Trash My Ride

A 1952 Chevrolet Pickup sits on for people to see at the 2010 annual Portland Auto Swap Meet.

On the second weekend of April the Portland Expo Center had the smell of rust, dust and fresh sausage. You wouldn’t find any hybrids at the annual auto swap meet, nor would you find anyone recycling their sandals. What you would find are bearded men in frenzy over old school gas-guzzlers with custom bodies and every kind of paint job imaginable.  The vehicles themselves were reflections of their owners and every participant showcased their own innovations. Thousands of people showed up to buy, sell, or trade cars with each other, both pristine trailer queen hot rods and strange auto amalgamations alike.

Jim Heidel from Middle Point stood next to his 1926 Essex two-door coupe. The car is the epitome of what they call a rat rod. Rat rods are similar to traditional hot rods in the sense that they are customized meticulously. The difference is that a rat rod is meant to appear as an incomplete eyesore to traditional custom car militants. If Frankenstein’s monster were a car, it would be a rat rod. “I’ve cut the two doors off the front and put suicide doors in the back,” says Heidel. “It also has a 96 Maxima electric sunroof in the top!”

The rat rod movement is a culture within a culture. It began in the mid-‘80s in response to the cars worth six figures that were so flawless they would lose their value if driven even once. At the opposite end of the spectrum, owners drive and race their rat rods so that it can reach full potential. In the car owner’s eyes, the bigger and louder the engine, the badder the rat rod. “I originally had a Pontiac 400 in it, sitting on a sidewinder drag chasse that’s been shortened down to a street rod version,” says Heidel with a proud gaze in his eye.

A 1952 Studebaker with original paint sits next to a 1948 Studebaker front clip at the annual Portland Auto Swap Meet on April 10, 2010.

“It’s the swap meet, this is the coolest place to be even if you don’t know shit about cars, you gotta come and have a good time!” says thirty-one-year-old classic car restorer Joe Thompson from Portland. Thompson pointed to the front of his 1948 Chevrolet Fleetmaster. “I left the original nostalgia there, you know, the old paint job and the original 48 Oregon license plate.”

Apart from Heidel’s Essex and Thompson’s Fleetmaster, many other rats at the swap meet commanded attention. A 1923 Buick Special with monstrously sinister exhaust pipes protruding four feet off the engine block was there, but the owner was nowhere to be found Saturday afternoon. Another was the 1969 Saab Deluxe with red hubcaps and a primer paint job. Until recently, most people have associated these types of automobiles with the rockabilly and greaser culture, but now rat rods are paving their own way into a more mainstream culture.

D.A. Sebasstian’s new independent film Rat Rod Rockers! set to be released in 2010,  will be a follow-up to his 2009 film Hot Rod Girls Save the World. Sebasstian is a film producer for Go-Kustom Films and Go-Kustom Rekords. While also known in the Northwest and greater Seattle area for his electronic band, Kill Switch…Klick, Sebasstian is becoming a notorious figure with a cult following for his short films, music videos, and artistic commercials.

In the movie  a gang of ruthless thugs driving rat rods take control of a small Northwestern town and wreak havoc among the townspeople, according to Go-Kustom Films. Sebasstion filmed the movie in a “weird slap-stick, dark comedy type of humor,” he says, mentioning the film styles of David Lynch and Wes Anderson.

An unattended 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood occupies a for sale space at the 2010 Portland Auto Swap Meet.

The Rat Bastard Car Club in Washington orchestrated the drag racing scenes in the film. The official premier date has not yet been released. “This one is gonna be much more streamlined with less dialogue,” says Sebasstian in a Go-Kustom press release where he promises to replace the aliens and zombies of Hot Rod Girls Save the World with mobsters and moonshine.

“This isn’t to say Rat Rod Rockers! will not have a sense of humor. I always felt that hot rods are in fact a kind of exaggerated automobile, almost cartoonish. But not in a Baby Huey kinda way. More like a Hellboy, Dark Knight or Sin City kinda way. Let other directors make The California Kid Part II — I like my hot rod films campy.”
Everyone seems to have their own notion as to what makes the perfect rat rod- the highlighted appeal being the idea of raw, incomplete vehicles that intimidates grandmothers everywhere. “Even if I had a nice car, I don’t know if I would be nice to it,” says Thompson.

Rat rods are the reincarnation of past American decadence recaptured in a new and completely different way. In the past car enthusiasts sought to create the perfect pristine ride, whereas today custom car enthusiasts are beginning to shoot for the unrefined and incomplete machine. “Anyone can get into it,” says Heidel. “But it takes a certain person to stay there. In my younger years, I’ve built and owned cars that nowadays would be worth so much it’s unreal. You don’t realize what you’ve got until it’s gone.”