The term Hot Rod was sometimes used in the 1950s as a derogatory term for any car that did not fit into the mainstream. Hot Rods seems first to have appeared in the late 1930s, when kids, returning from the war would take a vehicle that’s cheap and readily available, cut it up to remove some weight, lower it and fit some fat tires, soup up or swap out the engine, open up the exhaust and would race their modified cars on the vast, empty dry lake beds northeast of Los Angeles. There wasn’t a prescribed set of rules. In fact, rules were meant to be broken. By using some good ol’ Yankee ingenuity, you were able to modify an inexpensive vehicle into one that performed better and looked cool. Hot Rods were about self-expression and doing something unconventional. At least the hot rod started out as a simple idea. How come that simple formula has become so rigid and difficult today… not to mention expensive? Hot rodding started out as kinda fun and easy going, why can’t it still be? Well, it can…
The Volksrod HiBoy. An ingeniously simple idea re-born.
Take a readily available and inexpensive used Volkswagen 1303 SuperBeetle, cut it up to remove some weight, lower it, tune the engine to give more power, fit some fat wheels and even fatter tires for traction, and paint it to make it stand out. Sound familiar?
With the Hiboy conversion you throw away the bumpers and fenders to remove close to 500 lbs., then fit Wide Whitewalls to rare, newly chromed Lemmertz sportsrims to give it a retro look. Add chrome 3-spoke centercaps to complete the look and your off cruisin’ EZ. It makes it so you can enjoy the easy-going fun and cruisin’ attitude of the ol’ hot rods and roadsters that many of us promised ourselves we’d have someday. When you factor in “cruiseability” (Volkswagen parts are cheap and easy to find) and total cost (build-ups can be under P100,000), the Volksrod HiBoy is one unbeatable combination.
