Classic Car Hunter-A blog for the classic car or hotrod enthusiest

This blog will be in support of the Classic Car Hunter website where you'll find for sale several thousand classic cars, classic trucks, muscle cars, custom cars, vintage cars, collector cars, hotrods, street rods, ratrods along with many other specialty cars made in America.

The website also has numerous articles on every facet of the collector car hobby such as how to buy a classic car, classic car insurance and loans, classic car transporting, some of the scams to watch for in buying and selling classic cars, where to find parts and accessories, classic car clothes, gifts, books magazine, etc. You can also list your classic cars and classic car parts for sale as well as put in cars and parts wanted ads.

Right or wrong, I use the word classic car to encompass the whole collector car hobby. If you're into classics, neo-classics, muscle cars, street rods or hotrods please bear with me. I think most people understand classic cars doesn't just mean those and no other "old car". If you can come up with a better name for the entire hobby let me know.

Before I get too much flack from the real classic car collectors let me do some explaining about the different car terms you'll see in here.
A classic car is defined by the purist as a car of note manufactured from the beginning of car manufacturing through 1948. I believe this leaves out a lot of classics built after 1948 but they know a lot more than I do.

My term for a car that can't be labeled classic because it was manufactured from 1949 to 1972 is neo-classic which includes muscle cars. You can add years to the 1972 if you want. I just happen
to think the last real muscle car in the neo-classic car era was in 1972. 1973 saw the end of the hemi and some other big engines and the others dropped as much as 90 horsepower. This was mainly due to oil prices and the insurance companies.

Although the neo-classic cars started in 1949, muscle cars didn't really get started until about 1964. Most muscle car fanatics agree that the 1964 GTO was the first real muscle car. Before you start yelling I agree that there were big engines and big horsepower prior to that but the muscle car concept was a big engine in a lightweight or smaller car. Keep that in mind when trying to make a case when muscle cars started.

Street rods are a little hard to define but overall I'd have to say they can be any car that has been modified mainly in the performance department, either by increasing the horsepower of the original engine or putting a different engine in the car. Most cars I call street rods are from 1949 through 1972. Now here I can be a little more lenient in the years because the styling of cars from 1972 forward was good, it was just the horsepower that sucked. Making them into a street rod solved that problem.

Custom cars and street rods are the same in many cases although custom cars tend to have more customizing than your typical street rod, which except for custom wheels look fairly stock on the outside. Custom cars can run the gamut from mild customizing by taking off chrome, changing lights and grills to the chopped, channeled, sectioned lead sled of the Barris era.

Hotrods and ratrods can cover almost all cars up until about 1949 when we had a big body change. Cars from about 1935 appeared to start crossing the line from hotrods to street rods or customs. Up to 1935 most cars no matter how they are modified are pretty well known as hotrods. It is very hard to try to categorize cars and years before 1949.

I guess vintage cars would describe all older cars that have remained stock with nothing modified on or in them. There are plenty of purists around who believe that it's terrible to do anything to a car. I happen to disagree with them and modifications of all types will be discussed here along with stock machines.

I welcome your comments, opinions, corrections or whatever on the subject of American collector cars. Leave the foreign cars to those who know about them.