B6 - Sunday, May 22, 1983 - North Shore News NE cnt Where have all the hot rods gone’ The death of automotive knowledge By ELLSWORTH DICKSON Tonight, tonight the highway’s bright Out of my way, Mister, you best keep Summer's here and the time ts right For racing tn the street. (Bruce Springsteen) In his song, “Racing m the Street,” Bruce Springsteen captured the feeling and mood of an era that somehow seems in the dis- tant past. As a teenager in the late 'S0’s and early ’60’s, not only did we love fast cars, but we took pride in working on them ourselves. Today, except for a few diehards, it seems that the mechanical knowledge of most young men is pretty superficial. This is due to an unfortunate series of circum- stances. In 1960, if you wanted a fast car, or any car for that matter, you had to maintain it’ yourself. What teenager then could afford expensive mechanics? It was the time when you could still search the countryside and _ find some gem in a farmer's field and tow it home. The first car ] owned was a 1932 Plymouth into which I shoehorned a 1953 Cadillac engine. Later I traded it for a car which Ill forever regret selling. It was a maroon 1946 Mercury Opera Coupe. Not content to leave tt stock, I stuck in a 1956 Buick engine and a truck transmission. It was beautiful, fast and darnit, it's gone forever. In this post beatnik, pre- hippie time, the sport of building hot rods and custom cars was growing by leaps and bounds. The car culture of those days is preserved on vinyl by the Beach Boys and a few other groups who sang such classics as “Little Deuce Coupe” and “Shut. down”. So many young men were interested mn hot cars that Detroit finally took notice By the mid-sixties, you could walk into a showroom and order a fast car to go It was the birth of the muscle cars like the Pontiac GTO, Dodge Charger, and Firebird The very act of buying a hot car meant that you no longer actually built it from the ground up. Gradually. “ wf ws IRE NAR AYAMA PUZOL PAOK