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Hot rods are typically American cars that might be old, classic, or modern and that have been rebuilt or modified with large engines optimized for speed and acceleration. One definition is: "a car that's been stripped down, souped up and made to go much faster." However, there is no definition of the term that is universally accepted and the term is attached to a wide range of vehicles. Most often they are individually designed and constructed using components from many makes of old or new cars, and are most prevalent in the United States and Canada. Many are intended for exhibition rather than for racing or everyday driving.
The origin of the term "hot rod" is unclear. Some say that the term "hot" refers to the vehicles being stolen. Other origin stories include replacing the engine's camshaft or "rod" with a higher performance version. According to the Hot Rod Industry Alliance (HRIA), the term changes in meaning over the years, but "hot rodding has less to do with the vehicle and more to do with an attitude and lifestyle". For example, hot rods were favorites for greasers.
The term has broadened to apply to other items that are modified for a particular purpose, such as "hot-rodded amplifier".
In the early days, a car modified for increased performance was called a "gow job". This term morphed into the hot rod in the early to late 1940s.
The term "hot rod" has had various uses in relation to performance cars. For example, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment in its vehicle emissions regulations refers to a hot rod as any motorized vehicle that has a replacement engine differing from the factory original.
Hot rods first appeared in the late 1930s in southern California, where people raced modified cars on dry lake beds northeast of Los Angeles, under the rules of the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA), among other groups. This gained popularity after World War II, particularly in California, because many returning soldiers had received technical training. The first hot rods were old cars (most often Fords, typically 1910s-1920s Model Ts, 1928–31 Model As, or 1932-34 Model Bs), modified to reduce weight. Engine swaps often involved fitting the Ford flathead V8 engine (known as the "flatty") into a different car, for example, the common practice in the 1940s of installing the "60 horse" version into a Jeep chassis.
Typical modifications were removal of convertible tops, hoods, bumpers, , and/or fenders; channeling the body; and modifying the engine by Engine tuning and/or replacing with a more powerful type. and were changed for improved traction and handling. Hot rods built before 1945 commonly used '35 Ford wire-spoke wheels.Shelton, Chris. "Then, Now, and Forever" in Hot Rod, March 2017, p.18.
In the '50s and '60s, the Ford flathead V8 was supplanted by the Chrysler FirePower engine (known as the "early hemi"). Many hot rods would upgrade the brakes from mechanical to hydraulic ("juice") and headlights from bulb to sealed-beam.Shelton, Chris. "Then, Now, and Forever" in Hot Rod, March 2017, pp.18 and 20. A typical mid-1950s to early 1960s custom Deuce was fenderless and steeply chopped, powered by a Ford or Mercury flathead,Shelton, p.20. with an Edelbrock intake manifold, Harman and Collins magneto, and Halibrand quick-change differential.Shelton, pp.17-18. Front suspension hairpins were adapted from , such as the .Shelton, p.24 and p.26 caption.
As hot rodding became more popular, magazines and associations catering to hot rodders were started, such as the magazine Hot Rod, founded in 1948.
However, the 1973 Oil Crisis caused car manufacturers to focus on fuel efficiency over performance, which led to a resurgence of interest in hot rodding. As the focus shifted away from racing, the modified cars became known as "street rods". The National Street Rod Association (NSRA) was formed and began hosting events.
By the 1970s, the small-block Chevy V8 was the most common choice of engine for hot rods. Another popular engine choice is the Ford Windsor engine. During the 1980s, many car manufacturers were reducing the displacements of their engines, thus making it harder for hot rod builders to obtain large displacement engines. Instead, engine builders had to modify the smaller engines (such as using non-standard and ) to obtain larger displacement. While current production V8s tended to be the most frequent candidates, this also applied to others. In the mid-1980s, as stock engine sizes diminished, rodders discovered the aluminum-block Buick or Oldsmobile V8 could be modified for substantially greater displacement, with mainly wrecking yard parts.Davis, Marlan. "Affordable Aluminum V8's sic", in Hot Rod Magazine, March 1985, pp.84-9 & 121. This trend was not limited to American cars; Volkswagen enthusiasts similarly stretched stock 1600cc engines to over two liters. VW Trends, March 1993, back cover.
Particularly during the early 1960s, a genre of "hot rod music" rose to mainstream popularity. Hot rod music was largely a product of a number of surf music groups running out of ideas for new surfing songs and simultaneously shifting their lyrical focus toward hot rods. Hot rod music would prove to be the second phase in a progression known as the California Sound, which would mature into more complex topics as the decade passed. Hot rods were used as the theme of Lightning Rod, a Rocky Mountain Construction roller coaster at Dollywood.
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