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Rust & Rebellion

1 January 2010 835 views No Comment BY Stacey Muncie

Chrome sparkles in the sunlight, perfect candy colored paint and custom upholstery beckon car show attendees to take a closer look. Signs instruct the uninformed to look, but “please don’t touch.” Their owners have just spent a lot of time polishing and dusting, and those fancy paint jobs cost a lot of money. Oldies music blares from the mobile DJ trailer nearby, and car owners sit in lawn chairs behind their vehicles collecting compliments from admirers. A low slung, deep purple early 1950s vintage Mercury lounges in the sunshine of the cool, crisp day. Nearby, the tricked out T-Bucket with a matching trailer bides its time while the judges decide which cars will take home a trophy for being the best in each class.

And then there’s Dennis Dugger’s car.

A stuffed buzzard eyes passersby from its perch in the engine compartment of the 1953 flat black Ford Ranch Wagon. A flying eyeball — which Dugger had custom made and has hand painted — sits atop the air cleaner cover. Flames trail down the sides, and one fender shows a little damage from a recent run-in with a wayward deer. As far as Dugger is concerned, the blemish only adds character–especially since he painted a deer in a circle with a slash through it and the words “Deer Slayer” near the spot. He explains that the Ranch Wagon model was originally marketed to farmers to use as both a truck and a car, with old advertising showing fence posts piled in the back. “I looked for 15 years to find it,” he says of the Ford, “because that’s what I had in high school. It was my first car.”

Over the three years he’s had the wagon, Dugger has enjoyed taking it to local shows, as well as big regional hot rod shows such as the Hunnert Car Pile-up in Morris, Ill., and the Road Rocket Rumble in Indianapolis. But he loves to drive it, so in addition to taking it to shows on the weekends, Dugger drives his car to work every day at Union Hospital Clinton. His long, wavy, salt and pepper hair tied into a ponytail, the radiological technologist chuckles as he quips that his co-workers appreciated it when he painted flames onto the car, making it look less like a hearse. “I still have the buzzard looking out the window, though” he jokes.

His car, and others like it, are part of a modern trend which harkens back to the origins of American hot rodding–the rat rod.

Post-World War II America saw the rise of the hot rods–cars that were built for performance by young guys tinkering around with miscellaneous parts. Think Danny Zuko and the T-Birds from “Grease,” minus the choreography. In those days, there were few specialty automotive equipment manufacturers, and no one was mass producing everything imaginable for the hot rod set. So, by necessity those early hot rodders kept resourcefulness and ingenuity right alongside the wrenches and screwdrivers in their tool boxes. Since most of the rodders were younger, most of their creations were fairly low-budget projects that emphasized function over form. Speed over sparkle. Using what parts they had, and finding what they didn’t have in junk yards, the hot rodders of the day created custom cars from readily available parts. These early hot rods also were a form of rebellion against the conventions of the time. They were loud, and fast, and like Danny Zuko’s Greased Lightning, sometimes faced off in illicit drag races.

Over the years, the hot rod has evolved from its humble, gritty roots into something built less for driving and more for looking pretty. During the late ‘50s and ‘60s, hot rod builder and artist Ed “Big Daddy” Roth emerged from the southern California hot rod scene. Roth’s over-the-top creations were at least as much art as automobile, with exaggerated, futuristic lines, bubble tops, groovy paint jobs and names such as Orbitron, Outlaw, Road Agent and Asphalt Angel. Roth also created a series of grotesque hot rodding cartoon monsters, including the popular Rat Fink. Rat Fink became such a sensation that by 1963 teenagers all over the United States were buying Rat Fink model car kits and T-shirts. The popularity of Roth’s creations no doubt influenced the up-and-coming hot rodders, who began building more stylized, flashier cars.

These days, aftermarket parts, accessories, and kits make it possible to order nearly everything necessary to build a show car — no junk yarding required. However, plenty of money is required for anyone wanting to keep up with the hot rodding Joneses. All that chrome, paint and custom body work is expensive enough if you do it yourself, but pay someone else to do it for you, and you’re likely to spend as much as you would to buy a new Hummer. True to its roots, the rat rod movement began as another rebellion — a rebellion against what the modern hot rod had become — and a revival of hot rodding for the common man.

Often left in primer, or even rust, rat rods offer quite a contrast to the standard car show fare. They are purposefully constructed with a little bit of edge and playful humor, along with a free-spirited artistic flair that you won’t find in a standard show car. And unlike most show cars, which keep the same appearance from season to season, rat rods tend to evolve, changing regularly at their owner’s whim. “It’s ongoing. It never stops,” commented one local rat rodder. It could be an interesting found item that’s added, or a change made at the suggestion of a buddy, but the unconventional appearance of these vehicles provides a certain freedom that encourages rat rodders to make changes along the way. And so the rat rod you see one summer might have a different look the following year.

“It changes about every season,” says Martin McFarland, “It’s like an old house — I don’t know that it’s ever done.” McFarland has built a lot of cars over the years. Once a car mechanic who worked for dealerships and repair shops, he’s now in business for himself. Folks come to his place for repairs and restorations. “As a kid, I loved building model cars. I do the same thing now, I just use different glue” he chuckled. Over the years, McFarland has built everything from those model cars of his youth to classic show cars, but the thing he’s enjoying the most these days is his ’34 Buick rat rod.

Looking like something out of “Road Warrior,” the car is a carefully crafted conglomeration of parts from several different vehicles. A ‘31 Chevy, ‘33 Chevy, ‘34 Buick, a ‘95 Ford Taurus, and even two old Ford 8N tractors were parts donors for the project, which took seven months to build. The original four-door body was modified to be a two-door. Unfinished seams highlight each place where the car has been cut and spliced, with mock stitches holding the pieces together. Martin’s neighbor affectionately dubbed the car “The Meat Grinder” for its crazy-tall blown motor which rises higher than the top of the cab, and resembles a belt-driven meat grinder on steroids. You don’t drive something like this on the street without getting attention, and one of the things McFarland enjoys most about the rat is the reaction he gets from people who see it. “I get everything from ‘that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen’ to ‘what was that guy thinking?’” he says, adding, “I’ve had more fun with this car than anything I’ve built in the last 25 years.”

But it’s over the past few years that McFarland has noticed a disturbing trend. The hot rodding population is aging, a fact he attributes to the expense of building a contemporary hot rod. As a parts vendor at the yearly Good Guys Hot Rod Nationals in Indianapolis, he says, “Every year, the young guys get less and less because of the cost.” He hopes that the rat rod style will make it easier for younger folks to get into the hobby. “You can build a rat rod for a fraction of the cost,” he says, adding, “The coolest thing about this is, ‘Hey, just use what you got!’”

Jesse Lewis leafs through a notebook of sketches he’s kept since his high school days. Turning past sedans, roadsters and hot rods, he finally finds the sketch he made 50 years ago of the 1947 Dodge truck that his dad would give him when he graduated. For the retired maintenance mechanic, who now works part time at a local auto parts store, it’s the inspiration for the ‘47 Dodge rat rod he built over the winter of 1999. “It was in pieces,” Lewis explained, “It had been taken apart, because a guy was going to restore it.” A buddy of his had bought the car, and it sat for five years in his garage before Jesse was able to talk him into selling it.

Lewis put the truck together, with the addition of a 350 Chevy motor, Mustang II front suspension, and a nine-inch Ford rear end. He then painted it with gray primer and added thin, rust colored flames that lick down the sides of the hood, and are reminiscent of those colored pencil flames on his high school sketch. And while the traditionalist in him wants to give the truck a proper paint job someday, friends and finances have encouraged him to leave it the way it is.

A shiny, red ‘31 Ford street rod sits in his garage as well, but he’s only driven it a couple of times over the course of the summer. The rat rod, on the other hand, has been to shows nearly every weekend of the summer, both locally and to venues such as the Street Rod Nationals in Louisville. “I just call ‘em fun cars,“ says the soft-spoken wrencher. “You don’t have to worry about them, you just get out and drive ‘em.” Unlike his contemporary street rod counterparts, Lewis doesn’t spend a bunch of time polishing and dusting his truck when he gets to a show. A fact that he sometimes likes to rub in when parked next to his show car friends. “They don’t get too mad at me most of the time,” he says, laughing.

When Steve Haney lost his job in 2005, he was forced to sell his 1965 and 1967 Nova Pro Street cars. A lifelong gearhead, Haney says, “It probably took a month after I sold my cars before I decided I needed to build something.” That something turned out to be a 1937 Plymouth pickup. But money was tight, and a traditional hot rod was out of the question, so he built a rat rod in the purest sense. Using parts he had on hand, trading for parts, combing through junk yards and even getting some items given to him, Haney built his ’37 Plymouth truck in 37 days. And it cost him $650.

First, he narrowed an ’82 Chevy S-10 frame 24 inches in the center. Then, combining the Plymouth cab with a ’69 Dodge Coronet motor, the bed and grill of a ‘33 Ford, fenders from a ’48 Chevy, and the help of a lot of friends, Haney was able to build the car for next to nothing. When asked what he had to spend the most money on, he grinned. “The exhaust,” he said, “I spent $200 on the exhaust.”

And while his truck will never win any beauty pageants, he sees definite advantages to the rat rod style. “This is more fun because you don’t have to worry about scratches,” Haney said, as he shows a picture of his grandson paying with Legos in the bed of his flat black pickup. “Kids can climb around on it,” he notes, adding that at this stage of his life, having a vehicle that’s family friendly is important to him, “That’s what I think it’s all about, really.”