MAGAZINE

We have gotten off on primered cars and saddle blanket seats for quite a while now and what we’ve done is to include them. They were never excluded in the eyes (and garages) of Hop Up Guys. We all knew they were cool because we never thought completion of a car project was prerequisite to cool; a hot rod is cool in every stage of it’s evolution from boring stocker to the lumpy-ass, muffler-scrapin’ hot ones most Hop Up Guys have......or want. Fact is, most of the older guys have included a primered beast on their play lists just because they are a type of rod that is pretty bitchin to run. Always wuz.........

But really. We want to do some finished cars, too, before we’re completely at the end of our tether. The finished cars gotta be fine TRADITIONAL rods and customs, though. The vision is the one that stuck in the mind of a pre-license kid: blue and white t n’ r interior, chrome all over the place inside, gauges spread out door to freakin’ door, carpeting with white naugahyde binding stitched on, a floor shifter, Moon gas pedal, top squeezed down so low it looks like a Stutz DV32 .........whitewalls, wheels painted as good as the body, and a 348 mill stuck in there as if it had any business in a Model A pickup.

That’s where all the beaters were headed, weren’t they?

That guy may have been a tiny bit more civilized that some of them because more was at risk. But he was just as threatening to the rest of the population; still smoked Luckys, found Olympia beer (it’s the water) on the weekends, burned up those bias whities at nearly every stoplight., and was a hit with the beautiful womens, too. A cool hot rod can be the entre to lots of things, even now........

So don’t reject finished cars as if they’re from some other culture. It’s our culture. There is the inevitable evolution of things that says if you are to be prosperous in the usual way -the American way- you probably are enjoying prosperity as a counterbalance to growing old. Damn. If we had been prosperous in our youth, we’da probably screwed it up anyway, so we’re out here, able to acquire a few of the parts we could never get close to as a young man, and the reward for the series of decisions we’ve made and our investment and toil (sob!sob!) is the ability to do something fine......... finally.

If the fine is righteous. If the fine is executed with good taste and style, and not gee-gawed up (too much flames and beehives and one-of-everything-that’s-hard-to-get is a little bit too much nostalgia some times), then painted and plated and trimmed and rimmed has gotta be OK.

Ya think? Oh, yeah. It’s OK.

en hopup veritas