Or like Travolta wearing a poly leisure suit in Sat nite fever, the next month every guy was wearing a leisure suit. They were available everywhere from Brooks Bro. to Wal Mart. A few looked good in it, but most looked the same or bad in them, but soon everyone looked like clones, no one stood out from the rest.
Soon someone said that's enough, and wore something else to stand out in the crowd, and the circle started again.

 

I do like the wheels. Something went wrong after that. It looks a bit like a yard truck at my local parts recycler. If it's any consolation 'rage, at least it doesn't appear he wasted too many good Effie parts building it.

 

A "rat rod" is a piece of junk looking for a salvage yard. I have seen TOO much buildable iron and I mean complete vehicles disassembled and chopped up to build these unfinished piles of crap and that IS just what they are. The same money could have been spent to build something "cool". How any of these vehicles ever win a trophy is beyond me. Tom

 

Not something I'd want for myself but I like it. At least it's not sitting in some farmers field rotting away. I doubt if a good truck was wasted to build this thing. Most rat rods are made from left overs...

 

Vern makes a valid point. Left over parts are the common thread holding these things together. I see nothing wrong with that. My only gripe is when someone cuts up a restoration-worthy truck just to make it look "trendy". Case in point with my coworker, who has a '49 F3. The pics I've seen of the truck show it in great shape, faded paint and normal wear, but great shape overall. We know the running boards and bed parts are not reproduced, but he chopped it all up to "make if fit" his ratrod. A simple ad on the local Craigslist would have gotten him the parts he was looking for, and if he would've simply asked me for the spare parts I had, he could've gotten what he wanted and another F3 would've been saved.

Another thing: My Fairlane will be in a flat gray primer paint, and it will be called a ratrod by the masses. I will proclaim it is not a ratrod, but merely not done yet. So to the masses, definitions are obscure. It is what it is.

 

I think we can all agree, if it had a BIGGER shifter...

 

For me, I always want the freedom to create what I want with a truck or anything else. Along with that freedom comes the fact that others will criticize. That's just the way it is. I could build a perfect OEM stocker and someone would notice a fastner not angled correctly etc. Its the same way in art class. Some people can take criticism better than others. We need some-criticism--although I don't like receiving it--but we'd never learn or get better if everyone "always gushed" over our creations. It can be kinda complicated. I don't have all the answers.

Tom

 

Come on guys, it could be worse. He could have put a Chebbie motor in it. Uto..... that is a Chebbie motor. Never mind. Jag

 

That's actually a good analogy. But why do I see some much "art" on ebay. Just doesn't seem fitting for a masterpiece of this caliber.

 

The worst thing about this whole "ratrod" craze is that means I'll have to break down and make my truck purty so that people don't start calling my truck a ratrod.

Dang thats going to take alot of work....LOL

Bobby

I'd take those chrome wheels and baby moons anyday

 

They don't build 'em to win trophys, they build 'em to drive.
I wish mine drove... even if it did look like a rat rod!

 

Frankly IMO that thing is hideous and looks like it belongs in a wrecking yard wheels and all! (I hate white walls on anything!) But to each his own I guess. A big rule with hot rods is absolutely no IFS on fenderless cars or in this case trucks because it's ugly! I say a car, actually it was a junk rod or rust rod, at the Billetproof car show this year that makes that truck, even as ugly as it is, look good. But I hate idiots that go and cut up good sheet metal to make those ugly looking, ground scrapping, piles of ....... Well I've said my two cents worth!

 

Come on John, sometimes Wide Whites look good:

 

well i dont really mind it all that bad except for the bed wtf. personally i have always wanted to just take some old parts and put them together and make something uniuque and origanal and cool. mine would definalty have oldish them with a y block or flathead. just something stripped down to the bare essentials thats the way hot rods and harley davidsons should be. more along the lines of this one

 

I agree, but "bare essentials" to me includes doors that open, windows that roll up and down, wipers, etc. That's just a cartoon car, a show vehicle only