I’m a student of gearhead anthropology and am proud of a few prophetic calls about trend shifting in past years, but here’s a twist I didn’t see coming: the next generation doesn’t know what’s cool. To put it in their view, they don’t care what cars and styles old guys think are cool. This is fantastic news.
In my day, we kids read HOT ROD and Car Craft, and when Gray Baskerville told us that Model As on Deuce rails were the purest roadsters or Jeff Smith told us Pro Street was cool, we fell into line. Of course, back then there were fewer styles of cars in the mix and the whole hobby was chronologically closer to its roots. Today there are decades more body styles, build styles, race trends, iconic project cars, and media outlets. There are thousands of “social influencers” out there, and many more marketers. Inspiration is spread thinner, but broader.
The upside is that old thoughts about the rules of hot rodding haven’t filtered down as steadfastly, leaving more room for open thought. I first realized this when seeing reactions to my most recent restyling of HOT ROD’s 23-year project Crusher Camaro. I was influenced by NHRA Modified Production cars of the early 1970s, adding 15×10 Cragars poking out the quarter-panels and hiding the tunnel ram with the controversial item: the Grump Lump. This absurd proboscis was the pinnacle of cool in 1970, was derided as outdated awfulness in the 1990s, and is coming back for certain cars as retro trends are awash in the 2000-teens. I expect people to think a boxy Grump Lump is ugly, but either in a gross-but-cool-retro way or just-plain-hideous-in-a-please-don’t-bring-back-the-’70s way. Curiously to me, it was a never-before-seen phenomenon to many of the freshman car folks on social media, and as a result, they judged it on its own merits, unclouded by nostalgia. Some thought it was the worst thing ever done to a 1967 Camaro, fewer thought I’d broken new ground as a styling genius.
Next example. Not even ironically, my pal and video cohost Steve Dulcich made the quip that a 1971 Plymouth Duster may have superior styling to a 1969 Mustang Mach 1. It was provocative, so I turned the concept over to the social audience for commentary. Shockingly, many agreed with Steve—and not just the Mopar-only weirdos. The junior gearheads had no context of decades of magazine stories identifying the Mach 1 as one of the greatest styling exercises in automotive history, and no idea that the Duster was once the Chevy Spark (OK, the Spark 2LT) of 1970s transportation and the subject of social shaming in the 1980s. All they knew was what lines most appealed to them. Only when the debate hit YouTube was Dulcich derided as a clueless stoner, but YouTube commenters hate everything and everybody.
If my hunch is right that the newest folks into the hobby have more open minds than ever, it’s a great opportunity. It means we old guys can dazzle ’em with retreaded styles that will seem fresh, and more importantly, that we will see some new trends out of these folks instead of continuously relying on history to guide us. Loving cars for what they are now instead of what they were then! It’s a thing.
HRDP-171000-LAST-01
The Grump Lump is a boxy hoodscoop pioneered by Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins circa 1968. The Crusher’s latest iteration was inspired by Jenkins’ Camaro that won the first NHRA Pro Stock race in 1970, and that trickled influence into the Stock and Modified classes for a decade-plus.
The post Coolness: A Moving Target appeared first on Hot Rod Network.