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

Abstract

Exhibit Review HOT RODS AND CUSTOMS: THE MEN AND MACHINES OF CALIFORNIA’S CAR CULTURE, AT THE OAKLAND MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA ROBERT C. POST The postwar car culture is typically perceived as having southern California origins. But it had strong roots elsewhere as well, notably in the San Francisco Bay area. For one, there was the Oakland Road­ ster Show, which had its inception nearly fifty years ago and is now billed as “America’s longest-running and most prestigious hot rod and custom car showcase.” The idea of the Oakland Museum pro­ ducing an exhibition on hot-rodding also goes back a long way. By the time this one finally materialized in 1996, however, Oakland had been anticipated by displays at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles and by a traveling show titled Kustorn Kulture organized in 1993 by the Laguna Art Museum in Orange County. Still, HotRods and Customsundoubtedly comprehended the richest variety ofsuch vehicles, twenty-nine of them, ranging from a Spartan Model-T roadster refashioned by Ed Iskenderian in 1939 (fig. 1) to “CadZZila,” transformed from a Cadillac Sedanette a few years ago at a cost of $450,000 to the owner, Billy Gibbons of the rock band called ZZ Top. All told, there were about an equal number of such “customs,” designed expressly as showpieces, and “rods” intended for speed contests, be they on city streets, drag strips, or dry lakes (fig. 2). Except for a few vintage photos and scattered memorabilia, all the cars except one were displayed in whatJoe Corn has called the “celebratory” mode. Visitors were expected to savor them as icons, and no doubt the curators were thrilled when the San Francisco Chronicles notoriously hard-to-please art critic praised the show by remarking that “the collision of convention and invention that deDR . Post is former curator oftransportation at the National Museum ofAmerican History and author of High Performance: The Culture and Technology ofDrag Racing, 1950-1990. He thanks the co-curators of Hot Rods and Customs, Michael Dobrin and Philip 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$02.00 116 Hot Rods and Customs, at the Oakland Museum 117 Fig. 1.—Ed Iskenderian, who subsequently prospered in the automotive aftermarket, 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 from the way it appeared on the cover of one of the first issues of Hot Rod magazine in 1948. (All photos by Michael Dobrin.) fines modernity in art is likely to occur whenever obsessed tinkerers do their stuff.” (The exhibition also got an appreciative notice in the Wall StreetJournal.') But, however pleasing they might be to a critic or enthusiast, tech­ nological artifacts displayed as objets d’art are not likely to impress most readers of thisjournal, attuned as they are to contextualization as 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 Grajjiti was staged in a ramshackle 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 ofthe car culture’s revered elders, lived there. So did the exhibit’s co-curator, Philip Linhares. And most importantly, George Lucas went to high school in Modesto, and his film American Graffiti was sited in that Central Valley town. Now, I was never inside a hot-rodder’s garage in Modesto, but I was in plenty of others in similar towns like El Monte, and I can attest to the exquisite authenticity of this one. From the obsolete engine sitting on the floor to the prime-coated “deuce” grille hang- 118 Robert C. Post Fig. 2.—Modified from a 1934 Ford, this rakish coupe ultimately clocked 224 miles an hour on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. In the 1990s a southern California collector had it restored to its appearance when it was first turned into a hot rod...