Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

RatRods

RatRods

For an old Geezer one might think that my taste in cars and trucks ran along the “Restoration” track where the restorers rigidly adhere to the standard of Originality. In other words make the car or truck as close to possible as it came off the assembly line.

Such an assumption would be totally false. If I have a restoration philosophy it's inclined towards the “Rat Rodder” culture which in my view has produced some amazing and exciting automotive creations.

Across the road are my friends Tim and Mark. Tim is on a farming kick and Mark is consumed as always by his passion for hunting. They are both good guys. The other day I was driving the Stude around and pulled up when I saw them chatting alongside the road.

The Stude was sounding good and I had done some more body work. Neither had seen it up close and it was starting to look good. They made some complimentary comments not realizing it was not an “Original“ restoration.

“You really got that classic engine running nice,” said Tim

“Are you going to have this thing ready for the next Forth of July parade,” asked Mark?

First off the engine is not “Classic.” It’s a six cylinder S-10 engine. It's of a modern design and less than fifteen (15) years old. Secondly I was not building it to drive once a year in a parade. I intend it to become a daily driver. Still, they were trying to be polite and pleasant and I thanked them for the kind words and pointed out that I simply put an old body on a more modern chassis.

“I see, said Tim scratching his jaw…. “You’re building a rod…” There was a sound of distain in his voice and I knew he had classic car sentiments and looked down on the “Rod” culture. I was not offended.

“Yeah, it’s a Rod...,bought it from Jed Clampet." (If you're too young to remember the Beverly Hillbillies you won't remember Jed's truck) I have an attraction to the fringe of the Hot Rodding culture. The “RatRods” There are the traditional Hot Rods, the Street Rods and now the RatRods have emerged as a legitimate force.

To build a RatRod ,a person uses stuff that has accumulated around the shop and gets additional parts from the local scrap yards. They then unleash their creative energies and build vehicles fresh and innovative ways. The patina of rust and corroded metal are particularly prized in the construction of these cars and trucks.

At a car show the RatRods are the first thing that attracts my interest, and I walk past a lot of $10K paint jobs to check one out. Naturally it drives the purists batty when nobody stops to look at their beautiful and meticulously restored vehicles and instead there are always these big crowds standing around the RatRods.

When my wife and I were much younger we loved antique furniture but couldn’t afford it. So we did what we could to acquire old furniture and our house was full of it. At the time there was a craze to paint old chairs, tables and dressers in this awful “Antique” green lacquer, after the original patina had been scraped down to bare wood. Eventually this type of “Antiquing” gave way to cleaning up and preserving the old patinas and I see the same trend in antique cars today as I did then in furniture.

Anyway I sure like to look at the RatRods and see some of the clever ideas and accents that the builders have used in transforming their creations into virtual pieces of automotive art.