Can anybody explain the HOT ROD thing to me please

[Dez]

carledo that was ‘buying a complete car’ prices.
I reckon if you go down the ‘buy a load of tat and cobble it together’ route you could put together a cut down, flathead powered model A ‘special’ of some sort for significantly less than your described budget.

[Dez]

In fact I sent this to a mate the other week to goad him into buying it 😂
Compete rolling chassis already converted to hydraulic brakes and open drive for 3 bag. You’re an engine and box and some rudimentary bodywork and seats away from a real gow job. Doesn’t get much easier than that.

[duggers]

For those of a certain age.....

Hope it helps......

For the younger audience:

Eddie and the Hotrods, most known track, Do anything you wanna do, seems appropriate

[lewiswilliams]

There is a series on amazon motor trend called "American icon the Hot rod" by chip foose it explains everything you need to know and is very entertaining and educational, I recommend it.

www.amazon.co.uk/American-Icon-The-Hot-Rod/dp/B077S2PTHK?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=bab6764c-918b-4a12-8421-272dc99085a0

[bmcnut]

How about a tractor hotrod just to confuse things a little.

[carledo]

Feb 20, 2023 21:06:50 GMT Dez said:

In fact I sent this to a mate the other week to goad him into buying it 😂
Compete rolling chassis already converted to hydraulic brakes and open drive for 3 bag. You’re an engine and box and some rudimentary bodywork and seats away from a real gow job. Doesn’t get much easier than that.

See, this scares me! Transverse leaf springs. No shock absorbers. Tiny drum brakes. Skinny wire wheels. Crossply tyres. Chassis like wet spaghetti. I know that a poor old flathead will struggle to provide a reliable 150 horse, limited by it's base metalurgy and design inefficiencies. Even so, I wouldn't like to drive it fast on those underpinnings. Especially here in England where there is RAIN. And TRAFFIC. More to the point (at least for me) is where do I put SWMBO's electric wheelchair?

So, not one for me, But, horses for courses, I'd be the last one to object if this is YOUR dream car in the making.

Steve

[HowdyYall327]

I'll say hot rodding can apply to a lot of cars, even newer ones. Air cooled 911s to 20's Model As can be be hot rods. My basic premise is that hot rodding is generally trying to make something faster, by whatever means you want. Less weight, more power. Generally speaking, a hot rod is an old car, cheap, and modified in order to be faster.

I've seen a Turbo Honda 2.0L (K-Series) swapped into a 93 Chevy 1500 pick-up truck. To me, that's a hot rod. Not a traditional hot-rod( pre-50's), but a hot rod because it's in the spirit of hot rodding. I think muscle cars, and cars from the 60's can be hot rods too. Sometimes there are street rods, and those are hot rods, but with the intention of it being a comfortable car that looks presentable vs something more race oriented.

[braaap]

Thanks for that, HowdyYall327 , lots of people = lots of opinions!
Like I wrote in my OP, I heard (and was confused) before that even muscle cars are considered as hot rods.

But reading Your post made me think further.

Back in the seventies some engineers (?) unofficially tinkered with a standard golf and an engine taken from some juicier audi 80 and made it drivable. It wasn't necessarily lighter, but definitely faster. But was their result, the first gen golf GTI, as it was later marketed as, a hot rod?

Is a yank truck with a japanese high rev engine a hot rod? Or just another tuning experiment?

Sorry, but only the lighter/faster thing just seem not enough for me to define a hot rod. Like somebody else wrote, that applies to cafe racers too, another term somewhat far-stretched at times.

[mr2fc]

Hope I haven't missed it in this thread, buuut...

Have any of you considered the car's feelings in any of this?

As is the modern way, does the car identify as a hot rod?

[metalshapes]

Feb 22, 2023 7:06:36 GMT braaap said:

Sorry, but only the lighter/faster thing just seem not enough for me to define a hot rod. 

For me neither.

For me a Hot Rod is pretty clearly defined as far as style and base vehicle.

To use the Mk1 Golf GTI example, that one was at the very beginning of the Hot Hatch craze.

A milestone car in itself.

Calling that Hot Rod cheapens Hot Rods AND Mk1 GTI's in my opinion...
( I mean, you could.  But why would you want to...)


But what is really more interesting to me than how the various cars are named or defined, is how they evolved for different types of racing in different parts of the world, while answering to the same laws of physics. 

That is why for me any style of modified car that has its roots in some form of racing is just better, in a form follows function kind of way...

[HoTWire]

Feb 22, 2023 10:57:53 GMT metalshapes said:

That is why for me any style of modified car that has its roots in some form of racing is just better, in a form follows function kind of way...

Like Kaido cars with their root in Group 5 racing

[andyborris]

She can explain.....

[braaap]

Feb 21, 2023 22:15:13 GMT HowdyYall327 said:

Air cooled 911s to 20's Model As can be be hot rods.

Reading this I had to think of a short story I have read more than 30 years ago in one of germany's leading car magazines auto, motor und sport. It was about an american who had put a v8 into a 911. Not the like of todays' LS-kits. No, it was stuck in the middle with 8 chromed , racecar type snorkle pipes stuck through the back window to the sky. Btw. now that I write this , I remember having read another story of a 914 here in germany transformed to V8 by an american GI serving here.

I tried to find a picture of it, but couldn't. I found a lot of these LS kits mentioned.



And one two of these rat rod things done by some frenchman whose creativity doesn't seem to go further than that rat rod thing (although I spot a familiar dyane in the background, now that I write this). He did a Lambo rod, too (of course).




And I found some 911 from France with a Hemi in front.




But still, I would not consider a 911 a hot rod, not even potentially.

[metalshapes]

braaap, sounds like you are thinking of this one.

[metalshapes]

Feb 22, 2023 12:00:43 GMT HoTWire said:

Feb 22, 2023 10:57:53 GMT metalshapes said:

That is why for me any style of modified car that has its roots in some form of racing is just better, in a form follows function kind of way...

Like Kaido cars with their root in Group 5 racing

Yes...

In all their understated beauty...

[braaap]

Feb 22, 2023 17:21:03 GMT metalshapes said:

braaap, sounds like you are thinking of this one.

Can't remember it was a red one, or the pics were probably b&w, but there won't be that many with that set of trumpets through the window.

[carledo]

Feb 22, 2023 10:57:53 GMT metalshapes said:

Feb 22, 2023 7:06:36 GMT braaap said:

Sorry, but only the lighter/faster thing just seem not enough for me to define a hot rod. 

For me neither.

For me a Hot Rod is pretty clearly defined as far as style and base vehicle.

To use the Mk1 Golf GTI example, that one was at the very beginning of the Hot Hatch craze.

A milestone car in itself.

Calling that Hot Rod cheapens Hot Rods AND Mk1 GTI's in my opinion...
( I mean, you could.  But why would you want to...)


But what is really more interesting to me than how the various cars are named or defined, is how they evolved for different types of racing in different parts of the world, while answering to the same laws of physics. 

That is why for me any style of modified car that has its roots in some form of racing is just better, in a form follows function kind of way...

The "factory" hot rod has a life of it's own, not necessarily related to "proper" hot rods

Early muscle cars fit the bill and WERE so described at the time, a little later and you get the Lotus Cortina in Britain followed by such models as the RS2000 Escort and  Dolomite Sprint. Then the Europeans climbed on the bandwagon with the Cosworth Merc, BMW 2002Tii and all the M class cars (and, of course, the Golf GTi) Finally the Japs joind the circus with things like the Toyota AE86 Subaru Impreza WRC, Mitzi EVo and the incomparable Nissan Skyline. ALL these cars have been described as "factory hotrods at some time or another, and all equally deserve and emphatically don't deserve the title!

To me, "Hotrod" defines a look more than a particular set of pieces. It should be based on a common 20s/30s production car (make and country of origin undefined but US Fords obviously at the top of the tree) The roof should be chopped, or the screeen frame if it's a roadster, and the body channelled over its separate chassis. Bonnet is optional and it should cover (or uncover) a large V8. It should have a noticeable nose down stance and the back wheels should be bigger and wider than the front ones.

After that, it's up to your personal preferences. Go to it!

Steve

[grizz]

[OAY842F]

I think we're in danger here of over thinking definitions. A lot of the above are not hot rods in my eyes, but that's just my eyes, and my eyes are mine alone. They are however Retro Rides, and suitably modified to be considered interesting. I would hate to see this forum melt-down over semantics and arguments over "what is", and "what isn't" such and such. I have found this to be an easy going place on the whole and wouldn't like it to go the same way other forums seem to have gone.

[HoTWire]

Feb 23, 2023 19:57:28 GMT OAY842F said:

I think we're in danger here of over thinking definitions. A lot of the above are not hot rods in my eyes, but that's just my eyes, and my eyes are mine alone. They are however Retro Rides, and suitably modified to be considered interesting. I would hate to see this forum melt-down over semantics and arguments over "what is", and "what isn't" such and such. I have found this to be an easy going place on the whole and wouldn't like it to go the same way other forums seem to have gone.

I don't think anyone is having a melt down. Just a fun (and occasionally informative) thread about the definition of a pair of words to different people. I mean in the hot rodding world this back and forth has been run round a thousand times. Pinning down an exact definition of 'hot rod' has resulted in a number of rules confirming builds that also don't really confirm to the spirit of it (to prove a point), the most famous round here is Clive's slammed 48 Land Rover.