[computerworks]

The phrase 'Hot Rod' has no strict definition although the main aims of 'Hot Rodding' are to make your car bigger, faster, lower and all together more obvious.

Some define Hot Rod as any car modified by the owner to make it go faster.

(from The Rod Journal - Bill Alexander)
"The National Street Rod Association defines a street rod by it's year of manufacture, including in their definition only those cars whose original manufacture was prior to 1949. This definition, based partly on the "fat fender" design of cars built prior to 1949 as opposed to the "shoebox" design which followed, has served our hobby well and has been generally adherred to for well over twenty years. In spite of that, I believe it's time to consider changing the definition to include cars up to 1958. Here's why I feel the way I do:

Most people are aware that the cars we now consider to be "street rods" were orginally called Hot Rods. This name came from the act of modifying cars for greater performance, often through engine modifications and engine swaps. The main idea was to go faster, increase maximum rpm's and horsepower, keep those (engine) rods hot. Street racing led to more formalized and much safer drag racing off the highways. Competition on the drag strips and the quest for higher and higher speeds brought with it huge engine displacements and severe rear end ratios, neither of which were conducive to pleasant or cost efficient highway driving. As a result, many rodders Hot Rods became specialized vehicles which were seldom driven for pleasure, but used predominantly on the drag strips.

The late sixties and early seventies saw a movement toward driving the cars once again. This movement, fueled in part by Rod and Custom magazine and the establishment of the first Street Rod Nationals get-togethers sponsored by that magazine, encouraged Hot Rodder's to become Street Rodders, and to use their cars for more than drag racing. Changing the term from Hot Rodder to Street Rodder removed some of the negative connotations brought about from rodding's early history of street racing, and as the term was picked up and used by the National Street Rodding Association, it became a part of our hobby's language.

When this term began to become widely used a 1940 Ford was about thirty years old. The fat fendered cars were more widely available at that time than were the earlier models which had generally been considered the classics of Hot Rodding, the Model A and Model B Fords. Available at reasonable prices, rodder's snapped them up and became modifying them, performing the same engine swaps and making the same kinds of interior improvements that had been made on earlier models in past times. Their popularity necessitated the inclusion of them in the definition of "street rod" at the time.

That was all almost thirty years ago, and the fat fendered cars have now become just as rare as were the A models and B models in the sixties. Rodders have turned now to the shoebox models, just as they turned to fat fendered cars, and more and more of them appear at car shows and rodding events throughout the country. In 1997 a 1955 Chevrolet is 42 years old, over a decade older than was a Forty Ford Coupe when our definitions were established. It's time to include them, and other models of that vintage, in the definition which is central to our hobby.

Some would make the point that it doesn't matter very much what these cars are called, but I believe the hobby and sport of Street Rodding is best served by focusing on the nature of our activities than on the specific years that automobiles were manufactured. There is something of a natural cut-off which occurs during the 1960's due to the fact that the Muscle Car era came during those years, an era in which factory cars came already sporting most of the modifications which Hot Rodders had been making in the past. Later years brought with them front wheel drive and many other changes which are less adaptable to modifications by the average hobbyist.

Rodders were once known as rodders because they did the modifcations to their cars themselves. It was common practice to buy an old clunker and make it new again, only better. As the supply of old cars diminished it became harder and harder for such hobbyist's to find cars to modify. When this occurred, they turned to those old cars that were available, the cars manufactured AFTER 1948. It could easily be argued that many "Street Rods" today bear much less resemblance to the hot rods of old than they do to new cars, because they are so often manufactured by professionals and purchased after all the work has been done. This is not the case with most of the Fifties cars one sees, and I would very much like to see the effort that goes into their restoration and modification recognized by inclusion in the definition of Street Rod."