Could this 'heap' be Britain's first hot rod?

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There are exceptions to the rule, but it seems that not that many pre-war car enthusiasts are terribly interested in hot rods. However, there's no denying that it's a big part of motoring history; people have modified cars since the dawn of motoring, and hot-rodding started to take shape in America in the 1920s. There are some people who say it's no different from what European special-builders were doing but, if the principle was the same, they were culturally and aesthetically different.

The British Hot Rod Association was founded in 1960, and then customising really took off in the 1970s, when there wasn't a housing estate in Britain which didn't contain a Ford Escort, jacked-up over Wolfrace wheels with a cruising light illuminating the back axle and a Greg of Akron stick-on mural proudly emblazoned across the bonnet.

It started with the '32 Ford... or did it?

But what was the first British hot rod? And is such a topic acceptable to PWC readers? Only you can be the judge of that, but the earliest ones were very true to the American pre-war tradition. In 1958, Tony Williams, a 19-year-old Teddy Boy from Peckham, turned an abandoned 1932 Ford Model B convertible coupé into an American-style 'Highboy' roadster. At the same time, an English '32 sedan (the English ones had subtle detail differences from the American ones) was under construction, and wasn't completed until very recently.

We wonder, though, if this 1937-1939 Austin 12 might not be a contender for the title. The photograph looks to have been taken in the mid-1950s, and the young chap, who might be anywhere between 18 and 30, looks extremely pleased with his creation, which he has affectionately termed 'My Heap'. We don't know the location, but from the style of the terraced houses we might guess at somewhere in the Midlands or the industrial north.

Hopped-up and couped

What claim does it have to being a hot rod? For one thing, it has been the recipient of a performance engine upgrade. Admittedly, the 2.2-litre Austin A70 engine won't win many rice pudding skin-pulling contests, but it's a start... More interesting, though, is the bodywork modifications. The young lad has gone to a great deal of trouble to turn a staid, upright saloon into a rakish-looking coupé. The metalwork involved can only have been extremely time-consuming and difficult, and the only conceivable purpose can have been to make it resemble an American coupé of the 1930s.

Like it or not, one must appreciate the lad's efforts as a skilled amateur metalworker, and something of a maverick at a time and place where interest in hot-rodding was virtually non-existent and prewar saloons were being unashamedly sent to the scrapyard. It's a pity he stoved that rear panel in...

Words and photograph: Zack Stiling / Stiling Collection
 

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