Car Clubs bring safety and performance to Hot Rodding.
Here’s another cool movie I found on the US Auto Industry channel on YouTube for our Hiwaze column. It appears to be a PSA from 1953 called: “The Cool Hot Rod”. Courtesy of the Internet Archive’s 35mm stock footage collection.
Filmed in Inglewood to promote youths to join car clubs with their strict safety and community standards to cut down on unsafe driving and deaths caused by teens on the roads. Driver’s education and racing sanctioning bodies like the NHRA and SCTA were just beginning at this time as well.
This is the era where the first set of children of the “Greatest Generation” (WWII Soldiers) were of age to drive. Some would say the largest generation with oil in their veins and speed in their soul. Filmed in Southern California, the home of so many performance companies and nearby to the number one magazine for these youths: Hot Rod Magazine. If you wanted to hop up your car with some new performance parts, or tech tips on tuning that flathead, that was the ONLY place to go back then. Hot Rod magazine featured the growing racing and cruising scene, new parts, and the people behind them.
Did you hear that?
There it is again. It is BOOMING out here. Yep. The 1950’s was booming with business, industry and yes kids! The manufacturing industry in the U.S. was the best in the world and the most productive. Perfect for a growing country. We were well suited because the war was elsewhere. Europe was devastated and had to be re-built before they could make anything. We were primed perfectly for growth. That boom you hear is the big bang of the Baby-Boom era. Almost 77 million babies were born between 1946 and 1962. Approximately 4-million per year. The GNP (Gross National Product) more than doubled in the 1950’s and kicked off the “Golden Age of American Capitalism”. The U.S. invested in itself with the construction of the Interstate Highway System, National Parks, schools, and institutions. The distribution of veteran’s benefits and increase in military spending contributed to the new computer technology that spurred economic growth.
When Eisenhower was a soldier it took him 62 days to drive across the country. As President he campaigned for the Interstate Highway System that made the trip in about two weeks. The “White Shield” highways went from city to city. When the highway landed in a city, it became the main street, so traffic got bottlenecked bottlenecked. Travellers stopped at the local shops, gas stations, and motels. American consumer culture spread like wildfire. Small towns that were once little farming hamlets become commerce centers. Each with their distinct character. That was great for the local economies. But then the blue-shield Interstates started bypassing the towns in the 1960’s. We will pick up on that story in the next installment.
Suburbs were born in the 1950’s. Here in Southern California we had shipping and aerospace industries that supported, residential and commercial construction, then shopping malls and supporting industries. It was just the right recipe for a growing automotive industry. Enthusiasts of performance working on rockets and planes all day came home to tinker with their cars and started racing.
That brings us to Arcadia High School buddies Jack Foye and Ross Heale. Two guys who bought a jalopy and campaigned it all over Southern California. Read about the T&A Roadster here.
This film above just shows a small segment of what was going on. I can’t help but think if the local police started talking to kids in school today about safety and regulations to create clubs that can create new racetracks instead of on the streets. Makes me wonder how this content would be received by kids today.