Dreamcast18
02-14-2006, 12:39 PM
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060212/ART13/602110320/-1/ART
Article published February 12, 2006
Highway to hot-rod heaven
By MIKE KELLY
SPECIAL TO THE BLADE
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. - "Hot rod" is a musty old expression, along the lines of "cool, man," that most people probably think went out sometime between American Graffiti and Happy Days. But here at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum, a display featuring dozens of exquisitely crafted vehicles is ample proof that the hot rod is still very much alive and well, at least under the bright spotlights of the museum's spacious display areas.
A special exhibition called "Hot Rods and Cool Mods," which will be here through Aug. 20, features a number of exotic, one-of-a-kind vehicles that have been modified to improve their performance - or just to make them look really …well, cool, man.
For the most part, the two dozen cars, trucks, and vans in the exhibit came into this world as normal-looking vehicles, the kind that anyone could have purchased off the showroom floor. But after countless hours in somebody's garage or workshop, they emerged as sleek beauties - or monstrous behemoths - dripping with chrome, wild splashes of color, and slick-looking attachments and accessories poking out of their hoods, trunks, or wheel wells.
The "rods" and "mods" share space in the three-story museum with close to 70 other antique, custom, and concept vehicles that are part of the facility's permanent displays. The museum, which is tucked in a corner of the sprawling DaimlerChrysler campus just off I-75 north of Detroit, has nearly 200 vehicles in its collection, but has display room on its three floors to show only about 60 or 70 at a time.
Oh, and if you're wondering what the difference is between a "rod" and a "mod," it boils down to this:
Hot rods are usually older vehicles that have been customized cosmetically and modified mechanically as well. Their performance is definitely kicked up a notch, but their looks are just as important, if not more so.
A mod (modified) vehicle, on the other hand, is a stock car with a limited number of added or changed components, most of which deal with performance. The desired result here is more about giddyup than glitz.
Most of the vehicles in the exhibit are based on stock Chrysler products - what, you were expecting a few Ford Mustangs or Chevy Camaros? - and while a few of them are the property of DaimlerChrysler, most have been loaned to the museum by private owners. These owners are usually the ones who spent countless hours with their metal babies, until the cars were bobbed, chopped, lowered, pancaked, pinched, shaved, slammed, or tubbed to their satisfaction.
And if you have no idea what any of that means, don't worry. Most people don't. Chris Cortez, a Chrysler vice president, explains that the folks who love having their vehicles tricked out are a special breed.
"These are the people who can't just drive cars," Cortez says. "They have to open the hood and play a little and make it truly theirs."
Among the exotic vehicles on display:
●The "High and Mighty" Plymouth Business Coupe, a replica of an unlikely drag racer built as a project car by a group of young Chrysler engineers in 1959. They named the car after a John Wayne movie, and gave its 354 cubic-inch engine a towering intake manifold that extends up over the roof of the car.
●An orange and tan AMX 400, created in 1972 for the TV series Banacek. It was built by customizer George Barris, the same guy who came up with the original Batmobile, Fred Flintstone's Flintmobile, and other working Hollywood show cars. The 400's roofline is chopped 4 1/2 inches, its nose lengthened, and its body sculpted.
●A plum-colored 1970 Dodge Charger R/T, one of the most popular models of the muscle-car era. Its 440 Magnum V-8 helped give it a beauty-and-the beast reputation.
●A deep black 1999 Plymouth Howler, a variation of a '97 Plymouth Prowler, which was developed as a concept car for a specialty show in Las Vegas. The design team replaced the Prowler's standard V-6 engine with a Jeep PowerTech V-8, and this, along with other modifications, gave it the muscle to reach 60 mph in 5.9 seconds and attain a top speed of 129 mph.
●A 2001 Dodge Caravan that's not exactly the kind of vehicle that would be driven by a soccer mom or dad. This one sports a psychedelic paint job, gull-winged doors that open straight up, and welded steel plates instead of side windows. Inside are four Dodge Viper bucker seats, a 7,000-watt audio system, and a 22-inch plasma television for passengers in the back.
Besides the vehicles in the "Hot Rods and Cool Mods" exhibit, there's lots more to see at the museum, including a replica of W.P. Chysler's 1920s workshop and nearby, a poster-sized picture of a gas pump showing a price of 9 1/2cents per gallon - plus 4 cents tax.
In one corner is a diorama of a World War II scene in a small town in France, with mannequins of two GIs standing by a well-worn 1943 Willys-Overland Jeep. Not far from that is an olive drab 1946 Dodge Power Wagon, a brute of a 4x4 that looks like a Jeep on steroids.
Other displays further illustrate Chrysler's wartime involvement with the military. There's a Sherman tank engine that consists of five six-cylinder car engines bundled together and connected to a central drive shaft, and a mammoth, 2,500-horsepower experimental aircraft engine. Only five of those were built before they were made obsolete with the advent of jet engines for aircraft.
Here and there are hands-on displays that beg to be played with. One features a small wooden figure of a woman who can be moved forward in her 1934 Chrysler to reduce the vehicle's "bounce factor," an early illustration of the principle that led to the "cab-forward" design used in many Chrysler products beginning in the early 1990s.
A "Mopar Thunder" computer terminal lets visitors click on one of several vehicles, from a 299-horsepower 1952 Hudson Hornet to a 2000 Dodge Viper V-10 with more than 700 horsepower, and hear that vehicle's engine start and rev up, sometimes to ear-splitting levels. A cable runs from the computer to the chair in front of it, so you can also feel each engine's surging power as it revs up.
There's a TV monitor showing old Dodge and Plymouth commercials, including one in which a baseball pitcher winds up and fires a ball at the window of a car. The ball bangs into the window, which is instantly covered with a spider's web of cracks, but it doesn't break. A pretty model emerges from the car smiling and, one can only imagine, immensely relieved.
The museum's 125-seat theater features three continuously running movies, including Speed and Power, which highlights the corporation's performance-vehicle breakthroughs.
And, of course, there's a gift shop where visitors can pick up books, clothing, and all manner of automotive souvenirs, including a $20 CD recording of the teeth-rattling roars of the revving engines heard at the "Mopar Thunder" display. My favorite item in the store was a $19 alarm clock with a spinning tire and an alarm that could wake the dead with its revving engine and blaring horn.
Music to a hot-rod fanatic's ears.
Mike Kelly is a retired Blade travel writer.
[/url]
Article published February 12, 2006
Highway to hot-rod heaven
By MIKE KELLY
SPECIAL TO THE BLADE
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. - "Hot rod" is a musty old expression, along the lines of "cool, man," that most people probably think went out sometime between American Graffiti and Happy Days. But here at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum, a display featuring dozens of exquisitely crafted vehicles is ample proof that the hot rod is still very much alive and well, at least under the bright spotlights of the museum's spacious display areas.
A special exhibition called "Hot Rods and Cool Mods," which will be here through Aug. 20, features a number of exotic, one-of-a-kind vehicles that have been modified to improve their performance - or just to make them look really …well, cool, man.
For the most part, the two dozen cars, trucks, and vans in the exhibit came into this world as normal-looking vehicles, the kind that anyone could have purchased off the showroom floor. But after countless hours in somebody's garage or workshop, they emerged as sleek beauties - or monstrous behemoths - dripping with chrome, wild splashes of color, and slick-looking attachments and accessories poking out of their hoods, trunks, or wheel wells.
The "rods" and "mods" share space in the three-story museum with close to 70 other antique, custom, and concept vehicles that are part of the facility's permanent displays. The museum, which is tucked in a corner of the sprawling DaimlerChrysler campus just off I-75 north of Detroit, has nearly 200 vehicles in its collection, but has display room on its three floors to show only about 60 or 70 at a time.
Oh, and if you're wondering what the difference is between a "rod" and a "mod," it boils down to this:
Hot rods are usually older vehicles that have been customized cosmetically and modified mechanically as well. Their performance is definitely kicked up a notch, but their looks are just as important, if not more so.
A mod (modified) vehicle, on the other hand, is a stock car with a limited number of added or changed components, most of which deal with performance. The desired result here is more about giddyup than glitz.
Most of the vehicles in the exhibit are based on stock Chrysler products - what, you were expecting a few Ford Mustangs or Chevy Camaros? - and while a few of them are the property of DaimlerChrysler, most have been loaned to the museum by private owners. These owners are usually the ones who spent countless hours with their metal babies, until the cars were bobbed, chopped, lowered, pancaked, pinched, shaved, slammed, or tubbed to their satisfaction.
And if you have no idea what any of that means, don't worry. Most people don't. Chris Cortez, a Chrysler vice president, explains that the folks who love having their vehicles tricked out are a special breed.
"These are the people who can't just drive cars," Cortez says. "They have to open the hood and play a little and make it truly theirs."
Among the exotic vehicles on display:
●The "High and Mighty" Plymouth Business Coupe, a replica of an unlikely drag racer built as a project car by a group of young Chrysler engineers in 1959. They named the car after a John Wayne movie, and gave its 354 cubic-inch engine a towering intake manifold that extends up over the roof of the car.
●An orange and tan AMX 400, created in 1972 for the TV series Banacek. It was built by customizer George Barris, the same guy who came up with the original Batmobile, Fred Flintstone's Flintmobile, and other working Hollywood show cars. The 400's roofline is chopped 4 1/2 inches, its nose lengthened, and its body sculpted.
●A plum-colored 1970 Dodge Charger R/T, one of the most popular models of the muscle-car era. Its 440 Magnum V-8 helped give it a beauty-and-the beast reputation.
●A deep black 1999 Plymouth Howler, a variation of a '97 Plymouth Prowler, which was developed as a concept car for a specialty show in Las Vegas. The design team replaced the Prowler's standard V-6 engine with a Jeep PowerTech V-8, and this, along with other modifications, gave it the muscle to reach 60 mph in 5.9 seconds and attain a top speed of 129 mph.
●A 2001 Dodge Caravan that's not exactly the kind of vehicle that would be driven by a soccer mom or dad. This one sports a psychedelic paint job, gull-winged doors that open straight up, and welded steel plates instead of side windows. Inside are four Dodge Viper bucker seats, a 7,000-watt audio system, and a 22-inch plasma television for passengers in the back.
Besides the vehicles in the "Hot Rods and Cool Mods" exhibit, there's lots more to see at the museum, including a replica of W.P. Chysler's 1920s workshop and nearby, a poster-sized picture of a gas pump showing a price of 9 1/2cents per gallon - plus 4 cents tax.
In one corner is a diorama of a World War II scene in a small town in France, with mannequins of two GIs standing by a well-worn 1943 Willys-Overland Jeep. Not far from that is an olive drab 1946 Dodge Power Wagon, a brute of a 4x4 that looks like a Jeep on steroids.
Other displays further illustrate Chrysler's wartime involvement with the military. There's a Sherman tank engine that consists of five six-cylinder car engines bundled together and connected to a central drive shaft, and a mammoth, 2,500-horsepower experimental aircraft engine. Only five of those were built before they were made obsolete with the advent of jet engines for aircraft.
Here and there are hands-on displays that beg to be played with. One features a small wooden figure of a woman who can be moved forward in her 1934 Chrysler to reduce the vehicle's "bounce factor," an early illustration of the principle that led to the "cab-forward" design used in many Chrysler products beginning in the early 1990s.
A "Mopar Thunder" computer terminal lets visitors click on one of several vehicles, from a 299-horsepower 1952 Hudson Hornet to a 2000 Dodge Viper V-10 with more than 700 horsepower, and hear that vehicle's engine start and rev up, sometimes to ear-splitting levels. A cable runs from the computer to the chair in front of it, so you can also feel each engine's surging power as it revs up.
There's a TV monitor showing old Dodge and Plymouth commercials, including one in which a baseball pitcher winds up and fires a ball at the window of a car. The ball bangs into the window, which is instantly covered with a spider's web of cracks, but it doesn't break. A pretty model emerges from the car smiling and, one can only imagine, immensely relieved.
The museum's 125-seat theater features three continuously running movies, including Speed and Power, which highlights the corporation's performance-vehicle breakthroughs.
And, of course, there's a gift shop where visitors can pick up books, clothing, and all manner of automotive souvenirs, including a $20 CD recording of the teeth-rattling roars of the revving engines heard at the "Mopar Thunder" display. My favorite item in the store was a $19 alarm clock with a spinning tire and an alarm that could wake the dead with its revving engine and blaring horn.
Music to a hot-rod fanatic's ears.
Mike Kelly is a retired Blade travel writer.
[/url]