40 Fun Facts About Hot Rods

Which 1950s concept car was rebuilt into the Batmobile for the 1966 Batman TV series?

The Lincoln Futura was already a decade old when a Hollywood custom shop reworked it in three weeks, because filming was about to begin.

Which actor had a pinstriper letter 'Little Bastard' on his Porsche 550 Spyder in 1955?

James Dean drove the new Porsche to the Lynwood shop of Dean Jeffries, a young hot rod striper who went on to build cars for television.

Which toy line did Mattel launch in 1968 as wild custom cars with big rear tires and flame paint?

Hot Wheels began when Mattel co-founder Elliot Handler watched his son play with Matchbox cars and pictured exaggerated customs instead of scale models of showroom cars.

After World War II, hot rodders built streamlined racing bodies from which surplus aircraft part?

Drop tanks built for fighters like the P-51 Mustang sold as surplus for $35 or $40 each, and they were already shaped to slip through the air.

Which rock band put a customized 1933 Ford coupe on the cover of its hit album Eliminator?

ZZ Top named the album for a drag racing term, and the guitarist's coupe went on to appear in the band's MTV videos.

In hot rod slang, what does the 'deuce' in the name of a Ford deuce coupe refer to?

Its model year is the clue: the two stands for 1932, when Ford became the first maker to put a V8 in a low-priced, mass-market car.

Which 1960s TV family rode in an 18-foot custom hearse built from three Ford Model T bodies?

The Munsters drove the Munster Koach, whose ornate rolled-steel scrollwork alone took 500 hours to form by hand.

Which pinstriper, born Kenny Howard, had his nickname turned into a 2000s trucker-hat fashion brand?

Von Dutch is remembered as the father of modern pinstriping, and the clothing label was launched by other people after his death in 1992.

In which film does drag-racing king John Milner cruise Modesto in a yellow deuce coupe?

American Graffiti gave the coupe the license plate THX 138, a nod to THX 1138, the science-fiction film George Lucas had made just before it.

Which Nordic country has a lively hot rod scene built around meetings like Power Big Meet?

Sweden has so little vintage American steel that local rods often ride on a home-made frame with a Jaguar or Volvo rear axle.

Which California band first recorded the hot rod songs Little Deuce Coupe and 409?

The Beach Boys got the words of Little Deuce Coupe from a local radio DJ, Roger Christian, and it became their highest-charting B-side.

Hot rodders gather every August for Speed Week at which famous land speed racing venue?

Bonneville, in Utah, hosts Speed Week and an October finals meet, both run by a club association founded in 1937 to make speed trials safer.

Hot Rod magazine's first editor founded which body in 1951 to move drag racing off the streets?

NHRA was the work of Wally Parks, who also sent Safety Safaris around the country to teach local tracks how to run drag races.

Which Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth monster, usually drawn in red overalls, became an icon of hot rod culture?

Rat Fink was conceived as the antithesis of Disney's best-known mascot, so Roth drew him green or gray with bulging, bloodshot eyes.

Which hot rod technique cuts down a car's roof pillars and windows to lower the roofline?

Chopping began with racers who wanted less frontal area, and some cut so deep that the side glass was nicknamed mail-slot windows.

On a hot rod, the 'suicide doors' of a three-window deuce coupe have what unusual feature?

Rear-mounted hinges are said to have earned the grim name before seat belts: if a door opened at speed the wind flung it wide, and a passenger reaching for it could fall out.

In drag racing, the 'Christmas tree' is the nickname for which piece of track equipment?

The starting lights stand in a column for each lane: staging bulbs on top, then three ambers, a green and a red.

Which Prohibition-era drivers tuned their cars to outrun police, an early forerunner of the hot rod?

Bootleggers needed speed to evade revenue agents, and the stripped Model T speedsters of the same years are the hot rod's other ancestor.

By one theory, the 'rod' in hot rod is short for which lightweight two-door body style?

Roadster is one theory; a rival one says the rod was the camshaft, a part tuners often swapped to make more power.

What is the principal ingredient of the fuel burned by drag racing's Top Fuel dragsters?

Nitromethane is also an industrial solvent and cleaning fluid, and drag racers usually blend it with a little methanol.

On what kind of terrain in Southern California did the first hot rodders race in the late 1930s?

Dry lake beds northeast of Los Angeles drew the first racers, and the sport swelled after 1945 as returning soldiers brought home technical training.

Which 1973 shock turned carmakers away from performance and revived interest in hot rodding?

The oil crisis turned carmakers from performance to fuel efficiency, so fans who wanted speed went back to building it themselves.

Which engine, launched by Ford in 1932 as the first affordable V8, became an early hot rod staple?

Flathead V8 production for American buyers ran for 21 years, and Ward's named it one of the ten best engines of the 20th century.

Chrysler's FirePower V8, a favorite in 1950s hot rods, is better known by which short nickname?

Hemi is short for the hemispherical combustion chambers, which leave room for two large valves and make more power at the cost of a bigger, heavier engine.

Chevrolet's small-block V8, a hot rod favorite, was nicknamed after which cartoon character?

Mighty Mouse caught on with stock car racers and was soon cut to plain Mouse; more than 100 million of the engines were eventually built.

Which Hollywood customizer, builder of the Hirohata Merc, popularized spelling 'Kustom' with a K?

George Barris and his brother Sam built the Mercury for Bob Hirohata at their shop, which traded as Barris Kustoms.

Which builder, once a Disneyland machinist, starred in the TV series American Hot Rod?

Boyd Coddington grew up in Idaho, opened Hot Rods by Boyd in 1977, and became known for a clean, elegant style called the Boyd Look.

Which star designer of TV's Overhaulin' won the Detroit Autorama's top prize with a 1935 Chevrolet?

Chip Foose began working on cars at age seven in his father's design shop, and that 2002 winner, called Grand Master, was the first of several.

Which drag racer perfected the rear-engine dragster after an explosion took part of his foot?

Don Garlits, drag racing's Big Daddy, built his first racer under an oak tree at home in Tampa, and his Swamp Rat XXX was later enshrined in the Smithsonian.

What name is given to a hot rod built to look deliberately unfinished, often rusty or unpainted?

Rat rod builders were reacting against high-priced show cars that were seldom driven, and their parts can be as odd as a wrench for a door handle.

Smoothed, lowered customs like the 1949 Mercury take which nickname from an old body-filler metal?

Lead sled pairs the filler metal with sled, said to describe a body dropped so low that it seemed to slide down the highway.

Which TV detective series made Norm Grabowski's T-bucket hot rod famous as the Kookie Kar?

77 Sunset Strip gave the car to the character Kookie, and renting it out to studios led its builder into an acting career of his own.

Which New Journalism pioneer wrote a 1963 Esquire essay on California's custom car builders?

Tom Wolfe, stuck with writer's block, sent his editor raw notes instead of an article, and the editor is said to have cut the greeting and run them.

Santa Ana Drags, often called America's first dragstrip, opened in 1950 on what kind of site?

An airport runway in Orange County became the track, set up with $1,000, a 50-cent admission and clocks that gave racers accurate times.

Joe Bailon is credited with creating which custom paint color, sprayed over a metallic base coat?

Candy apple red opened the way to a whole spectrum of candy colors, and a show trophy named for Bailon carries an apple he painted in it.

Which hot rodder became the first American past 400 mph, driving the four-engined Challenger I?

Mickey Thompson reached 406.60 mph on a one-way run in 1960, faster than the one-way best set by Britain's John Cobb in 1947.

Before the term 'hot rod' caught on, what was a car modified for more speed commonly called?

A gow job was the early name, and it gave way to hot rod during the 1940s.

Which speed-parts pioneer began with the Slingshot manifold, designed for his own 1932 Ford?

Vic Edelbrock left school at 14 to ferry Model T Fords out to Kansas farms, and the constant roadside breakdowns made him an expert repairman.

Which trophy, called the Nobel Prize of hot rodding, goes to the Detroit Autorama's best in show?

The Ridler Award honors Don Ridler, a band and sports promoter hired in 1956 to widen the show's audience; its first winner was a dragster.

Which actor drove Pete Chapouris's black 1934 Ford coupe in the 1974 TV movie The California Kid?

Martin Sheen played a stranger hunting the speed-trap sheriff who had killed his brother, and the film's fame led rodders to build numerous copies of the coupe.