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NHRA used to stand for National Hot Rod Association.
It's become No Hot Rods Allowed.
Why?
Safety.
It looks bad if you let people die when the duct tape peels off and the car crumples into a ball and the baling wire traps the driver in the fire.
A hot rod organization, in the true spirit of hot rodding, would require a dangerous improvisation or the car wouldn't pass tech.
And people would get hurt in such numbers you'd think race weekend was an ambulance convention.
I've been to car shows and seen a lot of these original cars.
Some things are ingenious, others are terrifying.
Then there's the terrifyingly ingenious...
But then, hot rodding was founded by people who'd just come back from WW2 and found that normal life just wasn't cutting it after getting shot at...
Same things are true of "stock car" racing. There is almost nothing at all "stock" about anything in NASCAR's upper levels. There really hasn't been much of any production car parts in a Cup car since at least the 1980s, and even by the 1970s most of them was really a purpose built race car.
ReplyDeleteWhen you get down to smaller level like IMCA and to classes like "hobby stock" or "bomber", you start to see more the way it used to be. Mostly dirt tracks, cars that once were actually street cars. Even then at the local dirt tracks, "modifieds", "sprints", etc, have always been purpose built cars for racing, even if a lot of them are powered by an engine once from a street vehicle (usually an old school. Small Block Chevy). Well, they evolved out of street cars (Sprints I believe out of 1930s cars and modifieds out of F-bodies) but they've been built from scratch (or almost factory made) for so long the lineage is lost.
IHRA (Sportsman & brackets) and some of the local events are more "run what you brung" subject to at least a few safety rules... Gotta wear a helmet, tires can't be corded, battery can't be flopping loose, can't have missing lugs or nuts, etc... But at a lot of the events in brackets you will see cars lining up that are way different... Trucks and rice burners, Muscle cars and drag bikes... Brackets can make it interesting because it's not just about who is "fastest". In fact, I've beat a lot of much faster cars and sometimes been beat by slower ones. But that's mostly because my skills on the light aren't what they used to be...
In today's world, the track has to have at least some concessions to safety or they'd get shut down. Back in the early days it was a different world. Society was not nearly as litigious. Cars were not nearly as fast as they are now. There are quite a few cars that you can drive off the showroom floor these days that will turn low 11s or faster even on factory supplied tires. It took a LOT to push a car that fast in the 1940s-1980s. There were few street driveable cars which could do it. Of course cars are also a lot safer now than they used to be... steering wheels and dashboards that aren't so hard that you just hose them off after an accident, better seat belts, MUCH better brakes, etc.
And even with the rules sometimes people still get hurt. A few years ago there was a "no prep" race at an airport down by Kerrville. Now, I don't like to run on "no prep" tracks personally (the sticky stuff really helps). But slick surface on that day = Mustang crowd surfing and spectators dead (I know, bad Chevy fan picking on the Mustang guys). In that case I mostly blame the organizers of the event not just for the "no prep" part, but also because they didn't have adequate guard rails and the spectators were allowed way too close to the track.
I dunno, I'm not as strict about definitions or distinctions between "racer" or "hot rodder". If you don't want to ever abide by any rules at all then basically you're limited strictly to being a show car, or just a street driver or illegal street racing. And that's fine if that is what you want. But if you want to actually run on a track at all, you're going to at least have to have a car that doesn't look like it will fly apart and explode even on test and tune nights. But really, they're pretty relaxed at the drag strip I go to. There are a few cars that run that are very Jerry rigged (and I can say that w/o being racist since I identify as about 1/2 Jerry) in the tradition of the old days in a lot of ways. And there are a lot of cars built that will never see a track, and that's OK.
So I don't think hot-rodding is dead, but yeah, it has changed. I think the spirit is still there, just the higher level you go, the more corporate it gets and the less "soul" there is left. -swj
A modern car that is factory built to do 11's will do it so casually it's not even funny. A '70's hot-rod doing that is scary inside. Ask me how I know.
DeleteI know exactly what you mean. Stock C7 Z06 and C8s seem like they are barely breaking a sweat turning low 11s and they are totally stable doing 180+ on the open road. Most 1970s hot rods that can do either of those feel like they are about to self destruct. It's amazing how stiff the chassis and suspensions are on those cars. I suppose it is part of why they are so unbelievably heavy compared to older cars despite using so much more lightweight materials... aluminum engines, more plastics and composites, etc.
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