Volume IX, Issue 7, Page 56

Perhaps unintentionally, the rise of professionalism in appearance in drag racing evolved from the desire of team owners to elevate drag racing’s image to a higher plane, and more to satisfy the demands of sponsors. Three decades earlier, and long before Corporate America was willing to write multi-million dollar checks for drag racers, a similar crusade was launched to clean up the image of an earlier generation of hot rodders.

Back in those formative days -- the late 1950’s and early to mid ‘60s -- drag racing was far more sport than career. Racers held down regular jobs and spent their evenings in the garage and weekends wherever a group of like-minded individuals gathered to find out who was fastest. The early days may have been strictly amateurs, but that didn’t stop drag racing and its hot rodder participants from being tagged with a severely negative image. Borrowing the slogan off a popular t-shirt, you were better off telling your mother you just spent five years in prison rather than admit you’d been away drag racing! All hot rodders were considered bad boys with zero redeeming qualities. They were almost universally portrayed as the unsavory characters your momma warned you away from, and often aggressively condemned in both pulpit and print, usually for transgressions they didn’t commit.

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The truth is, most drag racers were just young men with a burning desire to learn how cars, engines and racing worked. Many of them were members of “The Greatest Generation,” fresh out of the military, having knocked off the Axis powers, and eager to expand on the mechanical skills they acquired in the service. Maybe their worst fault was the aggressively loud mufflers or straight pipes on those souped-up, rag-tag hot rods. To hot rodders the noise was music, but to the non-believers it was pure aggravation.

Adding to the controversy was the fact that there were few organized drag strips for the hot rodders to test and race their creations. Undaunted, these early hot rodders usually took to the public streets, resulting in even more negative reaction from the community. Asking any “respectable citizen” his or her opinion of hot rodders generally drew an immediate, thumbs down response. Those speed-crazed punks were the devil’s own spawn. If Aunt Gertrude’s opinion wasn’t proof enough, Hollywood’s movie moguls fanned the flames with B-grade movies depicting hot rods and drag racers as an outright menace.

Ironically, the solution to this dilemma came in the form of another ‘50s cultural innovation: hot rod car clubs. It was the reined-in, toned-down appearance and behavior of the car club members that finally turned the tide of negativity into acceptability for the much maligned hot rodders and their unpopular favorite pastime.

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