In post-war America, there were alternatives to the Big Three when purchasing a new U.S.-made automobile. Among the manufacturers was Kaiser, which had a short history from 1951 to 1954 (with production continuing for another year in South America). Company president Henry J. Kaiser made his money early on in construction, then ship building for the war effort, then opened Kaiser Aluminum and Kaiser Steel, and then created what would become the Kaiser Permanente hospital system.

Most car projects take longer than you expect and nearly always cost more in the end, too. Even using the old adage “multiply what you think it will cost or take in time by three” can get you somewhat of a reasonable working schedule and budget together, but not always.

Nineteen-forty Fords aren’t the only cars Larry Olson likes, but they happen to be high on the list. He’s owned a few, from convertibles to sedans and of course coupes. Larry calls them the prettiest of the fat-fendered cars, and we wouldn’t argue. With a design cleaner than the inside of a bubble, and more curvy lines than a trigonometry textbook, the ’40 coupe has established its place alongside the ’32 as a street rod icon.

After decades of customizing, it’s sometimes hard to come up with something new when it comes to fixing up a ’32 Ford roadster. But elegance never goes out of style, and William “Buddy” Shores was determined his Deuce highboy should exude a certain amount of class to go along with the traditionally inspired nuances.

As a senior in high school, Aaron Pilatzke of Orangeville, Ontario, Canada, went straight to the head of the class when he purchased a ’59 Corvette for his very first project car. Not satisfied with installing a run-of-the-mill small-block, he opted for a big-block Chevy V-8 while also venturing into his first experiences with mechanical fuel injection. Determined to make the old Hilborn unit work on the street, he mastered its many needs and soon became a force to be reckoned with on the both the street and strip.

Ted Daniel, from Fort Loramie, OH, owns this ’38 Plymouth coupe (pictured above), but only after trying for five years to buy it from the previous owner. When he finally did purchase it, it had been sitting in the guy’s backyard and it was only covered in primer paint. It still had the original motor and transmission and, after almost four years of working on it, Daniel was able to drive it to the Street Rod Nationals in Louisville. Now it sports an independent front suspension, a 340 engine, and it’s backed to a five-speed Dodge Dakota transmission with a hydraulic clutch and a 3.23:1 posi rear. The interior is all leather and features embossed flames in most of the panels.

In Danny Blocker’s baby scrapbook is a photo of the Hemi-powered Willys Gasser that Fred Hurst raced in the ’60s. It belongs in there—as much as any first tooth photo and birthday invitation. Even as a little boy, Danny had wanted a Willys coupe. When he was 7 or 8 years old, he saw a made-for-TV movie called Rebel of the Road (aka Hot Rod), featuring a gray-primered Willys coupe in the title role. When his father, Michael, an avid hot rodder, took him to his first car show, Danny was convinced that the gray-primered 1940 Willys coupe he saw there was the same car. Had to be.

For Chad Folkema of Dorr, Michigan, it was definitely like putting the cart before the horse when his latest build began to take form. Chad was influenced by a nasty Model A coupe that used to terrorize the local streets when he was growing up, so it was obvious at some point he’d have to step into the deep end and get started on his own Model A project.

So this is where this ’30-31 A coupe gets its vision.

Smoothed out, mono-colored street rods were very popular in the early ’90s, and Dave Hawkin’s ’32 roadster from Scottsdale, AZ, was a textbook example on how to get the look, right down to the powdercoated Halibrand square-window wheels.

There couldn't be a better way to get indoctrinated into the world of hot rodding than attending dirt track jalopy races back in the early '70s. It was a time when junkyard bodies of cars from the '30s and '40s were still available so racers packed them full of Flathead power and headed out onto the track to battle it out for the honor of being number one at the Main on Saturday night. For Neil Candy of Ontario, Canada, it was a perfect way to grow up while spending weekend nights with his parents who were avid race fans, at tracks all over Eastern Ontario and Northern New York.

You’d probably have to live there to discover it but there’s another strip of gleaming palaces in Las Vegas. And as a local would tell you, the houses there boast the best odds in town—in fact just about every player drives off in a brand-new car. Unofficially, it’s Dealer Row and among insiders East Sahara Avenue has been the valley’s Glitter Gulch of Go for decades. Just ask Greg Heinrich; his family staked its claim with Fairway Chevrolet 42 years ago.

Being a woodworker has its advantages when building a phantom woodie. Owner Dennis Egan, of Round Rock, Texas, knows this because he finished this woodie using a '31 Model A cowl, reproduction fiberglass fenders, and a Deuce grille shell with a die-cut stainless steel insert after spending four years in the design and build process.

If ’32 Ford highboy roadsters were at one end of the hot rod build spectrum, then perhaps the four-door Chevy wagon would be at the other end. But don’t be fooled: there is a strong following out there for things that are different. Folks who own ’50 Plymouths, ’37 Fords, or a ’58 Bel Air have on more than one occasion created something stunning out of a vehicle at one time most folks wouldn’t have thought twice about. And four-door anythings usually fall into that camp.

For the biggest bang when building a hot rod, nothing comes close to a T-bucket packed with a nasty mill nailed to the 'rails. Since the engine is typically exposed, it gives each individual owner the perfect platform to show off their cubic inches. It was nearly 30 years ago when Jim Wilkos of Wallingford, Connecticut, got involved with hot rods, thanks to his dad who was (and still is) a member of the Connecticut Street Rod Association. The pair would frequent cruise nights and local rod runs in their hopped-up '34 Ford pickup as well as visiting Connecticut Drag Way on a regular basis.

Imagine a scene from American Graffiti. John Milner is waiting at a traffic light in his yellow '32 five-window coupe. Imagine a black '32 five-window creeping up alongside him, its lakes pipes letting out a couple of quick provoking blurts. Then what happens?

In the final moments of the 2011 Grand National Roadster Show, the award for America's Most Beautiful Roadster went to a '34 Ford wearing mirror-shiny black paint and a ton of traditionally influenced styling. Minutes before, this big moment was foreshadowed when a '35 Ford five-window coupe wearing mirror-shiny black paint and a ton of traditionally influenced styling took First Place in the Custom Rod Coupe class. This is the story of how a West Coast rock musician and a racer from the mountains of western Virginia teamed up to make that happen.

When he was in high school, Mark Williams, of Riverside, California, drove a ’56 Chevy. Now a bit older, he has a grade-school-age daughter, and he thought it would be great if she had a similar experience when she reached high school, so he started looking for a car for her. With Mark having always liked ’57 Chevys, soon a two-birds-with-one-stone concept was born.

Bloomfield Hills, MI

Automotive designer Larry Erickson recently explained certain cars receptiveness to creative expression. A Volkswagen Beetle and a 32 Ford dont look anything like each other but they have a certain honesty and willingness to be hot-rodded, he observes. On the other hand, The willingness for an Edsel to be hot-rodded is fairly low, he says, a reference to the cars polarizing image. It always wants to be an Edsel.

As the interest in early ’60s cars continues to explode on the street rod scene we are seeing more creative approaches to building these cars and a strong interest in the hardtop versions of early ’60s cars. It seems every automaker had come up with a sleek new hardtop for 1961; for the Chevrolet it was the Sport Coupe, available in both Bel Air and Impala trim levels, while Ford offered the Starliner. Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac also offered up great-looking two-door hardtops that year, as did Dodge and Plymouth. Known by hot rodders as bubbletops, these hardtops all shared the design feature of a large, laid-down rear window with extremely thin C-pillars.

As the drummer for the West Coast rockabilly band the RevTones, Marcus Edell is used to being in the spotlight. His ’34 Ford has been getting a taste of that kind of attention recently. The metallic blue coupe is familiar to anyone who visited the Suede Palace at the 2012 Grand National Roadster Show, where the early-’60s–flavored hot rod was displayed front and center. It’s also well known on the Hokey Ass Message Board website, where HAMB members watched its start-to-finish progress over the course of a couple years.

Some folks will confuse a ’39 DeLuxe Ford with a ’40 Standard Ford because the factory basically made the ’39 DeLuxe its base trim package for the ’40 model year, but there are a handful of other telltale design changes that you can spot to separate the two years. The ’39 versions don’t have windwings in the doors and the ’40 does, and the windshield wipers on a ’39 mount above the windshield while a ’40 has them mounted in the cowl. Both years have the same iconic grille (though it’s usually referred to as a “’40 grille”), but the ’39s have the classic teardrop-shaped taillights while the ’40 uses the one-year-only Chevron-shaped ’lights. Of course the headlights are different, too, with the laid-back teardrop design being used in the ’39 and the vertical design used in the ’40, but that doesn’t mean you can’t mix and match any of these design elements with either year, which is how you get a car like the one owned by Dan Garcia.

For those who believe you cant go back, they obviously havent met Garry Crawford. Based in El Dorado, Kansas, Garry has spent most of his seven decades in the small towns around Wichita, which includes going to high school in Ellis.

Modern brick office buildings now occupy the block in downtown Alexandria, Virginia, where Jeff Berry’s grandfather opened Herby’s Ford in 1947. Jeff worked there before he was even a teenager. By the age of 13, he was wrenching on a ’65 Mustang GT fastback that his dad had given him. Before he had a driver’s permit he’d painted the car twice.