Origins
The December 1972 issue of Rod & Custom Magazine was dedicated to the "beater", a low-budget alternative to the over-polished, slickly-painted, customized early car. The beater could easily be considered a progenitor of the rat rod with its cheap upholstery, primer instead of paint, and lack of chrome or polished metals. However, owners of these beaters often had a high-dollar machine sitting in their garage.
As with many cultural terms, there are disputes over the origin of the term "rat rod". Some say it first appeared in an article written in Hot Rod Magazine by Gray Baskerville about cars that still sported a coat of primer. Some claim that the first rat rod was owned by artist Robert Williams who had a '32 Ford Roadster that was painted in primer. Hot Rod magazine has since verified this. Gray's use was in relation to "Rat Bikes," motorcycles thrown together from spare parts to be enjoyed and ridden, not necessarily to show the builders best fabrications skills. Although the term likely started out as derogatory or pejorative (and is still used in this way by many of the high dollar Street Rodding community), members of the subcultures that build and enjoy these cars have adopted the term in a positive light.
Read more about this topic: Rat Rod
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)