For a good half century, the hobby of hot-rodding generally meant taking a cheap car, removing any body parts that didn’t matter (i.e. roofs, hoods, bumpers, fenders, seats, and other such nonsense), modifying the engine, and / or by fitting a larger one for greater performance (often sticking up out of the hood) and fattening up the tires for extra traction.

The term is still as precise as ever. In fact, not even the cars in question have necessarily changed: a very typical image of a hot rod is a muscle car straight out of the 1960s (the so-called golden age of muscle cars), restored to all its glory and something. more. It’s not uncommon to take the great car ancestors we know today (Mustang, GTO) or those forgotten by all but a few (Plymouth Barracuda) and send your V8’s output to 600 horsepower or more. Hot rods can have as much to do with customization as they can save weight (think burning paint jobs), and price isn’t necessarily an item – a remarkable Barracuda (“Hemi Cuda” in hot rod talk ) on the cover of a major name Hot Rod magazine had each body panel and interior item customized to the wish of its owner. For $ 340,000.

As for the relationship of hot rods to American culture, the link is quite strong. Almost all hot rods are American and almost always rear-wheel drive. In our culture, quarter-mile times make the man. Enthusiasts who spend as much time in the present as in the past also pay close attention to today’s production cars like the new Mustang, and the upcoming 2009 Chevy Camaro and Dodge Challenger are currently making headlines in the news.

Of course, no rules said it had to be a car, per se. Muscular + American seems to add up enough; Jeep’s Grand Cherokee SRT-8 appears to be a hot item, no doubt due to the street cred of its modern 425-horsepower Hemi V8. Even the new Chevy Tahoe draws attention.

But some define the genre on their own terms, creating an occasional aberration. One individual dropped a turbocharged NOS Buick V6 right under the hood of a Geo Metro, for crying out loud. If you can go the quarter mile in 9.3 seconds at 147 MPH, who cares how you get there?

If hot rods are to be defined as speed at low prices, count on it to be part of our culture as long as planet Earth has fuel.