MAGAZINE

Familiarity. It makes something look right to you because you are familiar with it. Yeah. If you’ve had a piece long enough, you quit looking at it objectively (once I left a Le Carra wheel on a big sled for 10 years - not because I liked it at all - but because I didn’t want to spend any scratch changing it......so it disappeared. It didn’t look any less-wrong on that big column.......it just was so familiar that it wasn’t questioned any more. Shame on me.

The same thing happens with cars themselves. We came up in America and are familiar with the cars Detroit gave us so...we don’t question them. But did you ever hit yourself on the forehead with a torque wrench, clear your eyes, and look at a Tri-Five Chevy as though you were from Europe and you had no opinion one way or the other?

They look like they should be talking cars in a Chevron commercial. No shit. The cars look just like the cartoon cars on TV. Kinda bulbus. Kinda unstylish. Kitschy. Kinda un-inspired.

In defense, it was the fifties and the Chevys were better than some...but.......

Hold on, hold on....Christ! Some of you turkeys are already on your poison e-mail trails telling me that I don’t know......................oh, stop! We know they’re bitchin. Golly. Just trying to provoke thought!

We had a ‘56 in High School and still want another one. The fact is that our kind (Hop Up Guys) can save the ‘Leave it to Beaver’ turds by lowering the hell out of them, adding sway bars or something, and good brakes and steering and making them handle something better than a bread truck. .....and fix wheels and tires and all that. Paul Newman on the Central Coast takes the things and puts all new Corvette doo-dahs under them. Now that is OK.

No, that’s really OK.

But if they have not been saved (read: improved the Hop Up way) they have no use to mankind. They are useless; without purpose. No redeeming qualities. The next restored stocker we see with fuzzy dice (admit it..... that’s where all the fuzzy dice go) we will probably just hurl.

How ’bout Falfa’s ‘55. James Taylor’s ‘55 in Two Lane Blacktop. That’s good screwin’ up. Make a gasser out of the big bricks. Hop ‘em up.

Or, you could take a stocker to cruise night and brag about your........signal-seeking radio.

And sit in that little chair that has "Dirk’s ‘55" embroidered on it to match the personalized plate.

And don’t call back.

en hopup veritas