’s hard to find anybody nowadays who uses “hot rod” as a pejorative.
Model Ts and Model As, powered by built Model A and B four-cylinders, ruled early hot rodding, but by the late 1930s, gave way to flathead Ford V-8 engines, to much consternation on the part of older rodders. Chrysler Hemi V-8s didn’t take nearly as long for rodders to adopt-they came in vogue in 1952-53, about the same time as the Oldsmobile and Cadillac overhead-valve V-8s-and Chevrolet’s small-block V-8 was nearly immediately welcomed.
Hot rodding took a number of strange turns during the 1960s and 1970s as fads came and went. The performance hounds who built their own cars in the 1950s found factory performance via the muscle cars of the 1960s. But when the smog-and-safety mid-1970s era began, the old hot rodders dusted off their old 1930s and 1940s cars, updated them to contemporary standards and cruised them as street rods. Reproduction fiberglass bodies soon appeared to fill the demand left by dwindling supplies of original sheetmetal, and the aftermarket heated up.
Today, street rodding has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. It seems, at times, that every other neighbor either cruises a street rod or has one under construction in the garage. But within the last decade, traditional hot rodding-celebrating the styles and engineering of hot rods of the 1930s through 1950s – has come in vogue yet again as a direct reaction against the billet/tweed/small-block Chevrolet/automatic transmission formula that has become typical among street rods.
CUSTOMS
Hot rodders occasionally had an appreciation for aesthetics-take Stu Hilborn’s and Ralph Schenck’s streamliners as examples-but looks generally took a back seat to speed. Customs, on the other hand, reversed that theme. Heck, they reversed nearly every hot rod theme. For example, Pat Ganahl often points out in his book, The American Custom Car, that hot rods had a rake-in which the rear of the car sat higher than the front-while customs typically displayed the taildragger look. Hot rods stripped weight for speed, while customs added weight via the lead body filler that smoothed the body panels. And no custom ever went fenderless.
As with hot rods, the style’s inception remains murky. However, a few candidates pop up in conversation. First, Harry Westergard, who began customizing cars in Northern California in a distinct style in the late 1930s, using shaved door handles, Carson roofs and Packard or La Salle grilles. Others point to Jimmy Summers and Roy Hagy, two Los Angeles customizers who made their names by chopping roofs, filling hoodsides, nosing and decking cars (removing excess trim from the front and rear sheetmetal) and removing running boards.
Either way, customizers generally refrained from putting the torch to anything earlier than a 1936 Ford. They also skipped the 1937 Fords altogether, but wholly embraced the 1939-41 Fords and Mercurys. Customizers turned to GM products much more than their hot rod counterparts did.
Grades of customizing quickly became apparent. Mild customs typically sat low with a minimum of bodywork. Maybe they received fender skirts or some other bolt-ons-different bumpers, different trim, different wheelcovers. Full customs-the leadsleds-took the cars a step further, with chopped roofs, modified grilles, reworked window shapes and perhaps a sectioned body. Extreme customs, which came about several years later, incorporated radically different headlamp, fender shapes and rooflines, often appearing nothing like the original car.
Also as with hot rods, customs had nationwide acceptance and varieties, but Northern California this time boasted most of the big names in customizing: George and Sam Barris got their start in Sacramento before heading to Los Angeles, Tommy Hrones called the Oakland area home, Westergard and Dick Bertolucci hailed from Sacramento, and John D’Agostino grew up in Antioch.
The post-war period also proved a boon for customs, partially because the car-buying public, money in their pockets and impatient for the sluggish redesigns of American production cars, sought to update and gussy up what cars they had available. When the American car manufacturers did get around to redesigning their offerings, customizers almost immediately applied torch to the 1949-51 Fords and Mercuries and the 1948-54 GM sedans, creating such hallmarks as the Hirohata Merc, Jack Stewart’s Polynesian and Duane Steck’s Moonglow. Candies, metalflakes and other wild paint techniques started to appear during this era.
But as the offerings from the manufacturers became as wild as those of the customizers-with fins, quad headlamps and bubbletop roofs-and as indoor car shows began offering points and trophies to the wildest customs, the customizers began adding their own over-the-top touches. The car show madness escalated through the late 1950s and 1960s, drawing attention entirely away from the mild and full customs of the earlier era. A revival of those traditional customs has occurred over the last 25 years, since the foundation of the KKOA in 1981.
Though not as numerous as street rods, full-fendered leadsleds still draw audiences at car shows across the country today. Both styles seem to be holding their popularity today, and new variations on styles seem to appear at every show, suggesting that innovation and interest in hot rods and customs will continue and that hot rods and customs have become full-fledged facets of the old car hobby.
