The first hot rod you ever saw?

[PotvinGuy]

Do you remember the first hot rod you ever saw? The circumstances, the feelings? I'm just curious if it is a universal experience.

I'll start: I was a teen, not yet old enough to drive. In small town Indiana, my gang had finished bowling (back when alleys had pin boys) and we went out to our bicycles. Pulling into the lot was a '32 lowboy roadster, no fenders, flat black, no chrome, bare plywood floor, blanket over some seat. Really ratty. And I was transfixed. I had never felt such longing in my young life. If you had lined up Annette, a Ferrari and a million dollars, I would have taken the '32 without hesitation. Then I would have asked Annette to join me, but that's another story. What's yours?

 

[2old2fast]

Had a Funicello Fantasy huh , only mouseketeer w/ boobs
dave

 

[Hackerbilt]

Blood red 32 Ford 5 window.
I was just coming home from school I guess and heard it come up the street and rip past our driveway.
Looked great from a distance but when I bought the remains of it 6 or 7 years later I realized that it wasn't all that hot.
I sat on those $600.00 remains for 25+ years and a couple of years ago I traded it straight up for my T Roadster.
Realized I wasn't getting any younger and the continuous thoughts of hacking the roof off of it made me realize the reason I had let it sit all those years.
You just can't beat a car with no top on a sunny day!
The guy who I made the trade with may do it himself or let it sit for a couple of years more and also make some cash from it on a sale or trade. It's a real 32 so he ain't gonna lose thats for sure...LoL

 

[2old2fast]

Wasn't a "hotrod" persay but riding in the back of the '55 pontiac wagon , I was 11 , 2 guys in a '58 vette pulled out & passed , came SREAMING by in 2nd gear , went by us like we wear stopped [and we were doing 60] will never forget the sound that smallblock was making . Dad made some comment about "dam fool kids....."
dave

 

[RPM]

I was probably 4-5 years old and my Dad had a friend that raced dirt track. My dad let him park that race car in our back yard for awhile. I don't know what it was but it was a flat black coupe of some kind.

 

[Zandoz]

Well, I guess that it depends on the definition of a hot rod. From before I can remember, my dad and his friends always had late model MOPARs that were modified to various degrees, and one of his friends built full on custom show cars. To me then, and pretty much today to, a hot rod was a pre-WWII car built with parts from various other cars, stripped down to the minimum, and usually featuring exposed or partially exposed souped up motors. Fitting that definition there were 2 that I don't remember which was first. Today both would probably be considered rat rods, but in the early '60s they were called hot rods.

One was my uncles...the only specifics I remember was that it was a late '30s Oldsmobile 2-door sedan, with no hood or front fenders, and some kind of a multi-carbed V8 with headers. It had larger tires on the rear, mounted on reversed wheels, and narrower and smaller hubcapped wheels and tires on the front. The headers dumped into mufflers he made from large coffee cans. He used to do house painting and gutter installation, and the car doubled as his truck...ladder racks on the roof, and tools and supplies in the trunk and where the back seat used to be. The color of the car changed frequently...I suspect due to the availability of leftover house paint. My favorite was when he had it pumpkin orange.

The other belonged to the son of my dad's friend. It was a Model A pickup cab and bed mounted on a homemade frame. I think the engine was probably an old MOPAR V8, since my dad and his friends were MOPAR fanatics. Again no hood or front fenders. It was always a battle getting the doors closed due to the cab, and I suppose the frame flexing. The wheel treatment was a set of Lancer 4-bar spinner hubcaps, like my dad had on his MOPARs. I don't recall the paint job ever progressing beyond primer. The oddity that was the cause of my mom forbidding me riding in the car was that there was no conventional floors in the cab or in the pickup bed...instead it had welded in expanded metal mesh for floors. When I got a chance to sneak rides I was always mesmerized watching through the floor at the road.

 

[choppinczech]

When I was a kid a neighbor would drive by in a black '40 Ford coupe. I was hooked.

Then at around 16 I got to take a ride in a '33 3 window. I'll never forget the coolness of that car.

 

[rbsWELDER]

Norm's T-bucket on 77 Sunset Strip!

 

[EX JUNK]

I got my first issue of HOT Rod in 1953 and have been hooked ever since.

Jim

 

[benT]

I was always into cars even before I could walk, and couldn't tell you the first hot car I saw, but I do know the one that really left a lifetime impression on me. When I was about 11, we got new neighbors out where we lived in the country. They owned a small automotive upholstery shop, so they had a lot of cars around, but I was enamored with their son Chris' ride. Chris was the proto-typical rebel teenager: he was always getting into fights at school, wore a leather jacket and jeans, and drove a jacked up, primer black '68 Camaro with flames (with a ZZ top chrome keychain!). To me, a punk 11 year old, there wasn't any cooler 16 year old in this 11 year old's eyes. I'll never forget the first time I rode in it - he took me and his sister (which was my age) to the local skating rink. Luckily, my buddies were in the parking lot waiting for us, so they could see me riding in the baddest car around (to a bunch of pre-teens!). I've always like the '68's, probably because of that car.

Chris traded that Camaro for a '57 Chevy a year or two later which he fixed up. Sadly, he and a buddy rolled the '57 at high speed which crushed the apparently rusted out but bondo'd roof. His bud who was driving died and Chris suffered a traumatic brain injury that left him partially paralyzed and never to hold a license again. I remember sneaking a peek of the car which they kept for some reason out back with a tarp over it. I'm amazed he even survived after seeing what was left of the car. He never returned home while they still lived there. I saw him a few years later at a park with his dad who was letting him drive his corvette around. Seeing my hero reduced from a vibrant rebellious teen to a physically weak and challenged man left a much sadder and sobering lifetime impression on me.

 

[choppedtop]

I think the first one that I can remember was a 34 roadster. May have started out as a coupe. The doors were welded shut. The young driver would terrorize the country roads, and I thought he was about the coolest guy around. I was about 8 years old then. The owner gave me that car about 15 years later. Never did anything with it. It was just body and frame then. It is still on our old farm place in Kansas, along with whats left of a 36 Ford pickup.
Lee

 

[Screaming Metal]

Dad took me to the races, then when we left, a couple of guys were having trouble with a T....in the parking lot. Was a steel bodied T, 392 Hemi. I remember the body being a bit longer than a normal T. But I do remember it being all black, the only thing on it chromed or polished where the chrome reverse rims with baby moons w/ big tall cokers on the rear, chrome valve covers, air cleaners on th 3x2 setup that was drooling gas out the carbs, and a chrome cover over the top of the radiator.
Remeber 2 times they tried to crank it, it backfired, carbs lit, everybody dancing around putting them out. Dad worked in the carbs, then he twisted the old vertex magneto back and it lit off....whole car shaking, smelling the raw gas coming out the openlake pipes.
Had Yellow plug wires with the old rajah distr. terminals on the end...
Still remember it vividly....with a 8 ball shifter knob, exhaust barking out the open pipes, solid lifters clattering away, struggling to idle....
my mind was ruined after that....
I had a love affair with that motor and its sound....

 

[Bowtie T]

Mine was one I saw on TV. The Munster coach was my inspiration. And of course Dragula.

 

[Ratchet]

Been around car shows my entire life and my dad was a vette freak but the first rod that sticks in my mind was as 23' t-bucket. Yellow with red scallops, ford big block with tunnel ram. I was about 12 and that is when my love for hot rods truly began. The best part is the man that owned the car later married my cousin and now he stops by to check out my bucket.

 

[ChrisK]

When I was a little guy my older brothers had hot rods. A 1962 impala and a 1966 mustang fastback. This was around 1976. They would work on them out in the street. There was an oil slick there until I was in high school in the late 80's. When I was old enough like around 17 I had a 1976 cutlass with a 350 and a girlfriend who wore mini skirts and black nylons. Most of my friends had station wagons or mini vans!

 

[PotvinGuy]

and a girlfriend who wore mini skirts and black nylons.

Oh, my , I think I'm getting a strange sensation I haven't felt for a while...

 

[ChrisK]

Found this magazine while looking for Christmas decorations at my moms house.

 

[Johnny]

In my small town of Crescent, Oklahoma, my first sight of a hot rod car, was when my friend and I were riding our bikes and all of a sudden we heard this Waaa Waaaa Waaaaa of a '56 Ford Vicky spinning tires and going down the street sideways and finally straightening out and flying passed us at breakneck speed!
WOW! It was one of our rebellious thugs in town, Max Larue! Loved that car. My friend and I ran over to the rubber spin marks, got down on our knees and smelled the burning rubber.
HEAVEN! I couldn't wait to get my first hot car. Sadly, my first car wasn't very hot. '49 Chevy truck with an old worn out 6. But, I sure had fun with that old truck.

 

[mountainman]

First "hot-rod" I remember was my uncle's '50 Ford. It had the carbs, cam, and pipes. He and I both wish he still had it. Remember him, my dad (54 Buick Super) and another uncle (56 Studebaker) all drag racing each other in front of grandparents house. All the wives raising hell at them. Of course that was in late 50's so they weren't "old hot-rods" at that time.
First "real hot-rod" that I remember was when I was about 12 years old. Neighbor's son hauled a 32 five window PROJECT home on a trailer. Was chopped and channeled, early Ford running gear, 348 Chevy with no motor mounts (chain under it), etc.
Even as a kid, I could tell that lots of things were wrong with this build but the one thing that stood out in my young mind was that 1/4" steel diamond plate was not the correct floor and firewall material if the goal was to be fast.
And NO, it was never finished.

 

[GreggDaniels]

I was 10 years old in 1968 when my dad took all of us out to San Jose, and Los Angeles to visit his two sisters during the summer. I remember him saying "we used to have one of those on the farm" every time we'd see some kind of hot rod but when a little bucket pulled up along side of us at a stoplight all he could say is "what the hell kind of a contraption is that?" I don't know if it was his response to it or something else but I absolutely fell in love with them. Well it took me to the age of 34 to start building one and it took 18 years to get it running but here I am at the age of 57 and I feel like a kid when I'm driving it even though I creak and groan when I get in and out. I still find myself glossing over a big buck show car to stare at any kind of a little bucket at a show.