I’d say that for the past 30 years, the definition of what a hot rod is—or, for that matter, anything in our “car” world—has gone through a “fluid” period. Definitions, or what I thought a word meant, past or present, have or will change. In other words, “What car language do you speak?”
For starters, for me a hot rod can be any car or truck that is modified to reflect the owner’s wishes to enhance performance. Now, what’s “performance”? It’s true, especially in the early days of hot rodding, that performance meant how one goes faster. In those earliest days, the easiest and quickest means of going faster was to remove weight—hence the removal of fenders, running boards, and so on. This led to pumping out more horsepower. Now,…
