Australian Hot Rods

AUSTRALIA. Once again I found myself in Australia, visiting Kustom National Hot Rod Show down on Phillip Island on the outskirts of Melbourne.  By Mats Carlsson. Translation Ellen Kay Krantz.

As many of the readers of Usabil.nu and Worldkustom may know, my sister-in-law lives in Melbourne since almost 20 years back and we have celebrated lots of Chrismtases and New Years Eve’s over there.

I’ve visited this car show about five or six times along the years. My coverage’s of this meet has been published in both Bilsport Classic and on Usabil.nu under “reportage”. This year the car show follows the same structure as earlier years. It’s a three day meet with a laid back tempo. Vendors selling car parts and clothes, two bands playing and then the Show and Shine which is the car exhibition. This meet is one of the biggest around with 400-500 cars and I’m really enjoying it!

You can get a great meal and a cold beer at the food court and over here; no one takes the beer outside that area. There’s no cruising arranged afterwards which is standard in Sweden, but some spontaneous cruising arises.

What you do do is letting the cars out on the track on predetermined times to let loose. A really appreciated part of the agenda. Although, there are sadly no burnouts or other fun stuff that stands out, the tempo is as cool as their manners. But it’s a nice thing, because every car always looks prettier in motion.

The car trend is similar to the one in USA and Europe, what really differs is the obvious liking of compressor motors and eternal love for pickups, or UTE, as they are called.

I talked to Waddington Hot Rod Shop that amongst other stuff produces a 28-29 pickup body in sheet metal and also right hand side doors to existing bodies. This because the right door is always more worn out after years of farmers using just the one door to get in and out.

Other popular cars that dominate this show are rods, Mustangs, Chargers and some 50-60’s cars. A lot of them recently imported from the US but some of them are actually made in Australia.

Both GM and Ford through Holden have car industries here. Ford has their own models for this market and Holden is best described as a mix between Chevy and Opel.

It’s pretty funny cause on rare occasions you can find a Ford that looks like a Ford does in USA but after a closer look you realize the fenders and badges are very different, a lot like the Fords that are produced in Canada.

The guys and gals down under like cars and it clearly shows that it’s a  popular hobby here. I also happen to know that some of the parts you buy from USA actually are produced in Australia.

One small anecdote: Later during the week I visited Waddingtons Hot Rod Shop to discuss them having the Swedish five body windows for retail which is something I also am involved in. Two days later I received an email from my colleague Arvid in Sweden that he returned two Kwik Top Cab racks to Vintique Inc because the woodwork had been infested by maggots.

Vintique Inc forwarded this to the distributor and asked them to contact Arvid. It turns out that Waddintongs’ produced the cab rack and sold it to Vintique Inc, who sells it to retailers in Sweden.

Yepp, the world of Rods is a small one.
There are similar stories back in Sweden with Swedish produced parts that is sold to USA and then imported back to Sweden by eager mechanics, but let’s save that story for another time. 

If you get a chance to visit the land down under, pencil in a car show or two as well.

There’s a car show pretty much every week. Remember to take into consideration that Australia is about as big as North America, with only about 20 million citizens..
– Hey, that’s about the exact number as inhabitants in London….!

The distances are long and wide and many places are totally inhabited. But it’s an incredible beautiful, nice and easy country to vacation in.