There have been a lot of great hot rod-oriented books released in the last year or so. We've compiled this short list of some of the newest and, in our opinion, most interesting. Whether your taste runs to technical buildups, hot rod history, lifestyle stuff, feature cars, motorsports, or all of the above, there is plenty out there to capture your interest. If none of the following books grab you, go to the listed Web sites for even more choices.
The Hot Rod World Of Robt. Williams
By Robert Williams With Mike Lavella
Hardcover * 176 Pages * $40
Www.Motorbooks.Com
Hot rods and the culture surrounding them were once considered edgy, low-brow, and threatening. That's changed, but not for Robert Williams. His artwork-challenging, unsettling, and enormously popular-has appeared on Roth Studio T-shirts, gallery walls, and the pages of Zap Comix and art books. This isn't an art book. Here, Williams tells his fascinating personal story, centering around his lifelong involvement with hot rods-from the '34 coupe he owned when he was 12, to his wife Suzanne's chopped '34 Tudor, and his own '32 roadster. As one of the first finished primered rods, the Eights & Aces roadster created an uproar. When the hobby finally caught up, Williams was already way down the road. The '32, elaborately repainted as Prickly Heat, agitated the hobby all over again. As with everything Williams creates, people love it or hate it-nobody is indifferent.
Sundays With Von Dutch: Calabasas 1970
By Richard Karl Koch
Paperback * 128 pages * $24.95
www.motorbooks.com
There have been a couple of excellent books about Von Dutch recently. This newest contribution to the Dutch annals is altogether different. In 1970, photographer Richard Karl Koch spent four consecutive Sundays at Dutch's home in Calabasas, California, shooting photos for the Los Angeles Times Sunday supplement magazine, West. Now, 37 years later, those photos-and more-are presented in this close-up look at the artist and icon. Tony Thacker wrote the text that accompanies the photos, but this book isn't a biography or a commentary. It's a snapshot of Von Dutch at the center of his career. He had recently built the Winton Flyer for the Steve McQueen movie, The Reivers, was building firearms, and, of course, still 'striping cars and motorcycles. None of us will get to hang out with Von Dutch on a Sunday afternoon, but Koch's book might make you feel like you did.
Rockin' Down The Highway: The Cars And People
That Made Rock Roll
By Paul Grushkin
Hardcover * 240 pages * $40
www.rockindownthehighway.com
www.voyageurpress.com
Hot rodders were the original rock stars. Elvis was still in grade school and Chuck Berry was working at the Fisher Body plant when hot rodding ignited in the '40s. Rockers didn't invent the full-throttle, nonconformist lifestyle-they stole it from the rodders and added a soundtrack. Bands started singing about cars as much as about girls, and soon a cool car was a necessary accessory for any self-respecting musician. Paul Grushkin's entertaining history charts the 50-year-long overlap of rock 'n' roll and cars, starting at the '50s drive-in, where jukeboxes exposed hot rodders to rock. Part encyclopedia and part scrapbook, this book is completely packed with 800 photos and descriptions of stars, cars, car kulture artists, album covers, interviews, and concert posters. It's about cars and rock, but what it's really about is cars as an expression of personality.
Drag Racing Gassers Photo Archive
By Lou Hart
Paperback * 128 pages * $29.95
www.iconografixinc.com
Drag Racing Fuel Altereds Photo Archive
By Lou Hart
Paperback * 128 pages * $29.95
www.iconografixinc.com
There's a reason why nostalgia drag racing is one of the fastest growing segments of motorsports and why Gassers and Fuel Altereds are two of the most popular classes in vintage quarter-mile action. Probably no other classes capture the overall drama and excitement of racing like these two.
The appeal of the Gassers may have been the fact that the cars were a natural progression from what hot rodders had been racing on the dry lakes before drag strips existed. Fans in the stands could relate to the recognizable bodies of these stock-wheelbased cars. With Fuel Altereds, it was their crazy appearances, and the wild showmanship that went with them, that made them popular.
Drag racing photographer Lou Hart watched through the lens of his camera as the sport emerged and evolved. He knows the historical significance and visual appeal of these early drag cars and has collected some of his best photos from the '50s, '60s, and '70s in book form. What he has previously done for slingshot dragsters and '60s Funny Cars, he's now done for Gassers and Fuel Altereds with two new photo archive books.
Luckily, we can still watch Gassers and Fuel Altereds run at nostalgia drags. And, luckily, we have these two books to provide a look at the coolest cars in drag racing from back before they were considered nostalgic.
Hop Up Volume Eight
Published by Mark Morton
Paperback * 146 pages * $12.95
www.hopupmag.com
We barely got past the Tom Fritz painting on the front cover before we knew we liked the eighth and latest issue. Tradition-minded hot rodders start getting impatient when it's time for another volume of Hop Up. Number eight was worth the wait. William Quinn originated Hop Up as a digest-sized magazine more than 50 years ago, and Mark Morton does a great job sustaining the title with these annuals. The content in this year's issue blends the old ('50s era photos from Bonneville, indoor shows, and the drags) and the new (more than a dozen current rods built to keep old-time styling alive) with a few timeless surprises (the well-preserved Alcala T from the early '50s and the under-reconstruction Black Widow T from the same period). You get all this plus the Halfhill-Neal-Pommer T roadster that was already a 30-year survivor when it made the cover of Hot Rod in 1950.
The Cars Of Overhaulin' With Chip Foose
By Dain Gingerelli
Paperback * 160 pages * $21.95
www.motorbooks.com
If you didn't catch "Overhaulin'" on The Learning Channel, you missed one of the most entertaining car-build shows on television. Every week, custom car designer and builder Chip Foose and his crew of builders "pranked" some unsuspecting victim by heisting his or her car, creating an elaborate imaginary backstory to mislead the owner, and completely reworked the car in seven non-stop days and nights. Meanwhile the "mark" flips out, thinking the car has been stolen or impounded. Dain Gingerelli has collected the stories of some of the most successful projects from the first three seasons of the show. Each of the 17 chapters starts with a description of the "sting," and continues with the details of how Chip and his A-team managed to transform a plain Jane car or truck into a Foose-level work of art in one week, keeping the owner completely in the dark.
Anatomy Of The Hot Rod
By Doug Mitchel
Hardcover * 256 pages * $35
www.krausebooks.com
Hot rod photo books are nothing new, and can range from a hodgepodge of arbitrarily assembled feature cars to high-end anthologies with the production and photo quality of a high-buck art book. Doug Mitchel's 39-car collection falls toward the latter category. Most of the 400 full-color images fill half and whole pages. Even the shots of engines, emblems, taillights, and dash details are blown up to in-your-face size here, making every detail visible. Most importantly, his selection of hot rods, customs, pickups, and musclecars is diverse, ranging from George Mostardini and Brian Helmintoler's raw and rusty '29 Model As to high-tech cars like Matt Delap's contemporary '37 Plymouth and Bob Parks' '57 Chevy pickup (both from Getz's Hot Rod Innovations)-and everything in between.