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Personally, I’ve never seen this film before, so I’m excited to share… The very beginning and end of this film are cut off, but I’m pretty sure this is the Hot Rod Story by Alex Xydias. Even with this cut down version, I think you get the bulk on some killer footage shot through the 50s and early 60s and narrated by Alex around 1964.
“The Hot Rod Story begins with a parade of roadsters on the road and then going through the famed Pasadena freeway tunnel. The film starts off a little grainy and the sound quality isn’t quite up to par, but it improves as it goes along. “Hot rod isn’t a term that we liked, we preferred the term roadster,” said Xydias. But over time the pejorative word became accepted and liked. “This is a story about a climb up the mountain of respectability, skill and creativity,” Alex continued. “Hot rodding, he added, began in the 1930’s and ‘40’s in Southern California. We tested our cars out in the Mojave Desert on dry lakes,” Alex said. There were still photographs of Karl and Veda Orr, Chuck Potvin and many other early hot rodders of the era. Along with some outstanding early video home movies, Xydias also had some early Hot Rod magazine movie footage. He quickly and easily moved from one setting and scene to the next, showing how wide and varied the culture of hot rodding was back then. There was Robert Petersen, also known as Bob, “Pete,” and the Boss, in his office at Trend Publications in Los Angeles. Bob Green and Tom Medley showed up in the next scene and the feeling came to me, “Did Alex shoot these videos or were they rescued from the infamous dumpster dive at Petersen Publishing during one of the many sales of the company to outside publishers?” Then it was back at the dry lakes for some really great quality taping of land speed racing. Alex has a talent for explaining the most mundane point in an interesting way. He went on to explain what was in the photographs and videos with an easy manner. He pointed out the differences in car class; streamliners, roadsters and how war surplus airplane belly tanks morphed into the famous lakester class of cars.”
More about the movie’s creation here.
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