Hot Rod Restoration Projects

Hot rodding may have started out as a Southern California fad, but it's now an international export. What was once perceived as an outlaw vice is now, more or less, socially acceptable—a mainstream lifestyle and big-buck business (more than $630 million in retail sales per year, according to some estimates). What once ran on the sun-baked alkaline clay of California's dry lakes is now found posing on the green, manicured lawn of the swanky Pebble Beach Concours. Owners of high-dollar hot rods who used to crack a six-pack in the garage now sip wine over their cars at museum openings. How is it that Southern California spawned so many hot rods? And more important, what sort of car should you consider for your resto rod project?

Origins
The origin of the term "hot rod" isn't exact, but sprang from references to "hot roadsters" and high-performance parts. Although many things influenced the growth of hot rodding in Southern California, it really boils down to a combination of a few key aspects of the region. It began with hopped-up, fender-less Model T roadsters in the mid-'30s that ran on dry lakes such as Muroc (now the site of Edwards Air Force Base). In these early days of hot rodding, drivers donned cloth helmets and removed the windshields. Hot rodding began to gather momentum when WWII veterans, who had boosted the performance of battle machines on the front lines, applied their skills to Flathead V-8s and '32 Fords.


Los Angeles-based magazine publishers, such as Bob Petersen, founder of "Hot Rod" in 1949, found grist for his burgeoning editorial mill at timed runs on the dry lakes of the Mojave Desert. Street racing and events on the air strips became so popular—and dangerous—they were formalized at the Pomona drag strip by Wally Parks, who founded the National Hot Rod Association in 1951. The movie industry, seeking ways to sell tickets by portraying antisocial behavior in forgettable films such as "Hot Rods From Hell," portrayed hot rodders as something far worse than they really were (which of course added greatly to the appeal of hot rodding). All these factors fed off of and promoted each other.

Little Deuce Coupe
If you were to pick one car that sparked the volatile fuel of hot rodding, it would be the 1932 Ford "Little Deuce Coupe," so named for the "two" in '32. Noted car collector Bruce Meyer, who has six of his Deuces on display at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, observed, "The '32 Ford epitomizes hot rodding. When somebody says 'hot rodding,' they think of the Deuce."


It's easy to see why the '32 epitomizes the birth of hot rodding. In addition to the performance potential of its then-new V-8 engine, you could remove the front fenders for increased speeds on the dry lakes, and the frame rails would become part of the design on a fenderless front corner. Ford built only about 12,000 of these roadsters, and those that didn't rust away in wrecking yards became the blank canvases for the hot rodders' art. It's not uncommon to find Deuces with Chevy small-blocks or even Hemis and Olds V-8s. Variations abound, limited only by the creativity of the hot rodders who build them. So many, in fact, that of the original 12,000 roadsters, many hot rodders joke, only 50,000 remain.