9781422277089

America, drag racing was seen as the activity of hoodlums because there were several street racing accidents involving young men and women in heavily customized cars whose tragic deaths made for attention-grabbing headlines. Then, of course, parents wanted their concerns addressed by local schools and police. Unfortunately, the more frequently tragic racing deaths happened, the more dramatic the headlines became and the more concerned parents became. Not only were parents concerned, but car builders and drivers who loved the sport did not want to see it made into a villain. As much as anyone else, drag racers didn’t want to get hurt and didn’t want to hurt anyone. They did like, however, bruising egos on the race track. The pressure from the negative publicity and the legitimate concerns of parents led the big names in car customizing and drag racing to organize their sport with rules, safety requirements, and the stipulation that all racing be done on organized tracks, not streets. But from the beginning of automobile mass production, youths were driven to deck out their cars. It took little more than a decade for the aftermarket to get a foothold, and by the 1910s, carmakers were offering their own custom options. Within the higher end car market of the time, the options were what defined the car. The Benz motor company (later Mercedes-Benz) was the first to offer brake pads. The pads were invented during a cross- Germany tour of one of the early Benz cars. As a publicity stunt of to show off how easy the Benz automobiles were to drive, Karl Benz’s wife, Bertha, put herself and their teen children in a Benz #3 model and drove to see her mother. This was a completely open vehicle, a literal horseless carriage, and the carriage was not fancy, but rather open, small, and cramped.

explored, not just the addition of a bobblehead or two. These cars will be ones that defy imagination and, in some cases, have literally been turned upside down. Somewhere in the neighborhood of six generations of car owners have been using their automobiles as moving canvases. They’ve splashed all manner of abstract and realistic objects across them. Custom cars can often be dated by their paint jobs. Today’s exotic paint jobs often appear to express complicated geometric formulas, which create illusions with angled lines, blurring the actual shape of the car. Custom cars in the 1970s often sported racing lines or even silkscreen paintings of landscapes, dragons, and attractive women. The 1960s was the era of Day-Glo colors and abstract images painted on cars. Prior to the ‘60s, most paint jobs served a strictly utilitarian purpose. Hot rods often got only a coat of grey or black primer. While custom car art and body creations became recognized as an art form in the 1970s, the early days were more about getting the job done than making cars look pretty. Car customizers didn’t have a great reputation either. In post-war In the 1970s, racing stripes like the ones on this 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass were a common custom addition.

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