Bangin' Gears October 2009 Editorial

Got Something to Say? I want to hear from you. Drop me a brief email at john.hunkins@sorc.com.

It may sound like a stupidly obvious statement, but a car just can't talk back to you. Sometimes that's a good thing. All of us have had times when things don't work out with the wife, girlfriend, co-workers, or parents, and what you need is to crack a beer, and head out to the garage for some one-on-one time with the hot rod. It's a great way to clear your head, and gain some perspective on the rest of the crap flying around in your life. Call it therapy if you want-only it's a whole lot less expensive and a lot more gratifying than paying a shrink by the hour.

I know guys who can work on a car by themselves for months at a stretch, fabricating, tweaking, tuning, painting, and wrenching in total silence. For that guy, it's akin to expressing yourself without words, like painting or sculpting. But I also know an equal number of guys who use the hot rod as a social tool. That car can't talk back to you, but your buddies sure can, and they do it a lot. Taking it a step further, for some families, the hot rod is the glue that bonds father to son, or brother to brother. For us, it's the mortar between the bricks in the metaphorical house of life.

A hot rod is by definition a car that starts out as something that's unsatisfactory in one or more attributes. You buy a jalopy, and fix it up. By force of will, ingenuity, and elbow grease, you mold it into your vision, or a rough facsimile thereof. You transform it, and in the process, it transforms you-hopefully into a happier state. It's funny how you go through life with people always trying to change you. Wives and girlfriends are famous for trying to change their men, and parents are always trying to change their children. The irony is that the thing that ends up changing us gearheads, mostly for the better, is our hot rods.

This past week, a friend of mine came to visit for a few days. Wes and I have a lot in common. We both love working on and driving our Chevys, we both play rock 'n' roll, and we both have loving families. I met Wes through a mutual friend, who also plays guitar. He told me, "Hey, you need to check this guy, Wes Jeans, out. You'd love his music, and he's into muscle cars too." Before you know it, Wes was on a plane headed out to California to help me cut a blues track for a rock album I'm working on. I thought Wes would be perfect for this ZZ Top-influenced song about a Chevelle-wielding racer named HenryJackson. (And yes, Henry is a real guy in New Jersey with an incredibly fast street car. We hope to tell you more about him later.) Wes thought it would be fun to fly out and lay down some high-octane guitar licks, and we could play with the hot rods too.

Wes and I worked in the recording studio for a few hours, then went out to the garage to unwind with the project cars between takes. It was kind of surreal to be working on a song about a wicked Chevy, then taking a break and working on a real one-in this case PHR's '75 Laguna project. As we wrenched, the car wasn't saying anything, but Wes sure was. It turns out, Wes's dad runs the NAPA store in Marshall, Texas, just a few miles from the Louisiana state line. His pop has a Stepside Chevy truck with a 496 big-block that's almost identical to the one in the '68 Street Sweeper Chevelle. Like his dad, Wes is a hard-core Chevy man. He's got a Vortech-blown C5 Z06, and a '73 Corvette that's in the process of going together. (You may remember it from the "109 Reader Projects" story in the August issue.)

As we worked on the Laguna's cooling system, Wes regaled me with what seemed like a dozen stories about how he and his dad would work on and drive the various Jeans' family muscle cars over the years. And other relatives were inevitably involved in the escapades too. It made me think of all the fun times I had with my dad working on the family cars back in the '70s. We both agreed that having and working on our cars just wouldn't be the same if it didn't happen in the context of friends and family. We also agreed that sometimes a hot rod is exactly the kind of haven you need when you want to escape from your sometimes lunatic family. It kind of makes you wonder what families without hot rods do to keep it together!