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Home | Programmes | Behind The Scenes | Hot Rod History | Custom Creations | Find Out More
From Leonardo da Vinci's first drawing of what he imagined a horseless carriage would look like, to today's £160,000, 515bhp Ferrari 575 coupé (0-60mph in 4.1 seconds – ooff!), the old motor car has certainly moved on a bit.
In the late 1700s, French engineer Joseph Cugnot was the first to come up with the steam-powered car. He later crashed it into a wall, making that the first car crash in history.
In the 1800s, Scotsman Robert Anderson played with the idea of an electrically-powered car (very ahead of his time). This concept competed with gas, fuel oil and alcohol-powered cars for the hearts of the new breed of rich drivers up to the 1900s.
Just at the turn of the century, German engineers Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz separately started patenting what we would consider proper looking cars, using the new four-cylinder, four-stroke engines of fellow countrymen Wilhelm Maybach and Nicolaus Otto respectively. These designs were sold on to other manufacturers, like the French firm Peugeot.
Then mass production came along. The French were pretty good at this, but the Americans took the world by storm. By 1913, Henry Ford had built a conveyor belt production line in his factory, and his Model T was knocked together in about an hour and a half.
At about this time came the first spark of 'conversion' thinking. Today, people worry about whether their car is a GT, GTX, GTO or whatever. Imagine if you only had 'T' to choose from? What a nightmare! You're busy driving down the mud track, frightening all the horses in your shiny new Ford Model T – when your neighbours suddenly thrash by and cut you up in exactly the same car! How embarrassing. By the 1920s, people were already starting to adapt and race their cars, and individual flair had started to appear.
One thing's for sure, old motors, like those of the 1920s, '30s and '40s, probably had no idea that they were about to be chopped, tuned and lowered to ridiculous proportions by the first batch of real motor car customisers: the hot rod-crazy homecoming GIs.
After seeing all kinds of adapted vehicles in World War II, the returning GIs had plans of their own. Take a 1920s car, lower it, fit a monster engine, bigger wheels and tyres, remove any extra weight and what do you have? A serious and desirable street car. The hot rodding phenomenon is strong today, but it really started in the 1940s.
Not to be outdone by the home builders, the larger manufacturers started to release custom models of their standard vehicles. However, it wasn't long before many of the custom models were further adapted by their owners. The need to change the car and be an individual was now in the blood of every young driver.
From hot rods and customs to extra specialist cars like dragsters (American Scott Kalitta's dragster does over 333mph!) and even attempts to make commercially successful floating and even flying cars, it appears that there is no limit to the lengths people will go to when it comes to developing the old four wheels.
Today, there's a massive market for add-on bits for every model of car, and a host of different sporting categories open to enthusiasts. As for the monster adaptations that the likes of Cookie and his crew get up to, well there's even a thriving community of scrapheap builders who'll happily have a go at building anything.
Did Leonardo foresee any of this when he had his 'back of an envelope' brainwave? Probably not. He'd already moved on to inventing helicopters.
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