9781422277089

Customizing Your Ride

OF A U T O M O B I L E S

OF A U T O M O B I L E S

The World of Automobiles

Written by Norm Geddis

Carmakers from Around the Globe Concept Cars: Past and Future Customizing Your Ride Hop Inside the Most Exotic Cars Toughest Trucks From the Streets to Showtime

mason crest

Mason Crest 450 Parkway Drive, Suite D Broomall, Pennsylvania 19008 (866) MCP-BOOK (toll free)

Chapter 1 You Bought It, Do What You Want With It..............................................7 Chapter 2 Adding Power and Style......................................................................19 Chapter 3 Everything and the Kitchen Sink..........................................................35 Chapter 4 Remix or Restore? Two Paths to Wow!................................................45 Chapter 5 Lowriders and Hip-Hop Rides.............................................................57 Chapter 6 Today’s Car Culture: Old School Adopts High Tech............................ 65 Series Glossary of Key Terms.................................................................................74 Further Reading......................................................................................................76 Internet Resources..................................................................................................76 Educational Video Links and Photo Credits. .......................................................... 77 Index.......................................................................................................................78 Author’s Biography.................................................................................................80

Copyright © 2019 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

First printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN (hardback) 978-1-4222-4089-2 ISBN (series) 978-1-4222-4086-1 ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4222-7708-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Geddis, Norm, author. Title: Customizing your ride / Norm Geddis. Description: Broomall, Pennsylvania : Mason Crest, [2019] | Series: The world of automobiles. Identifiers: LCCN 2018018047 (print) | LCCN 2018018422 (ebook) | ISBN 9781422277089 (eBook) | ISBN 9781422240892 (hardback) | ISBN 9781422240861 (series) Subjects: LCSH: Automobiles--Customizing. Classification: LCC TL255.2 (ebook) | LCC TL255.2 .G43 2019 (print) | DDC 629.28/7--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018018047 Developed and Produced by National Highlights Inc. Editor: Andrew Luke Interior and cover design: Annalisa Gumbrecht, Studio Gumbrecht Production: Michelle Luke

Words to understand: These words with their easy-to-understand de nitions will increase the reader’s understanding of the text while building vocabulary skills.

Sidebars: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together additional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Educational videos: Readers can view videos by scanning our QR codes, providing them with additional educational content to supplement the text. Examples include news coverage, moments in history, speeches, iconic sports moments, and much more!

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Youmay gain access to certain third-party content (“Third-Party Sites”) by scanning and using the QR Codes that appear in this publication (the“QR Codes”).We do not operate or control in any respect any information, products, or services on such Third-Party Sites linked to by us via the QR Codes included in this publication, and we assume no responsibility for any materials you may access using the QR Codes. Your use of the QR Codes may be subject to terms, limitations, or restrictions set forth in the applicable terms of use or otherwise established by the owners of the Third-Party Sites. Our linking to such Third-Party Sites via the QR Codes does not

Text-dependent questions: These questions send the reader back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented there.

Research projects: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis.

imply an endorsement or sponsorship of such Third-Party Sites or the information, products, or services offered on or through the Third-Party Sites, nor does it imply an endorsement or sponsorship of this publication by the owners of such Third-Party Sites.

Series of glossary of key terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase the reader’s ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this eld.

You Bought It, Do What You Want With It For some people, deciding which car to buy is only the first step in owning an automobile. Since the early days of Model As and Ts a unique culture has flourished among owners who seek added speed and style, creating stand-out vehicles that make personal statements. Why should a production model stock car have to stay just a bland stock car? Once it’s bought and paid for, the owner may do what he or she likes. And many owners do just that! The statements that owners make come in two varieties. First are the owners who announce their arrival with neon lights,

aftermarket a secondary market available after sales in the original market are finished chassis a frame upon which the main parts of an automobile are built horseless carriage the original phrase used to describe what would become known as the automobile Model As and Ts the most famous early Ford model cars

Car customization has existed since the early days of the Ford Model T.

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booming sound systems, and an extravagant paint job. Another favorite, along with the flash of a customized body, is the roar of a supercharged engine bursting from a stock car body that will also turn heads. Often a custom car will sport both wild engine upgrades and wild accessories whose only purpose is to turn heads. These customized road creatures say something about the period in which they were created. Even when the Model As and Ts were new on the market, there existed custom parts and even custom options from Ford. That may come as a surprise. Founder Henry Ford once said about the Models A and T that customers could have the car in any color they liked, as long as it was black (the truth is that the Model T came in red and blue as well in its first few years of production). He wasn’t into giving customers choices. But customer demand led to the quick evolution of what’s called the auto parts’ aftermarket , and Ford wasn’t going to be left behind.

The Ford Model A was made in two series. The first Model As were built between 1903–1904 and were open two seaters. The ‘A’ stood for ‘Advanced,’ as in the Ford Advanced Automobile. The later Model A was a classier upgrade from the Model T. It had a wide, enclosed cab and leather seats. The Model T (for Tin Lizzie) was Ford’s first car for the masses. Reliable and easy to maintain, the Model T was an enclosed four-seater that was the first car to sell over one million units. These cars provided choice bodies to break apart and weld into mechanical monsters. Today the automobile aftermarket approaches one hundred fifty billion dollars in sales annually, and the market is growing by 2.5% per year. About 16.4 million cars are sold in the United States each year. That’s just production models from Ford, Honda, Toyota, GM, and other carmakers. Each person who buys a car also buys some kind of accessory. Maybe it is something no flashier than car mats that gets added to a new car, but just about every new car owner gets something to individualize their new set of wheels.

The US government passed a law in 1975 protecting the right to “trick out a ride” without worry. The law is called The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. It makes it illegal for car makers to void a car’s warranty simply for using aftermarket parts. This means that if a Ford owner decides to switch out exhaust systems then Ford cannot say they will no longer honor the car’s warranty on the remaining parts.

In this book, the extreme examples of customization will be

The Ford Model A, like this 1929 Tudor, was intended to be a class above the Model T.

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America, drag racing was seen as the activity of hoodlums because there were several street racing accidents involving young men and women in heavily customized cars whose tragic deaths made for attention-grabbing headlines. Then, of course, parents wanted their concerns addressed by local schools and police. Unfortunately, the more frequently tragic racing deaths happened, the more dramatic the headlines became and the more concerned parents became. Not only were parents concerned, but car builders and drivers who loved the sport did not want to see it made into a villain. As much as anyone else, drag racers didn’t want to get hurt and didn’t want to hurt anyone. They did like, however, bruising egos on the race track. The pressure from the negative publicity and the legitimate concerns of parents led the big names in car customizing and drag racing to organize their sport with rules, safety requirements, and the stipulation that all racing be done on organized tracks, not streets. But from the beginning of automobile mass production, youths were driven to deck out their cars. It took little more than a decade for the aftermarket to get a foothold, and by the 1910s, carmakers were offering their own custom options. Within the higher end car market of the time, the options were what defined the car. The Benz motor company (later Mercedes-Benz) was the first to offer brake pads. The pads were invented during a cross- Germany tour of one of the early Benz cars. As a publicity stunt of to show off how easy the Benz automobiles were to drive, Karl Benz’s wife, Bertha, put herself and their teen children in a Benz #3 model and drove to see her mother. This was a completely open vehicle, a literal horseless carriage, and the carriage was not fancy, but rather open, small, and cramped.

explored, not just the addition of a bobblehead or two. These cars will be ones that defy imagination and, in some cases, have literally been turned upside down. Somewhere in the neighborhood of six generations of car owners have been using their automobiles as moving canvases. They’ve splashed all manner of abstract and realistic objects across them. Custom cars can often be dated by their paint jobs. Today’s exotic paint jobs often appear to express complicated geometric formulas, which create illusions with angled lines, blurring the actual shape of the car. Custom cars in the 1970s often sported racing lines or even silkscreen paintings of landscapes, dragons, and attractive women. The 1960s was the era of Day-Glo colors and abstract images painted on cars. Prior to the ‘60s, most paint jobs served a strictly utilitarian purpose. Hot rods often got only a coat of grey or black primer. While custom car art and body creations became recognized as an art form in the 1970s, the early days were more about getting the job done than making cars look pretty. Car customizers didn’t have a great reputation either. In post-war In the 1970s, racing stripes like the ones on this 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass were a common custom addition.

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Driving to see mom isn’t a big deal today, but at the time it constituted the first cross-country car trip of any real distance. At the time, there were no fuel stations or even a fuel industry. Bertha Benz stopped at pharmacies along the way to buy the chemicals needed to fuel the car. When the wooden brake shoes kept falling off, she stopped at a blacksmith where she designed and had the blacksmith make the first brake pads, using leather attached to iron castings, in a matter of a few hours. If not for this trip, there may never have been a company called Mercedes-Benz. Bertha Benz took the trip without informing her husband, who suffered from debilitating anxiety and insecurity. He believed his car would never make any money. So in order to show that a car could be useful, and to encourage her husband, she made the first cross-country journey where she not only invented the brake pad but also improved elements of the car’s fuel line. Newspapers around Europe got wind of Bertha’s trip and by the end that drive to mom’s became the most famous car journey to-date. Not every car company was fortunate enough to have a Bertha Benz. The period beginning after 1885 and ending around the time of the First World War saw many horseless

carriage companies come and go. This was the era of the first model cars, in which automakers would make many versions of the same vehicle. While Henry Ford is credited with bringing the assembly line to auto making, it was Karl Benz who created the first series of model cars with the Benz Patent Motorwagen. Before 1885, cars were available on a limited basis in the United States. These cars were all made to order, each one unique. Often the buyer would have to makeshift a horse carriage onto the horseless part. One company would create the chassis . Another company would make the motor, and a third would provide the carriage. Sometimes a fourth company was needed to put the whole car together.

Watch an original Benz Patent Motorwagen 1 in action from 2014. The horseless carriage shown here was made in January 1886. The commentary is in German, but you don’t need words to know this is really cool!

The Benz Patent Motorwagen, seen here on exhibition in China, was designed to create the first series of model cars.

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Some inventions take a long time to arrive at the marketplace. The television was one of them.

The television was first demonstrated at the 1875 World's Fair in London, and it took a century before every home in America had one. Automobiles, surprisingly, were a long- expected invention. An article from an 1885 issue of the Salt Lake City Tribune describes the horseless carriage as something everyone had been waiting for, for about seventy years. The headline of the article read, “Factories for the construction of the new vehicle now springing up all over the United States. We shall soon match Europe in this matter, but it will be bad for horse breeders and farmers.” The article, which appeared in various forms in many other papers around the county, touted the fact that the next year, 1886, would be the first year the horseless carriage would be available in the United States. The first aftermarket part was arguably a headlamp and taillight set made by the Pockley Automobile Electric Lighting Syndicate in England in 1908. Their set was unique for the time in that it was for any horseless carriage and added a significant feature available on only the most expensive automobiles. And that’s really the motivation for customizing a car: to give the average car some of the gravitas of the most expensive cars. The Pockley light set came with a set of headlamps, sidelights, taillights, and an 8-volt battery, the most powerful battery for a set of car lamps at the time. The set required its own battery as cars did not yet produce enough power to light their own lamps. Even production models of the time, like the Peerless, ran their headlamps off of separate batteries. As the twentieth century got rolling, more and more people got themselves automobiles. By the 1920s, just about every city had several auto parts stores, many selling their own

In 1885, the Salt Lake City Tribune published an article declaring that the long awaited horseless carriage would be available in the United States the following year.

parts claiming to improve performance on Fords, Buicks, and other cars. Just as car customization really got going with stories of the first drag races being held on the same day as Pearl Harbor, everything got put on hold for World War II. After the war, all the pent-up frustration of the Depression and the war exploded over American culture. Just as homes, entertainment, and even food were changing, cars and the way people interact with them changed too. The Interstate Highway System began in the 1950s and was completed in the 1970s, allowing the country to be traversed by car in about four days. The previous Federal Highway system was a patchwork of local roads and a cross-country journey took about ten days to two weeks.

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1. True or False? The automobile was an invention that took everyone by surprise. 2. What was the first car accessory, or aftermarket part? 3. What was the first Model automobile?

Getting to California was quite a job before the Interstate Highways System. A number of drivers lost their lives. Getting from Kingman, AZ, to California on Route 66 required a trip backward down a steep hill. That part of Route 66 is today inaccessible. A number of old crashed cars sit in the ravine below to this day, a visceral reminder of just how adventurous one had to be, even in the twentieth century, to get to California.

Go to a car show or meet. There are literally thousands of car shows and car meets around the United States. Note both the styles of yesterday and the latest styles in customization. This will give you an appreciation of just how many generations have been into customizing. The Car Show Finder website will help you find one near you: http://www. carshowfinder.org

The completion of the Interstate Highway System in the 1970s allowed for easy cross-country travel. A coast-to-coast trip could be accomplished in four days.

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