Don’t call them rat rods. Autorama Extreme for 2014 featured a basement packed full of traditionally flavored rods and customs. Check ‘em out.
MCG likes to call Autorama Extreme, the basement show at the Detroit Autorama, the Salon des Refuses of the car-building world. It’s conventional hot rodding, more or less, but with an attitude. Increasingly removed from its tatty rat rod roots, today the scene is more focused on the traditional and historical elements of hot rodding. Here are a few of our favorites from this year’s show:
+ Tom Carrigan’s incredible ’39 Chevy two-door sedan, which he has stretched several feet in order to stuff in a 1710 CID Allison V12 powerplant rolling on a scratch-built chassis. The WWII-vintage aircraft engine now sports his homebrew electronic fuel injection system.
+ One of Detroit’s earliest hot rods, a channeled ’32 Ford roadster built by Tommy Foster and now owned by Richard Munz, was brought over by the staff at the Gilmore Car Museum, where it is currently part of the American Legends exhibit.
+ A period-perfect 1941 Willys gasser straight out of 1968, complete with psychedelic paint, blue plexi windows, and injected Big-Block Chevy, now owned by Richard Malmsten.
+ Another period-perfect rod, a 1929 Model A roadster discovered in a Michigan basement in the summer of 2013 by Chris Fodell. The lowboy, which was apparently built in around 1960 and was last registered in 1982, sports Oldsmobile J-2 power and a LaSalle transmission.
Check out all these cars and more in the gallery below.
