You'll have to excuse me this month while I regain my composure. I've just visited a place where a flathead isn't a fish, a T-Bucket isn't where Ernie and Bert store their favourite letter. The fascinating world of hot rods beckoned last weekend and I decided to take a holiday there.
I'm afraid to say I can't give too many details about the show I attended, mostly because I wasn't paying too much attention to the organisational side of things. I don't know whether it had a special name, who organised it or who was competing. I went to look at and hear the cars and spend a couple of hours drinking in the original car modification subculture. I wanted to see guys with big beards, cars with candy apple paint jobs, fuzzy dice, proudly displayed vintage running gear and monster V8 engines. I wanted to hear roaring, crackling exhausts, smell raw fuel fumes and see burnouts.
For an outsider, it's very easy to generalise about car culture and its various manifestations. The hot rod movement is one that is particularly easy to generalise about, given that it's been around the longest and seems the most easily defined. A visit to a show will reinforce some stereotypes, but is pretty eye-opening in other ways.
This particular show was held in the car park of a shopping mall. Under a shopping mall, to be exact. This was disappointing. There obviously weren't going to be many burnouts, unless you count me trying to steal a car park from a sleepy dowager in a Camry before the show. It was also disappointing in that, as for most good car shows, you have to go somewhere that's objectionable in some way, so that the not-so-enthusiastic won't bother to make the effort. I'm talking about portable toilets and appalling weather. Anybody can go to a mall.
The location meant that the crowd would be more curious onlookers and less enthusiasts. So no, there weren't any screaming engines, raw fuel fumes or spectacular accidents. There were hot rods though.
In a lot of ways, the hot rod movement really provided a template for just about every other car subculture. In essence, the desire to transform an otherwise pedestrian vehicle into something desirable with the right application of effort and money. Once the boundaries have been set, the definition of what is a hot rod and what isn't becomes easier, thus creating an identifiable genre which is both liberating and limiting.
If you can identify a subculture, you can name it, and popularising the movement becomes easier. People suddenly realise that they weren't alone in tinkering in the shed with their old Model T, that there were other guys out there doing it and who wanted to get together and compare notes and drag strip times.
First, the obvious stuff. Flame paint jobs are still pretty popular, although not absolutely required. Big, American V8 engines are also very popular, although the evocative little flat-head Ford engine seems to have been largely surpassed by the Chevy 350.
Carburettors are much preferred over fuel injection, and the car bodies and chassis are still largely US vehicles ranging from T model Fords ("T-buckets" and utilities), '40s and '50s Mercurys and '55-'57 Chevrolet sedans. These are augmented by various V8 powered Australian cars in the local scene, just for variety.
So visiting this hot rod show was somewhat like visiting a museum. Modifications followed pretty simple rules (hello Holley carb, Earls braided pipes, chrome air cleaners, hidden wiring, flawless paint on every surface). Most displayed cars had a list of their parts on a board in front of them; brand names are very important and the front wheels are inevitably skinnier than the back ones, presumably to infer that the car in question is a drag racing vehicle.
The cars are roped off (rightly so, I wouldn't greasy hands and scratchy jewellery messing up my mega-dollar paint job either), they are completely static and most show no signs of running at all. It's very strange looking at a car which, by rights, should be a high- performance, road ripping demon only to discover it doesn't even smell slightly like oil, petrol or coolant. Mostly they just smell of polish, or that peculiar smell that steel acquires when it's been handled but never heated. If you've ever visited a war memorial, you'll know the smell.
The winner of this show was an amazingly turned out Ford Mustang. In common with many other displays, extensive use of mirrors to show the immaculate underbody was used to devastating effect.
Not one ounce of sound deadener was on that shell, I assume if anybody ever drove it anywhere, the stone chips would have it rusted out in days rather than years. It was mesmerising to look at though - I wanted to jump behind the wheel and make the little 289 snort. No doubt the owner wants to as well, but the thing looked like it had never been started, let alone driven anywhere....
I find it a little sad, in truth. To me, the appeal of a car can be broken into three parts: how it looks; how it drives; how it sounds. The show, for me, sort of missed the point of what cars are about. Why hold it at a shopping mall? I can only guess that the organisers are trying to ramp up some popularity amongst your average car-hating suburbanite. Obviously, having a well supported movement makes it easier for the participants, but attempting to popularise it too far beyond the hard-core can only really lead to a dilution of the real core of the hobby. If Joe Fashion-come-lately wants to own a hot rod, he just buys one and brings it out for shows every now and again. Better still, buy a hot rod directly from Plymouth! Thankfully, the only Prowler on display was on a couple of not very popular T-shirts. The caption, "you either get it or you don't" seemed deliciously ironic, given we were surrounded by real hot rods.
Still, it's obvious that the guys involved love their cars, so I didn't feel like I was a million miles from home. I was happy to jump back in the old Alfetta for the trip home though. It smells of oil, fuel and leather and makes offensive noises with no apology.
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