As a car designer and vintage car enthusiast, I get a lot of questions about cars, the interest behind certain brands, why some cars look better than others, and what makes a car collectible. For the most part, cars are reflections of general tastes, cultural interests, and very often convey a great deal about their owners. So it was particularly challenging when one of my friends and I were at a local car show and we saw a lowered rusty, ’60s sedan with a nicely restored engine, a woven blanket covering the worn upholstery, and a seemingly misplaced level of cleanliness and near obsessive detailing around the rust and dirt. It was an interesting combination of rusty and restored. My friend asked me, “Why would anyone want a rusted out low rider?”
John Ward’s deceptive “sleeper”, is a rusty 1948 Buick Super Convertible on the outside… …hiding a beast underneath.
As a bit of background, in the hot rodding community, the emergence of what have come to be known as “Rat Rods” was a backlash against the Boyd “Billet” look and feel of the pristine high dollar hot rod that represented everything some believed hot rodding was not. This Rat Rod phenomenon began in the 1990s and it was fueled by a pretty distinct group of culture rebels who’d just had enough of it. By 1997, Jay Ward and Kirk Jones decided after too many frustrating outings with their unfinished hot rods, they would put on their own show. Though attendance was small, it started a trend leading to one of the largest shows in the world “Billetproof”, which is still running today.
