The Hot Rods of Dearborn (HRD) is dedicated to collecting stories and pictures of hand-built hot rods and customs from the 40's, 50's, and 60's in the Dearborn and Southeastern Michigan area. HRD is also very interested in covering current hot rod builds that are true to the spirit of traditional hot rodding...new traditionalism, we call it.
This section is the heart and soul of HRD. The growing collection of little known hot rods are for the most part, the real cars we grew up with. These are historic vehicles that were created during the golden age of hot rodding…some are still around, while others are only photo memories.
The ‘New Traditionalist’ are those who are guided and inspired by the look and feel established by early hot rodding. These vehicles are recently constructed with some being exact time-capsule recreations, while others can only be described as ‘interpretive retro’.
These are the cars we dreamed about. We built models of these cars, drooled over them at Autorama, and watched them race at the drag strip.
1958 MHRA Drag Race at Lansing, Michigan
Featuring The Speed Sport Roadster 8mm film recorded by Richard Cote of Dearborn, Michigan
Street Racing in Detroit, Michigan 1964 Stecker...a 0.7 mile flat and straight slab of pavement between Michigan Avenue
and John Kronk attracted local street racers every Sunday afternoon.
This rare 8mm film footage captures some of the typical activities.
The HRD Hall of Fame Recipient
Congratulations to Terry McFarlane!
The Hot Rods of Dearborn is proud to make Terry the third recipient of the Hot Rods of Dearborn Hall of Fame. There's a bunch of cool photos here, so make sure you check it out.
ward Avenue: Cruising the Legendary Strip by Robert Genat
Detroit’s Woodward Avenue was America’s center of gravity for cruising and street racing in the 1950s and 1960s. Its widely paved surfaces with long sections of arrow-straight road between traffic signals provided the ideal location for stop light street racing and cruising action. Woodward even became the unofficial test track for the profusion of hot factory iron churned out by Detroit’s engineers. If you lived in the Detroit area in the 1960s and wanted to drag race – Woodward Avenue was the place to go.
Tom Kuhr & Rich DeBene, are the 'hot rod archivists' of HRD and are collecting any
stories and pictures that can document the rich hot rod legacy of Dearborn and the surrounding Southeastern Michigan area.
