What makes a good street rod?
There are probably as many answers to that question as we have readers. After all, a hot rod is about as personal as it gets when it comes to cars. People build street rods because they want to put their own stamp on a car, not because they are obsessed with date-code-correct wheel weights or some other such ephemera to score points with the judges.
Constructing a hot rod offers its builder a chance to show off his or her vision, fabrication skills or even performance chops, as the earliest gow jobs. were built for speed first with style coming in a distant second. For the truly talented who do everything, all of the above can be true.
There has been no shortage of hot rods that have crossed the digital block at Hemmings Auctions and they run the gamut from a basic wheels-and-tires swap to some full-blown, award-winning, other-worldly creations that were fabricated from the ground up.
We recently listed a 1915 Ford Model T center-door sedan that was the recipient of what the seller estimated to be a $340,000 build. That’s not a misplaced comma or a fat-fingered typo, it’s one-third of a million bucks! One look at the legitimately bespoke, machined-from-billet aluminum suspension components and you start to get an idea why the cash register rolled over like an odometer hitting six figures when this uncommon Model T was customized. Nothing was left untouched save for the rare center-door, five-passenger sedan body, the glass, and a proper, Model T-correct wooden-rimmed steering wheel.
In proper hot-rod fashion, that ’15 T sedan featured a thoroughly righteous driveline. Powering the rear wheels via a chrome-plated driveshaft was a built Ford 347-cu.in. stroker V-8 with a laundry list of go-fast parts mated to a four-speed automatic overdrive transmission. At the rear, that custom suspension was designed around a Jaguar axle with inboard disc brakes. The front end included rack-and-pinion steering along with another pair of disc brakes.
Photo: Hemmings Auctions
On the other end of the spectrum are the likes of fiberglass T-buckets from kits, the kind that, 50 years ago, you could order from an ad in the back of your favorite car magazine for $249.95. Opt for the deluxe kit, for $150 more, and they’d paint the ’glass body and grille one of five bright colors and throw in some extras like a seat, vinyl upholstery, and a fuel tank. Both versions, of course, came with “full assembly instructions.” You could even get a payment plan that started at $10 a month. These days, such a payment plan wouldn’t even get you through the week for coffee.
All the ambitious young hot rodder needed was a proper drivetrain, suspension and steering components, electrical equipment, wiring, some other bits like gauges and the gumption to follow through and read the fine print on those “full assembly instructions.” In the 1970s and ’80s, such kit-built hot rods were seemingly everywhere, stuffed to the gunwales with some form of Chevy small-block V-8 sending power to the oversized rear tires via a Turbo Hydra-Matic three-speed automatic transmission. Plenty of salvage yard parts found a new lease on life in these home-brew hot rods.
Other than the bigger motor in an older car concept, a low-budget, scrapyard-sourced T-bucket and an award-winning third-of-a-million-dollar street rod might seem to not have a lot in common, but they are more alike than not as both are unique products from the handiwork of their builders.
No two hot rods are alike. Well, no two should be alike, but inspiration in this hobby comes in many forms, which is why there is a market for fiberglass-bodied T-buckets in the first place. With nostalgia topping that list for inspiration, some builds may follow a pattern, but rarely are they direct copies. And that’s what makes a good street rod: putting your own unique stamp on the build.
A street rod is the blank canvas of the automotive world and your palette is a nearly unlimited variety of components, colors and powerplants to make it your own.
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