PLEASURES OF THE ROAD : TRUCKS THAT DON’T TOIL

In the dim glow of a single light bulb, a young man in jeans and greasy T-shirt is lost in the bowels of a dusty car--wrenching, hammering, bolting down a new engine.

The car, a 1946 Ford, looks nothing like the gleaming models that rolled off the assembly lines of Detroit. It is missing such things as fenders and bumpers. It has been “raked”: given a lowered front and a raised rear end. Its roof has been “chopped” (lowered), and its body has been lowered (channeled) on its frame, the better to increase speed when, on a deserted back-country road, one hears the magic words: “Wanna drag?” In other words, the car is the Great American Hot Rod.

Once the stuff of dreams for American teen-agers, the hot rod is now relegated, like the dinosaur, to floors of museums. And it has been replaced by--of all things!-- the pickup truck.

Parnelli Jones, who has made the transition from youthful hot rodder to Indianapolis 500 winner (1963) to successful businessman, tells why.

My first car was a 1923 T-Bucket with a hopped-up Model A engine. It wasn’t much, and I had to work every afternoon in a garage just to keep it running. But it was fast. And it was all mine.

I grew up dragging on the streets. Once in a while, I’d take the car off into some big dirt patch and run it around for a while. Had a real ball doing that.

Those were good days, working on and running our hot rods. Those times are gone now--probably forever--and it’s a shame that kids today can’t enjoy mastering that hands-on knowledge we used to gain working over an engine to get a car to go as fast as it possibly could.

In the late 1960s, teen-agers--would-be hot rodders--started turning to different pursuits. Hippies were “in,” and between protest marches and “flower power” a whole generation of kids lost interest in souping up a car and racing for pink slips.

The gas crunches of the 1970s didn’t help, since they were instrumental in launching the small-car era. As Eiji Toyoda, chairman of Toyota Motor Corp., says in his recent autobiography, “The rapid growth in the export of Japanese cars to the United States in the 1970s was the result of nothing more than an unexpected advantage given to the Japanese auto makers by the two oil shocks.”

But, if gas shortages greased the skids under American hot rodding, government regulation administered the coup de grace .

Smog regulations severely limited what you could do to an engine and to the rest of a car. If you installed a bigger carburetor or did almost anything else to make the car go faster, you were asking for trouble.

In 1984, when smog-inspection regulations were first enforced, some guys took their cars--fast cars, not family sedans--into smog-inspection stations. When their cars flunked, they were looking at a $3,000-$4,000 tab to get them up to government standards and make them street legal.

Mind you, I’m all for eliminating smog. It does nobody any good. But smog regulations have not only eliminated the hot rod, but they’ve hit the parts market hard, too. In 1984, sales of some products--exhaust and carburetion systems, for example--fell off nearly 50% in some instances. A lot of parts businesses had to fold.

But now, some after-market companies are reporting that performance and appearance products amount to nearly 30% of their sales. These products are being fitted not on hot rods but on trucks.

Trucks are changing the driving habits of Californians in a lot of ways. Kids still need transportation, and they’re finding it in vans, mini-trucks and, in some cases, even larger pickup models.

And, just like I used to do to that old T-Bucket, they’re expressing themselves by jacking their trucks up in the air, changing the shocks, putting on fancy light bars. They’re adding running boards to go with sliding rear windows and splash guards. Collapsible truck lockers, bug shields, window louvers, custom sound systems--even refrigerators--are big sellers.

In fact, you can buy complete truck dress-up kits, with pin-striping and decorative lighting, to eliminate time-consuming customizing work.

A lot of people, young and old, are buying trucks for primary transportation or even as second vehicles. With their smaller engines, mini-trucks are gas savers and pretty reliable as a breed. And, yes, there are lots of people who buy them, fix them up and head out to the desert for some racing.

After all, people don’t really change. When I was younger, I wanted to do stuff to my car to make it “neat,” to get noticed. Now, I have other things--boats, snowmobiles, trucks--but I’m still doing things to them so somebody will notice them and say, “Wow . . . that’s really sharp. What did you do to it?”

Young people have the same feelings today, whether it’s with a mini-truck or--as a classic example--the “low riders.”

Now, it’s OK to lower a car, if it’s done properly. But I have to admit that when I see low riders going down the street, bouncing up and down and back and forth, it kind of drives me crazy. It’s not something I’d do to my car.

At the same time, however, I realize those kids are doing the same things I used to do in that dusty old garage: expressing themselves through their vehicles.

It wouldn’t surprise me if, in a few years, those kids end up driving a truck like mine. I drive a full-size pickup for some very distinct reasons.

First, I’m up high in the truck--higher than any car--and I can read traffic far ahead. That makes me feel secure .

Compared to a car, the truck’s cab is small, and when I turn on the air conditioning, I get instant comfort. Plus, the truck is easier to get into and out of than, say, a small car or sports car.

Factor in decent price tags--the bottom line for lots of folks--and today’s trucks add up to economical, reliable, fun transportation.