Thread: "Well West Coast cars are hip..."

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That's a feeble attempt at humor based, on the lyrics of "California Girls". :-)

I grew up in a Midwestern town of about 50K people. The local custom and hot rod car scene was fairly active, but we all knew that the "best" came from California!

One day in the mid sixties, I heard that somebody local had bought a "California car"! All of my friends were buzzing about it... then one day I saw it! It was a beautiful black '57 Nomad with flames and mag wheels. All of those things were somewhat rare at the time. We were all in "awe" of it!!!!!

I have had my hands all over great rods and customs for the last 35 years. I even flamed a black Nomad... but THAT California Nomad will always stand out in my mind as something special!

Anyone else have a similar story???

I know what you mean, Jay. I lived in Pennsylvania and the first car I saw from California was a yellow 57 Chevy that showed up at our local hot dog shop one night. It had Rader mags and a Cal Custom hood scoop, and was MINT.

The second one I saw was a 32 Ford coupe that a local body shop guy traded a Corvette for. The vette was worth about $ 2500 in 1970 dollars, and his buddies all told him he was crazy, but the coupe was bitchin'. It had a chopped top, full fendered, and an Olds engine with two fours and a Cad Lasalle transmiision. Every nut, bolt, and washer on the car was chromed, and I had never seen workmanship like that.

The body shop guy wasn't into Olds engines and was "updating it" with a 427 Chevy and four speed. I was into Olds engines and bought the entire engine, from pan to air cleaners, and Cad Lasalle box for $ 175.00. I ended up putting it into my own 32 rpu, and then my 40 Chevy. It ran like stink.

It was obvious from those two cars that the ones from the West Coast were special. I don't know if it was that they had more money than us, or the availability of shops to do special work. But those two cars caused me to finally move to California in the late 70's, just so I could be near that kind of stuff.

Don

I was the same as you guys. Being raised in St. Louis, I couldn't wait for the next magazine to hit the rack so I could read more about all those cars.
After getting discharged from the Army I stayed in Colorado springs to finish my education. As I had more time, going to school and working 3 part time jobs, I got to see the car culture there.
Well to my surprise most car guys there didn't have the same respect for California cars. As a matter of fact California was a very unpopular word to use. I remember one speed shop even had bumper stickers that said, I DON'T CARE HOW THEY DO IT IN CALIFORNIA!
Ken

Originally Posted by Ken Thurm

..............even had bumper stickers that said, I DON'T CARE HOW THEY DO IT IN CALIFORNIA!
Ken

Hmmmm......seems like those would come in right handy even today......and I don't mean for hot rods.......

there was a guy back in 67-68 down in mcallen texas had a 40 ford that out ran all takers on the street. i was 16-17. i'll never forget that one.

I've told this story before, about the day I was smitten with hot rods. I was 13 or 14 and my dad took me with him to visit one of his friends that he worked with at the tool & die shop. Well, the friend had a friend who was visiting at the same time.

This dude was driving a '40 Chevy coupe with an inline six mounting a GMC 6-71 blower and 5 (yeah, count 'em, five) Stromberg carbs. At the time, I knew nothing, so I said nothing. I just stood there with my jaw hanging open and stared.

But that was it. I was done with stockers and it has been that way for the 55 or so years since that day. I never did learn what the motor was out of, but when I tell the story, I like to think that it was a GMC 302, 'cause that was the baddest 6-banger on the planet at that time ('55-'56).

I was raised back east and now live in California. The cars back east were just different than what we have here on the west coast. I think that maybe the cars on the east coast are more driver friendly and are used more than on the west coast. I have noticed the quality of the cars coming out of the east coast is starting to compare to that of the west coast. Not that there are not awesome cars back east just my observation.



Keith

well i would say here in MI we do better then ok .we have long cold winters to build cars we know how to build them

what happens in cali happens everywhere else 10 years later.

Originally Posted by geezer69

what happens in cali happens everywhere else 10 years later.

well lets hope not

Originally Posted by Bob Parmenter

Hmmmm......seems like those would come in right handy even today......and I don't mean for hot rods.......

Those California "flower children" of the '60s are all in Washington now! ..and they're still chanting "Make love...not war" ...and "Why can't we all just get along?"!

I think they are still smoking reefer maaan. :-(

That's true about stuff starting in California and years later showing up in the rest of the country. We lived there in the late 70's and moved back East after a while. Things we saw in California finally hit the East Coast a couple or more years after we were back there. I hope some of the vehicle restrictions our West Coast friends are seeing implemented now stay there though, but I fear they will not.

Don

Being a native Californian, born in what is now called "south central", and growing up on the suburban fringe as it grew out from L.A., I never could figure out just what was so special about cars and people from California to other folks in the country; they didn't seem unusual to me. But the fact was, maybe still is, that others see them as such. When I was in the Navy and was stationed in Memphis, I, and a lot of other guys from California had girls crawling all over us, and if we had our cars with us, they and we, were the stars of any gathering. My '51 Ford was left at home, but pictures of it were very much commented on, even though it was just a simple tudor that was raked and lowered a bit, and had crazy pipes, and different hub caps on it, and it had all of those carbs under the hood along with the polished finned heads and other flash on the 8BA. It was my first baby, but I really didn't think it was all that it was made out to be by other folks. I had two buddies from San Francisco, and one of them had his '55 Buick hardtop back there; it was mildly customized, and people would flock around to get a look at it. The other guy, like me, only had pictures of his '55 Bel Air, but you would have thought it was a Barris original from the way folks made over those pictures. Another guy had a '51 Olds coupe, black primer, raked and lowered much like my Ford, with bigs and littles and loud pipes, and people would stop and stare as he drove by. We were often refered to as "that (those) California boy(s)", and were almost universally hated by local guys wherever we went; their girls loved us though.

Ken, I think Colorado was the first place to use the word or phrase "Californicate"; probably in the late sixties or early seventies. By then, the influx of east coast liberal meddlers had thoroughly messed California up and were wandering off to other places, Colorado being foremost at the time because of the swank of the ski resorts, and local folks were blaming the mess on California; didn't matter that those people had "fornicated" California and then moved on, they were late from California so California got the blame.

Geezer, unfortunately, that does seem to be fact. For some reason, California is still thought of as "out front" socially, and people still want to emulate whatever happens there - I have absolutely no idea why, but that seems to be the way of things.