The Little World

Good Morning, Walter, and welcome to the wonderful world of crazy old Australians with yellow cars.

This might not seem to be unusual, but the cars you’ll see here in this report are from the Western Australian Hot Rod Show that we have every year. They are real, but how real and how old can sometimes fool you – a lot of the old cars are actually absolutely new builds.

They are not cheap things – the builders of these show cars have spent far more for them than I did when I bought my little Suzuki hatchback eight years ago. Even if they make some of the parts themselves, machine shop work is not cheap and custom-made parts are even more so. But they love their cars and this is the chance to shine for the year.

One thing that most of the builders and drivers know but will not admit is that these wonderful-looking cars are nearly all hard to drive and uncomfortable to ride in. They are safe – or as safe as the police can insist upon – but that doesn’t make them good daily rides. You can impress everyone as you cruise on by, but don’t expect to see out of the tiny windows or be able to hear the music on the stereo. Not with a V-8 engine feeding into chromed exhaust pipes.

There is an entire culture about the hot rods – clothing, music, hairstyles, etc. and at first some of the people look absolutely frightening – like leftovers from the 1950’s hillbillies. But they are pretty nearly all very good people – and if you can get them talking about their cars they will entertain you for hours.

But here’s a secret…look at their hands. They are all covered in scars, stitches, busted knuckles, and burns. That’s what working on hot rod engines does for you.