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Hot Rods and Customs: The Men and Machines of California's Car Culture, at the Oakland

Museum of CaliforniaAuthor(s): Robert C. PostSource: Technology and Culture, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), pp. 116-121Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Society for the History of TechnologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3107006 .

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Exhibit ReviewHOT RODS AND CUSTOMS:THE MEN ANDMACHINESOF CALIFORNIA'SCAR CULTURE, AT THEOAKLAND MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIAROBERT C. POST

The postwarcar culture is typicallyperceived as having southernCaliforniaorigins. But it had strong roots elsewhere aswell, notablyin the San FranciscoBayarea. Forone, there was the Oakland Road-ster Show, which had its inception nearly fifty years ago and is nowbilled as "America'slongest-running and most prestigious hot rodand custom car showcase." The idea of the Oakland Museum pro-ducing an exhibition on hot-rodding also goes back a long way.Bythe time this one finallymaterializedin 1996, however,Oakland hadbeen anticipated by displaysat the Petersen Automotive Museum inLos Angeles and by a travelingshow titled KustomKultureorganizedin 1993 by the Laguna Art Museum in Orange County.Still,HotRodsandCustomsundoubtedly comprehended the richestvarietyof suchvehicles, twenty-nineof them, rangingfrom a SpartanModel-T roadsterrefashioned by Ed Iskenderian in 1939 (fig. 1) to"CadZZila," ransformedfrom a Cadillac Sedanette a few years agoat a cost of $450,000 to the owner, Billy Gibbons of the rock bandcalled ZZTop. All told, there were about an equal number of such"customs," designed expresslyas showpieces, and "rods" intendedfor speed contests, be they on city streets, drag strips, or dry lakes(fig. 2).Except for a few vintage photos and scattered memorabilia, allthe cars except one were displayed in whatJoe Corn has called the"celebratory"mode. Visitorswere expected to savor them as icons,and no doubt the curators were thrilled when the San FranciscoChronicle'snotoriously hard-to-please art critic praised the show byremarking that "the collision of convention and invention that de-

DR. POST s former curator of transportation at the National Museum of AmericanHistory and author of High Performance:The Culture and Technologyof Drag Racing,1950-1990. He thanks the co-curators of Hot Rods and Customs,Michael Dobrin andPhilip Linhares, for their kindnesses when he visited Oakland.? 1998 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved.0040-165X/98/3901-0005$02.00

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Hot Rods and Customs, at the Oakland Museum

FIG. 1.-Ed Iskenderian, who subsequently prospered in the automotiveaftermarket, took a 1924 Model-T Ford and began converting it into a "gow job"even before World War II. It was displayed in Oakland virtually unchanged fromthe way it appeared on the cover of one of the first issues of Hot Rod magazine in1948. (All photos by Michael Dobrin.)

fines modernity in art is likely to occur whenever obsessed tinkerersdo their stuff." (The exhibition also got an appreciative notice inthe Wall Street ournal.)But, however pleasing they might be to a critic or enthusiast, tech-nological artifacts displayed as objets d'art are not likely to impressmost readers of this journal, attuned as they are to contextualizationas the touchstone of effective exhibitry. Fortunately, the one excep-tion to the prevailing mode in Oakland made up for a great deal.The yellow '32 Ford coupe from American Graffitiwas staged in aramshackle residential garage, a set piece called "Emerald Avenue,Modesto," created with unfailing fidelity (fig. 3). Why Emerald Ave-nue, Modesto? For one thing, Gene Winfield, one of the car culture'srevered elders, lived there. So did the exhibit's co-curator, PhilipLinhares. And most importantly, George Lucas went to high schoolin Modesto, and his film American Graffitiwas sited in that CentralValley town.Now, I was never inside a hot-rodder's garage in Modesto, but Iwas in plenty of others in similar towns like El Monte, and I canattest to the exquisite authenticity of this one. From the obsoleteengine sitting on the floor to the prime-coated "deuce" grille hang-

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118 RobertC. Post

FIG.2.-Modified from a 1934 Ford, this rakish coupe ultimately clocked 224miles an hour on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats. In the 1990s a southern Californiacollector had it restored to its appearance when it was first turned into a hot rodin the late 1940s.ing on the wall to all the parts and pieces scattered on benches andshelves (and even spilling over into mother's adjoining laundryroom), this setting was an absolute tour de force. The ambience wasperfect.And so, then, the car culture has had a celebratory exhibit and(again in Corn's terminology) a memorable excursion into thesocial-historical, that Modesto garage-all rolled into one in Oak-land. What's left to do? Actually, plenty. A photo in the museum'squarterly magazine shows a hot-rodders' pantheon posed aroundone of the cars featured in the show. Thirty people, all male, allwhite. (Not even a Hispanic-no low-riders in this exhibition.) Abso-lutely homogeneous. While this is scarcely surprising, the conjunc-tion of "men and machines" is a matter worth some explicit atten-tion the next time somebody does a show on the car culture.I say this not by way of affirming my politically correct sensibilitiesbut rather to suggest that the next exhibition should take advantageof an opportunity to pursue some very interesting questions. Firstand foremost, there is Ruth Schwartz Cowan's question: "Was thefemale experience of technological change significantly differentfrom the male experience?" It's an obvious way of getting beyondwhat we could learn from Hot Rods and Customs. Make no mistake,


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Hot Rods and Customs, at the Oakland Museum

FIG. 3.-"Emerald Avenue, Modesto," a 1962 set piece created by Michael C.McMillen and Craig Stecyk, the latter the curator of an earlier exhibition calledKustom Kulture. The "deuce" coupe, builder unknown, was featured in the GeorgeLucas film American Graffiti.Here, it has apparently just had its outmoded Ford en-gine (right) replaced by an overhead-valve Chevrolet.

Hot Rods and Customscould impart a lot of information to an atten-tive viewer-about technological enthusiasm, about the seductivewiles of novelty, about mechanical virtuosity and singular aestheticvisions (fig. 4). But there is so much more. There was a machine inthat laundry room, too, a washing machine.Once, hot-rodding epitomized youthful male rebellion. Now it islargely the domain of the middle-aged (or older), often couples,mostly affluent, Reaganite not anarchist-an activity freighted withnostalgia because of its irreversible transformation by all the thingsthat have changed in America in the past two generations. The sortof people whom Tom Wolfe once lionized are gone forever. Eventhough there are still artisans who practice the same crafts, and prac-tice them superbly, they are a different sort of people.Yes, guys still do guy things, but it's just not the same as it wasbefore the watershed epoch of the late 1960s. Paul LeMat's Milner,the hero of American Graffiti-an early '70s movie set in the early'60s-represents the last of a breed. In a review of Kustom Kulturethe journalist Henry Allen wrote: "As we were losing in Vietnam,feminism saw its opportunity to make guy things the living proof ofstupidity, ugliness, and oppression." Such a characterization is way

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FIG.4.-Steve Moal,an Oaklandmetalsmith,fashioned this roadsterin the tradi-tion of European coachmasters such as Pinin Farina. The frame and handcraftedaluminum body have been mated to prewarFord running gear.

FIG.5.-One of hot-rodding's most original designs-"lakesters"-had bodiesadapted from auxiliaryfuel tanks of World WarII fighter planes.


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Hot Rods and Customs, at theOaklandMuseumtoo severe, and this merits demonstrating in another show on hotrods and customs.But that show should directlyconfront somethingelse as well: "the innate conservatism of car culture-with its beliefin exacting, precision work,a pantheon of heroes, women as decora-tive accouterments, macho contests of speed and strength, and theprimacyof representational art."This remarkby a LosAngelesTimes taffernamed CathyCurtiscap-turesmuch that is of essence to the carculture. But it misses some ofits essence as well. One cannot deny that the machineryin Oaklanddisplayedwondrous measuresof technological and artisticcreativity(fig. 5). The next time, the trick will be to apply some significantmeasure of culturalanalysiswhile not losing sight of that wondrouscreativity.It won't be easy, but it's not impossible either.Hot Rods and Customs ad an abbreviated run, just four monthsbeginning on September 21, 1996, but a graphic meditation of theexhibition survives n the form of a 128-page catalog edited by theshow'sco-curators,Michael Dobrin and Philip Linhares,with contri-butions by Pat Ganahl, editor of the quarterlyRodder'sournal.Thecatalog is still availablefrom the Oakland Museum of California,ArtDepartment, 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA 94607-4892.

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