Antique & Classic Cars Blog

The Fifties had some great cars and great music. But let’s face it, a lot of people buying, driving, wrenching and dreaming on the car scene weren’t around in the 1950s. If fond memories of drives and dates and races fuel the hobby, how do you keep it going year after year?

Ya get younger people involved, of course. The Rochester Student Street Rod Association is one connection between today’s youth and yesterdays rods. President, Ilya Leontovich, says the kids got involved indirectly. The school had a program where area residents could donate a car, which the school would then sell to raise money for things like shop equipment.

One of the vehicles that came in was this ’64 Ford truck. Rather than spiff it up and sell it, someone (like maybe Gary K., a former mechanic who now teaches) got the idea of rodding it as a project for the kids. The idea took off.

Today about four Rochester area schools are involved. Students (and recent graduates) participate and work on the truck. They’re forming a limited liability partnership to own it collectively, with some strict rules about driving records and obeying the law. Sponsors dig on the idea too, and have donated lots of parts and expertise to help the young motorheads turn out a mighty fine truck. Beats video games.

For younger drivers, this big-scale slot-racer-style track provides a little high speed fun and wheel time. If you can’t drink beer, you don’t have your own rod project to talk about and source parts for, a little track time is a pretty nice diversion.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 24th, 2007 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Back to the 50s, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.