Hotrod?

[Mr 5 0]

This is the kind of thing that really pisses off muscle car people.

These little (mostly) foreign fart-cars are not only buzzing around America pretending to be fast via paint, plastic add-ons and stickers but they even adopt terms that should never be used for a ricemobile. 'Hot Rod' is a distinct American term used to describe the old 1930's and '40's cars street racers modified back in the post-war era (late 1940's to late 50's) and what the Big Three manufacturers eventually used as a template for the muscle cars of the 1960's. Light bodies, big engines and all the extras that make a car fast off the showroom floor.

The flathead-powered V-8 Fords that street racers coveted in the '50's were a prime example of this, with 'Offy' heads, '3/4 race' cams, duel exhausts and so on with a floor shift for the 3-speed transmission. Yeah, the Barris creations carried the look over the top but the basic 1955 Hot Rod was probably a 1932, '36, '40 or '49 Ford and it always had some kind of engine modification and often a much bigger engine, like an Olds 303 V-8.

Hot Rod, although a broad term that technically can include any car that is noticably modified, should not be applied to a Honda Civic with a bunch of junk on it, running 17-second quarters. They are stealing a great American car term and misusing it. That's wrong but a technical error that probably no one outside of muscle car fans will notice or care about; certainly not some kid with a gunked-up ricemobile and a fart pipe thinking he's 'kewl' as he whels mom's cast-off grocery-getter around town.

Yeah, yeah, they're are fast ricemobiles and they're are 7-second Mustangs too but the majority of the ricemobiles are fake and gaudy and have little relation to a real Hot Rod as most Americans understand the term.