Here's the great thing about hot rodding: Just try to define it. Study this crazy sport for more than a minute and already it's heading in a brand-new direction. That's a major part of rodding's appeal, really: the relative lack of boundaries. We can say this thing of ours involves fun with internal combustion in some form, combined with a big helping of individual expression. Beyond that, hot rodding has always defied definition. What are hot rods? Machines built by hot rodders. Who are hot rodders? The people who build hot rods. While it is possible to construct more complicated definitions, that is pretty much the long and the short of it.
Some years back, a new trend began to gather steam in the hot rod world. It was in part a pushback against the high-end street rods of the time with their excess billet and excessive price tags. A back-to-basics movement that aspired to embrace traditional rodding in both style and substance, it soon picked up the name rat rodding. Seven years ago the Chrome Czars, a retro rodder club in the Chicago area, organized its first Hunnert Car Pileup. (Is this the greatest name ever for a hot rod show or what?) "That first year we wondered if we could get 50 cars to show up," says the Chrome Czars' Josh Russell (whose club handle is Lucky). This year the organizers had to cap the entries at something more than 1,100 vehicles. Clearly, events like the Pileup represent a large and growing trend. This is not that surprising, for when you examine the scene, you can see that it represents not just one new trend in the sport but two: rat rods and trad rods.--two for the price of one.
Entry guidelines for cars in the Pileup are rather strict but still flexible enough to embrace both groups. The rules include no digital gauges, no electronic fuel injection, no contemporary mag wheels, no billet anything, and no trailered cars. "We are not trying to be elitist or snobby, nor are we trying to piss anyone off or say that their car is not cool or good," asserts the Chrome Czars' entry literature. "The Hunnert Car Pileup is a show for a specific set of vehicles and style of craftsmanship." Their one-day outdoor show is a showcase for traditionally flavored rods and customs, with the conceptual cutoff date set at 1964. So while there is plenty of room at the Pileup for both rat rods and trad rods as they both meet the criteria, make no mistake: They are not the same thing.
A trad or traditional rod is built to rigorous historical standards. The ideal trad rod might be a 40- or 50-year-old hot rod barn find; second best would be a very accurate replica. Trad rods can be period originals, restorations, or brand-new builds, but the most important consideration is historical accuracy. The car must be faithful to the period in hot rodding it represents. For example, a trad rod built for a late '50s look would not include billet wheels or a megawatt audio system. Trad rod builders search the country and scour the Internet for authentic sheetmetal and vintage speed equipment for their rods, which can get very expensive--although reproductions of popular antique speed parts are rapidly becoming available. Trad rodders revel in nuance; they want their cars period-authentic to the smallest detail.
The rat rod is much more free-form. It is not intended to capture the precise look and detail of an early hot rod so much as the flavor and the experience of early rodding. Rat rodders take the approach that hot rodding was originally performed with junkyard parts collected on the cheap. But since the original components from the first generation of hot rodding have become so rare and expensive, rat rodders allow themselves more license. They use whatever is in the junk pile. As long as the component is of the same approximate era or can be modified to look the part, it's allowable raw material. For example, farm tractor noses on early-style rods are a common sight on the rat rod scene. It sure wasn't the done thing back in the day, but it looks old and funky and achieves the look the rat rodder is seeking.
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