Has a lot of old school hot rodding been lost?
To me there's hotroding and then there's restoring and all the stuff in between.
Hotroding is getting an old car running/driving safe and then making it better running.... and the fluff may or may not come later/ not so much $$ in the old days.
Then there's the resto where you take everythng apart and make it all perfect. $$$$$$$$$$$$$
I agree with you 100%.
Nowadays, I thoroughly enjoy taking a car and making it complete, safe, and road worthy with what you have other than safety things being new more than ''restoring'' something.
Been there, done that with restorations.
There's a lot more fun in fixing up a shitty 318 and making it reliable than buying a crate engine or building a 700 H.P. bullet.
And then drive it with lousy paint and all.
A lot of people lose sight of having fun with tinkering with cars.
A case in point comes to mind when I was 20 years old and I had a '73 Road Runner big block 4 speed that had no oil pressure.
It was 30 below zero and I ended up chiseling off the oil pan that some idiot siliconed on and changed the bearings that were screwed up with yes, good used ones that I scrounged from a local machine shop for free.
After the job was done, it got me another 4 months of driving until I could afford to buy a better engine.
I bet a lot of people wouldn't have done that, but I did, and it made me appreciate learning how to work on cars myself.
Sadly, I doubt this same scenario happens very much these days...
