Retro Cruisers [pics]

I do believe a Vennie belongs here

New Zealanders seem to have got this done to a fine art. Also, a Ventora makes a great retro cruiser fred but maybe a photo not taken on a potato?

















Courtesy of our friends at: Old School New Zealand

Can I blow my own, long since passed, trumpet.

Those were the days!

Sadly I don't have the freedom to buy weird old cars and slam them as I did back in the day. AlabamaAndy and I used to live relatively near to each other and would regularly appear with some new low rarity. It got to the point that if people saw something strange and slammed in my neck of the woods they'd just wave, assuming it was me- even if they'd never seen the car before!

Here's a few of them:











We weren't the only ones either (obviously dez was one of the others!) with a few errant chaps hovering in a budget-minded wilderness somewhere between the Aircooled VW, Street Machine and Hot Rod scenes.

VIP was up to no good with Yugos (I didn't know him back then though):



...and the scrapingscrap gang were up to all sorts of silliness:









Seth (who I didn't know at the time, but saw his cars at a few 'Rod shows) was on the other side of London being all classic:








I tried to do things properly with a V8 Herald but missed the old 'slammer' days and found an old Cressida to chop the springs on and drive 'til either I was bored, it died or something more interesing came along - sadly (sort of) it was too good to treat in the disposable way these quick slam cars were intended, we got this place going shortly after and realised that obscure Japanese cars were 'a thing' with the help of some internettery. Rather than being some weird old grandad car ripe for slammage, I'd accidentally bought an iconic Shakotan base! The Cressy stuck around for longer than some of those old rides and tamed me a bit.

Crikey, it was fun. :-)

I think the base cars just aren't as ripe for it now, and the stuff that was been dicked around with back then was super cheap banger fodder. I need to get my old computer set up and get the photos of the old chod off. Highlight was a chevette that I bought for 25 quid, chopped the springs and bump stops till they were loose at ride height then drove round for 3 weeks till the test ran out then dumped it down the quarry and torched it.

I'll let others decide whether it's cool or not but my MGBGT only had a little lowering, some wheels and a couple of other cheap mods, did me well as a daily for quite a while





Edit: To give an idea of the cheapness

Wheels: £40 (some paint and tyres bump that up to about 70)
Front spoiler: £1.70
Roof: rollered black

etc...

Many people, certainly in the hot-rod/custom scene here, seemed to grow up to take their cars more seriously. Limited budget has always kept me away from being that serious.

See, I still think there's room for this kind of thing even if the cars have gone up in value somewhat, the trouble is now that it seems to be it's no longer cool to do things on a budget to stand out but rather to stick to a formula and show off how much money you can spend keeping up with everyone else. In my admittedly small knowledge of what goes on outside of the RR bubble the monetary side of things doesn't seem to be the issue since there's no end of young drivers barely out of their teens that seem to have no problem in spending thousands on virtually brand new cars, then spending nearly as much again on air-ride systems, brand new wheels and interior re-trims. For the cost of what it takes to put a five year old Golf up to show standard, you could probably build two, maybe three unique rides (obviously depending on what you start out with) and stand out ten times more for a fraction of the cost. So yeah, while times change and in turn older and classic cars have become more sought after I think it's more the change in peoples attitudes that have seen this kind of thing disappear more than anything else.