[1]If you haven’t followed along with Corvette Online’s Weiner Wednesday series, we have a reoccurring, weekly column on hump day looking at “Good Corvettes Gone Bad,” and the “weiners” that took them there. For better or worse.
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This week we are going to tackle a controversial topic. Corvette Rat Rods. The Corvette Rat Rod phenomena is all the rage and we’re going to dig down and discern if it’s a cool thing or a weinerfest.
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When chatting with colleagues here at Power Automedia about Rat Rod ‘Vettes, I was chastised that “I didn’t understand” the rat rod movement. What that translated to was, “Your a square and not hip to what the weiners cool kids are up to…”
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What’s not to understand? Guys deconstruct–destroy–a C4, reducing into it’s bare bones essence thereby creating a new life for this long derided era of Corvette. The C4 pioneered a ‘drivable chassis” so it’s a natural for throwing the body panels–and most all of the exoskeleton–overboard.
Hot Rod magazine was a key instigator in the Rat Rod movement and they duly documented how they broke down a C4, stripped almost a thousand pounds off the car and ran the bejeezus out of it at a California raceway.
Then there’s “Kicker,” the bare chested, “Faygo” guy.
He was spotted and interviewed picking up multiple case of Faygo soft drinks. With a name like “Kicker,” we suspect he has a brother named “Cleetus”
Speaking of funky dudes. YouTube geek Cleetus McFarland has mined this stripped down Corvette thing with a C5 named “Leroy” and has become a big dog weiner on YouTube. He even sells his own shirts and shit too.
Go figure.
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So what’s not to like? We get it that the car becomes a bare bones “kart” and goes like a raped moose with all that weight taken off it. WE GOT IT.
We also get it that a Corvette is essentially destroyed. Something about a Corvette being cut up with a sawzall isn’t fun to watch.
If you look up the word “weiner” in the dictionary it would include a picture of bunch of iPhone twiddling, back-slapping YouTube clowns gawking at a Corvette autopsy.
A root canal would be a viable alternative to occupy an afternoon.
Let the hate mail flow!
And that brings us full circle to our standard Weiner Wednesday disclaimer. What is one man’s nirvana, might be another man’s hell…We say to each his own.
What say you? Are Rat Rod Corvettes winners, or weiners?
Discuss.