"Ike" (untitledcarshow)
01/04/2016 at 19:05 • Filed to: Ike rambles
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"Ike" (untitledcarshow)
01/04/2016 at 19:05 • Filed to: Ike rambles | 2
| 6 |
What the emergence of shows like RoadKill, The smoking tires “all cars go to heaven” movies, Top Gears cheap car challenges, even to an extent Regular Car Reviews. Have in common is the idea of “kinda crap” is “kinda cool”. Is this a new thing? Is what’s going on a Rat Rod evolution? This seems like a bit of a silly question, but it has implications beyond what you may think! The whole world may rely on the answer!
Probably not though.
So rat rods came about ( as far as Wikipedia tells me ) when A fellow named Jim “Jake” Jacobs decided to build the “Jakelopy” interesting article here !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that’s where this picture is from
So like any good movement the initial effort was not to be dramatically different, more of a reintroduction to the roots of the hot rodding. Cheap, fun, and kinda goofy. Then slowly the rat rod morphed into a style of its own. It became what it intended to end. Now Rat Rods are all about crazy, over the top, and in my personal opinion a being a bit ridiculous.
So we had Hot Roding which started as cheap power & fun in cars, that became overly costly and begat Rat Roding, which followed the same path. So what did Rat Rodding begat? Well that’s the thing, it didn’t spawn anything in its place. We as a car culture grew beyond our “Roding” roots. We had powerful import cars, cheap muscle cars abound in the late 90’s and beyond. So we weren’t needing to build our cars up we could grab an off the shelf powerhouse.
As trends in the automotive world expanded and became more insular in the wake of all this off the shelf performers. i.e. ricers, euro tuners, American new muscle, it goes on all the way down to brand loyalty in each subculture. Yet out of all this emerged a very interesting thing happened. A pure enjoyment of cars in all there shapes and forms, but mostly in the ones that are a bit crap. Everyone reading this is probably one of these enthusiast. You like your cars no matter what kind, but you have a soft sport for those left unloved for years, almost like a “rescue” pet. Part of the love for this type of motoring is the knowledge that you are saving something that would have ended as scrap, another part of the enjoyment is because it’s cheap!
What I think is so remarkable is that this whole thing seems to be a product of the Internet, and just a touch of counter culture. It really didn’t spawn from any existing car trend. It will be fascinating to see how it evolves. Will Miata always be the golden idol? It can’t be known. We aren’t hemmed in by any sort of constrain that other trends like Hot/Rat Roding faced.
It’s truly an exciting time in car culture
Ike is host of the Untitled Car Show ( !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) he has owned 2 Dodge Challengers; a Volvo C30, a V70XC, a V70R, 740; and a Saturn Ion . He is a new father and loves driving and autocrossing. He can jerry rig with the best of them, and he wrote his bio in third person. He also has 2 dogs, 2 cats and is a crazy person some say!
The two photos up top are not mine, they were found via Google, last pic it my car.
Email the author !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!
lone_liberal
> Ike
01/04/2016 at 19:17 |
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The Rat Rod died when the first guy decided to pay a pro builder six figures to build one for him. We are in the age of the Faux Rod. Having fun with cheap crappy cars, on the other hand, will never die.
tromoly
> Ike
01/04/2016 at 19:28 |
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I don’t have anything to add, so I’ll drop off a picture so people don’t feel like they completely wasted 10 seconds reading my comment.
deekster_caddy
> Ike
01/04/2016 at 19:39 |
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Nicely written. I have two ‘fun’ cars and my DD. The fun cars are in my garage because they are both cheap, and mean something to me. My’73 Buick LeSabre was passed down from my grandparents. My ‘54 MG my mom picked out in 1968 and dad restored in the 70’s. He gave it to me a few years ago because he couldn’t work on it anymore. The LeSabre is my own rescue project - besides loving the way it drives, it’s got a few years of New England salt on the body panels, so I’ve had to fab most of the panels that were rusted out from scratch.
Neither ‘rat rods’ but both pretty unique and a blast to drive in their own different ways. The LeSabre is also my ‘truck’ - with a class 3 hitch I use it to pull my car trailer as needed.
BZiel
> Ike
01/04/2016 at 19:49 |
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Interesting and timely read.
The best rat rod I’ve seen come thru the shop yet was a powder blue 1980 volvo 240 station wagon with a blown 454, drag slicks, and two baby seats. It was covered in painted flowers, peace symbols, and ”eco-friendly” stickers.
Absolute hilarity.
camaroboy68ss
> Ike
01/04/2016 at 19:52 |
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I personally have a pet peeve on people using the term Hot Rods and Rat Rods as thinking one in the same. Rat Rods started out saying they were building cars like guys did right after WW2. That was a lie right off the bat. If Jim Jacobs 28 above is a “rat rod” what the heck happened? Now it’s over chopped, over channeled cars you can’t drive with all kinds of junk tacked on just for the sake of entertainment. Rat Rods have done to Hot Rodding what ricers did to tuner culture. It taints some of the great history and cars built over the past 60 years and pushes Hot Rodding back into its phase where it was a bad rap to have one.
TheJWT
> Ike
01/04/2016 at 20:10 |
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I think (Or rather I hope) that people are starting to realize that not following trends and making the car
you
want is actually pretty cool.