3-7-00, written by Bill Teysko

Hot Rod Engines

Mrs. Betty Anderson pushes on the gas pedal as the light turns green. The car takes off like a shot as the engine roars gaining RPM and power. She turns to her granddaughter and apologizes, "I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to take off that fast."

Mrs. Anderson happens to be driving an average family sedan of the late 1990’s, a white Ford Crown Victoria. From the outside, the car appears to be pleasant but ordinary, "a plain-jane." However under the hood is an engine featuring a double-overhead cam V-8 with multi-port fuel injection and high-swirl cylinder heads. To the average driver this is so much techno-talk, but to the knowledgeable it brings a smile. This car has an engine worthy of hot-rod status; beneath the hood of this suburban sedan revs an exotic racing engine of the past.

To explain the term hot rod, let’s go back to the late 1940’s and 50’s in post-war America. Young men were turning from military service to building a life and enjoyable pastimes. One of those pastimes was cars, that is, taking a used car and personalizing it, especially by adding speed. So was born the hot rod, an average car that was changed to make it look better and go faster. Soon the noun became a verb, where to hot rod a car was to customize the car in looks or performance.

Comparing the hot rods of yesteryear with some assembly line offerings of today will reveal a sameness in the engine compartment. The tricks used by the imaginative hot rodders have become the techniques employed by engineers. Exhaust headers have become tubular exhaust systems. Turbocharging or supercharging the air intake has become commonplace in production models where once that was only for the well financed. Fuel injection on a hot rod was a crude, expensive experiment but has become standard equipment on the majority of cars now.

The ultimate hot rod, an Indianapolis 500 racecar, hand-built exclusively for speed featured a Ford financed Cosworth V-8 in the late 70’s. The Cosworth V-8 powered the winners of the Indy 500 from 1978 to 1987. In 1983, thirty-two of the thirty-three racers used that design. The engine had a 32 valve, double overhead cam, fuel injected configuration. The same blueprint that propelled Johnny Rutherford, Al Unser and Rick Mears to the winner’s circle had launched Mrs. Anderson briskly away from the stoplight.

The hot rod engine of yesterday is now commonplace. Lift the engine compartment cover of most any car these days and you will see the dreams of the young hot rodders of the 50’s appear as shining metal reality. For some, a long look at the confusion under the hood may be bewilderment, but for others it is the satisfaction of seeing a desire for speed become real. We can all own a hot rod now.