(rock music)
(tires squeal)
- In the '50s, hot rod was a dirty word
and it was short.
You know, so it made headlines.
- Every time an old car was in a wreck,
it was "hot rod injures three."
42 old women run down by hot rods.
- We were made for the police in those days.
- Street racing was a big thing.
They'd hold 10 or 20 races and as soon as the cops came,
all the roadsters would take off through the bean fields
and the cops were driving old Nash bathtubs
and they couldn't catch them.
When you mention hot rod to someone, the car that comes
to mind is the '32 Ford Highboy like the McGee Roadster.
The McGee car is a quintessential American hot rod.
- A lot of people probably consider it the most significant
'32 Ford hot rod.
It just has a presence.
- [Man] My idea of hot rodding is, you take something
that isn't worth a whole lot and you improve it
as much as you can and you personalize it at the same time.
- When you really think about hot rodding and how important
it was to our American heritage, it's major.
These were the guys that were some of the greatest
innovators in the automotive world.
That story needed to be told.
- Hot rodding is a purely American activity.
Everybody has a little bit of competition in them.
- These young guys found out if you got a model T
or a model A, the first thing you did was strip off
all the extra parts because if you make it lighter,
it will go faster.
- When we were 12 years old, that would be 1933,
we'd see in our neighborhood a little stripped down
model T.
I said, "Boy, what would be more fun than to ride around
"in a little homemade racing car like that?"
- That's what I want to do, build a roadster
like one of those and drive it up through the Sequoias
with no top with your girlfriend.
What would be better?
- We had our roadsters and we street raced
and did the whole bit.
Of course, didn't have a wonderful reputation,
but we had a lot of fun and we didn't get into jail
too much, so (laughs).
- We just liked the freedom of the open air,
driving and playing like we had a racing car.
- The hot rod innovation is to build it, drive it,
have fun with it, do all these things
that it can do.
The only rule is, it must be modified.
You can't go into the factory and buy a hot rod.
- [Greg] I think there was a comradery about hot rodders.
It was all the common goal to have a nice car
and a fast car.
- [Pat] They taught each other the tricks of this,
of what at the time were called hop ups
or gow jobs.
- [Ed] A lot of the elements came from just trying things,
you know.
This was uncharted territory, so it was open for ingenuity.
- [Pat] They could make manifolds and put
two carburetors on and they learned how to grind
cab shafts with files and we were to the point like,
in my hometown, somebody down the hill fired up his car
and, "Oh, that's Cina's '56 Chevy.
"Oh man, he's got a new cam in that thing.
"I can hear it (laughs)!"
Your car should be personalized to make it different
than any other.
You don't want to copy somebody else's hot rod,
not matter how much you like it.
- Whether it's color, stance, style,
immediately, your thoughts are, "How do I distinguish
"my car?"
some were greasy mechanic type guys
and some were neat guys that always had extra clean stuff.
There was no money before the war.
It was tough.
We didn't know it was tough
because we were used to that (laughs).
- It was primarily young men working
with what was available.
Guys went to go to the junkyard and pick out
what they could find.
- [Ed] The junkyards were full of many different makes
at the time.
You could buy a model T in those days for $10
and get it running, you know.
- [Pat] It started here in southern California
partly because of the abundance of roadsters here
because of the weather and roadsters
were the cheapest and lightest and most streamlined
of all the cars
and pretty soon, they found the Dry Lakes.
- They would get wet with an inch or two of water
and that would erase all the tire marks and when it dried up
it would be smooth again.
- [Bruce] Muroc, Dry Lake was actually the center
of activity because you could take you car up there
and go as fast as you wanted to go
without traffic, or people, or anything else.
El Mirage was the second best lake to Muroc
and they still run there today.
- [Ed] They'd have these meets up there and you would
meet new guys and see new cars that you'd never
get to see otherwise.
You'd learn a lot.
- [Pat] You could afford to have two cars,
so you'd build your car to run up to the Dry Lakes,
but it also had to come back to drive on the street.
- There's no sponsorship to speak of
and there's no prize money whatsoever,
so it's the purest form of hot rodding,
is straightaway Dry Lakes and Bonneville racing.
When it first started, they would race four or five cars
across the lake bed.
Well, if you were first, it was okay.
But if you were fifth, you had a hard time seeing
where you were going.
- So they had to stop that, that was getting
too risky.
Only the guy in front could see and some of these guys
are crazy thinking that they'll wear out,
I'll pass them later.
- [Bruce] So in 1937, the Southern California
Timing Association was formed to give
some regulation and some safety
to that activity and they went one car at a time.
- [Announcer] This is legal hot rod racing.
There is no speed limit here.
The idea is to go as fast as you can against
a common opponent, the clock.
- [Pat] They made rules and classes.
It was to organize all these various clubs
that were founding members.
Roadrunners, Bungholers.
- [Ed] The Throttlers and the Cam Breakers
and these various clubs could join.
- There was a lot of innovation and then along came
World War Two.
(loud explosions)
- [TV Announcer] On December 7, 1941,
Japan, like its infamous Axis partners,
struck first and declared war afterward.
- [Bruce] That kind of stopped hot rodding
a little bit short.
- [Dick] Basically a whole lot of racing
was ceased in the United States.
- So now all these fellas that used to race
through the Dry Lake usually worked with government
equipment during the war and learned a lot more about
engines and so forth.
- [Bruce] Guys learned how to fabricate and weld.
- During the war, they all have a picture
of their girlfriend and a picture of their hot rod
in their wallet and they'd be talking about racing
these things on the Dry Lakes and how much fun it was.
The term hot rod did develop sometime during World War II
and nobody knows exactly where it came from, when.
- Wally Parks says he first heard it in the Philippines.
Another serviceman from San Luis Obispo used it.
He had never heard it before.
- When the war shifted from the European
to the South Pacific, they all shipped through
Long Beach, San Diego, and they'd see these roadsters
bumming around on the streets
and the Army, the Navy spread this word
and after the war, it just blossomed.
- That was a great time to be in Los Angeles.
They had survived the war, they'd be in prison camps,
they'd been shot at, they had some extra money
in their jeans and they were happy to be home.
That was the boom and Dry Lakes racing was huge.
- [Pat] And these were so big up there
that there would be literally hundreds of cars
and thousands of spectators.
- It was booming.
All these people who had talent needed a new hobby
and by God, this was it, cars.
- When the G.I.s came back, they went to work
and the car that was their first choice was the '32 Ford
because it was the perfect platform for hot rodding.
- [Pat] The '32 Ford was the first Ford that came with
this V-8 engine, which was an affordable V-8
that the public could buy.
It would be like if Ford brought out a self-driving car
today, it was that monumental.
- [Ed] Now here we are in about 1938 or nine
and that engine looked like a racing engine does.
In the junkyard, we bought one for $65.
- It was much more streamlined,
much more designer-y looking.
It looked sleek and it looked brawny at the same time.
- Amazingly enough, it looked good when you took
the fenders off too.
It just looked good pretty much whatever you did to it.
- At that point, a lot of people had find ways
to improve the looks of a '32 Ford Roadster
and I think the McGee Roadster exemplifies
the pinnacle of that.
Bob McGee was the football player
at University of Southern California.
He always had a love for cars.
He took time out to go to war and when he came back,
he jumped right in to building this car.
And like all hot rodders, Bob McGee tried new stuff.
- [Dick] A lot that he did himself, obviously,
but some of the characteristics of that car
were done by professionals and made it
the distinct car that it is.
He was thinking outside the box.
- [Pat] The McGee car was like the Ferrari of hot rods
at the time.
There was only one that even was remotely like it.
I mean, it was clean, it was pretty,
it reeked of that hot rod look.
It sat right.
They notched the frame in the back
and got the back in down to where the body line
and the tire were concentric and that,
and I worked and worked to get my car to sit that good
and I still, it doesn't.
That handmade three-piece wind
is one of the first to have it.
It had no hinges and no latches visible on it.
Just little things like that set it apart.
- [Greg] A lot of styling ques on hot rods
come from race cars,
so the louvers, in addition to increasing cooling,
they're a styling touch similar to what
an Indianapolis car would have.
- [Greg] There's no radiator cap on the radiator.
It's peaked.
The spreader bar, which supports the two front frame horns
is V-ed.
It has no exterior door hinges.
- [Dick] It took a lot of engineering to make that work.
- [Ed] And they took off the door handles
so they didn't show, so it was just a smooth body style
all the way through.
- [Pat] It has a completely redesigned dash
with a big tack in the middle.
The trunk and the rear line goes all the way down
to the end of the body.
It's not broken up by a panel.
- [Dick] He cut it on down and took that panel out
and had a special deck in formed that matched perfect,
but went all the way down.
The license plate and the rear taillights
are mounted right in the deck with itself.
- [Pat] It just took that one line out of the car.
It's a double take, even subconsciously
you know the car looks cleaner and smoother.
That's a badge of courage, that's a mark of distinction.
- [Greg] As unique as the car was stylistically,
the engine was just the same.
It has a 21-stud flathead with federal mobile
copperheads, a special burns intake manifold.
Still, the car wasn't just skin deep.
- [Bruce] It had enough performance to say, you know,
it's definitely a hot rod.
- Bob McGee just looked like the all-American boy
who was married with this car.
He took his honeymoon in this car.
It's the enthusiast that wanted to make changes,
make him go faster.
Then it really built our industry in the US
and it was the enthusiast like Bob McGee that took
a standard platform '32 Ford Roadster
and tweaked it to become an icon.
In the late '40s, there were a lot of hot rods
roaming the streets of southern California
and hot rodders were not always welcome
and then along came Bob Peterson
who went out to the Dry Lakes, took some great pictures,
and kind of started a newsletter which then became
Hot Rod Magazine.
- [Greg] Robert E. Peterson was pretty brave in 1948
to found a magazine called Hot Rod because it was
a pejorative term.
It was really a risky proposition, but it worked for him.
- [Greg] Within three years, it was selling like,
3 million copies and he was a millionaire.
- There was the magazine that, of course,
really built hot rodding.
I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri and we were able to see
what was actually happening there
in southern California.
Where we could get parts.
I happened to pick up the October issue
and that's where I first ran across a picture
of the Bob McGee Roadster.
- [Pat] What makes any hot rod significant
is being on the cover of Hot Rod magazine.
Everybody in the country saw this car
and the way it sat, and the way it was built.
- [Bruce] This car was photographed in front of USC,
so you've got a soldier, a scholar, a football star
all wrapped up into one package right there
in front of a very iconic university.
- [Greg] But to the public in the late '40s and early '50s,
hot rods were somewhat representative
of a menace.
- [Driver] (laughs) Yeah, they knew I was around now
all right.
You should have seen them scatter.
- [Pat] These hot rodders had gotten into so much trouble
with the cops that the SETA clubs and Hot Rod magazine
with Wally Parks leading the way,
he said, "Man, we got to clean up our image."
- [Bruce] All the hot rod clubs got together
with law enforcement to express their concern over
safe driving and image, and they selected this car
to lead the pack.
So on each car, they would put a safety sticker,
a green cross, on the windshield
and this was a big, big day for the legitimacy of the sport.
- After McGee, there was a fella named Dick Hirschberg.
He was a motorcycle and roadster guy.
He was a friend of VonDutch.
He got the car and then in 1955 painted it
a pale yellow color and put a new Chevy V-8 in it.
That has to be one of the first '32 Fords that got
an engine swap with a Chevy V-8, which of course,
they built literally millions of and it became
the basis for all kinds of racing and hot rodding
from then on.
- And then it went to Dick Richfield.
- I was driving down the street in Hollywood
and saw this yellow roadster sitting
in a service station.
Boy, that's a pretty neat looking car.
I said, "Hey, would you be interested in trading
"your roadster for a Lincoln Continental?"
And he says, "Oh, yeah.
"It looks pretty nice.
"I'll give you $800 and a roadster for the Continental."
I figured I was going to have to pay him
for the car (laughs).
And away I went and I was a proud owner of a 1932
Ford Roadster.
(car engine revs)
- [Pat] Once Richfield got the car, he kept updating it
with newer engines and different paint jobs.
- [Greg] He had the pipes going out the sides.
- The outside headers, actually, I think they
were for a boat originally and he turned them
upside down and used them on the roadster
and they worked fine.
- Eventually, I decided to built a new engine for it.
A 350 Chevy.
That was sure a good engine.
It just ran, and ran, and ran.
Go up to 8,000 RPM and sit there, never miss a beat.
- It was a new process called metalflake paint.
- And it was the first metalflake paint in the country.
Ducom and Chemical came out with a ground up
aluminum and they found a way to shoot it
through a spray gun.
You could put a real sparkly finish.
- [Greg] So it went from the pale yellow
to the metalflake red.
At the ultimate, we ended up painting it black.
In the late '50s, the street riding was dying off
a little bit.
He got together with a couple other guys and had roadsters
and decided that they'd form a club
and that became the L.A. Roadsters.
- [Pat] He was a doer.
He was a leader, and the idea was, we're going to drive
these goddamn things, that's what they're for.
They were a known hot rod club and they put on this show
at the Hollywood Bowl parking lot starting in '57.
- We were able to start a really complete industry
and it's just grown, and grown and just keeps going,
you know?
- Not only was he leading all these runs
with the L.A. roadsters, there were all these
Hollywood B-movies.
- Well, the studio is looking for a roadster for a movie
and I said, "Well, I'd be available."
so the first movie was Hot Rod Gang.
- [Pat] The first thing they're doing is,
they're banging hubcaps and the next thing,
they challenge each other to ride the curbs
and they're going and down where the driveways are.
- [Dick] I kept thinking they were going to hit one
of the light poles or something.
That made me a little nervous, I will admit.
- [Pat] Whenever they needed a hot rod,
it was Richfield's car.
They put it in movies, he put it in TV shows,
he put it in ads.
It was ubiquitous.
- I don't want my baby mixed up with these drug strips
and hot roots.
- Mom, that's drag strips and hot rods.
- Well, that's it!
- And it accomplished the start of the Richfield Roadster.
- I got a good life, I got a good job,
I got the boulevard.
- It was in tons of shows, I saw it in shows.
- Stella!
- Thanks, Fonzie.
- Sometimes I drove
and sometimes it was a stuntman or the actor driving.
- OH, wow.
This is the deuce!
(car engine revs)
- This car was in a lot of movies and TV shows
over the years, a lot.
- Well Andy, I declare.
This is the prettiest little car I ever did see.
- And he put it together all by himself.
That's os wonderful.
(car engine revs)
- It was a lot of fun.
- [Pat] It very well should be called the McGee Richfield
Roadster because Dick Richfield accomplished more
in performance with the car
than Bob McGee did.
- In the late '60s, he became interested
in Dry Lakes and Bonneville racing
and he lobbied SCTA and in 1971,
they formed some street roadster classes.
- We put the record.
We ran through at 168
and they couldn't believe that a street roadster
would really go that fast.
That was great fun.
- I've been well over 200 miles per hour at Bonneville
and when I think of going 167 miles an hour in this car,
I'm not sure I have what it takes.
Going that fast in a street roadster
is a real accomplishment.
- Turn the key and go 167 miles an hour.
It was pretty amazing.
- They always say I jinxed the record because I held
the record nine years before they broke it
and then they finally just made complete race cars
that were not street driven or anything else,
so I felt pretty good about that.
- He retired to Hawaii.
Well, Hawaii had a strict fender law at that time,
so he decided he would sell the roadster.
- Then I get over here and like, two years later
they change the law
and fenders aren't required anymore,
so I got had.
I was sorry I did that at that time.
They were all good memories with that car.
I do miss it.
It was a bit part of my life.
I like driving fast and I like fooling with cars
and that make me a hot rodder, I guess.
- [Bruce] To find a car like this with the original,
original everything, body, doors, hood, chassis,
is very, very rare that it hasn't been modified
beyond recognition and beyond restoration.
And so making the decision when I bought the car
which point to restore it to,
I picked the McGee car because this was the pivotal time.
It was so well-known in the history of hot rodding
and it just defined style.
(upbeat music)
- [Greg] Bruce located Bob McGee.
He lived down in Fountain Valley, which isn't very far
away, but nobody had really talked to him in a while.
He brought his scrapbook and contributed his knowledge
and so forth to the project.
Sadly, he didn't live to see it completely restored,
but he knew it was in the process
and was going to be restored.
Ad this is accurate as is possible to make it.
I think it's just spot on.
(car engine revs)
- This car represents generations of innovation.
Hod rodding is all-American as baseball, jazz,
apple pie, and it was almost forgotten.
There was a real under appreciation for the cars
and personalities behind the hot rod movement.
I think one of the running points was when
Pebble Beach accepted hot rods
along with Duesenberg and Rolls Royces and Ferraris
as a very acceptable art form.
The US Post Office put this car on a postage stamp
because this car has depth.
I mean, this car has done it all and I realize
when we leave this planet, we take nothing with us.
In fact, we're just custodians for icons like this.
(upbeat rock music)
(atmospheric music)
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