Daily we have at least one hot rod, muscle car, performance car enthusiasts declare that they too are going to jump on the bandwagon and quote “open a hot rod shop.” All it takes if a shop, some equipment, a little imagination, some cars to build and off to the land of the independently wealthy. On more than one occasion, the discussion starts with, “I was watching Barrett-Jackson and …” The truth of the matter is the industry is growing rapidly, but it is time for the hot rod/performance industry to demand some respect. From the first Model “A” that rolled off the assembly line the automotive industry has controlled the interest of the legislative entities of the government. In the background builders started to modify production parts, hot rodding, customizing, racing and refinishing within days of rolling off the assembly line. For over a hundred years, the automotive industry and the hot rod industry have traveled parallel to each other. Both sharing technology from one another on many occasions when the automotive needed new concept, or performance tips it looked to the hot rod, motorsports, performance industry for answers. After WWII, many automotive executives started to realize that the custom car and niche car builders could possibly challenge the baseline production cars so the major players of the day quickly adapted concept performance programs in-house. They hired the best fabricators, racers, designers, inventors, artists, industrialist and created positions known as Design Engineers. Smokey Yunick’s biography refers to General Motors executives calling racing and hot rodding rogue industries.

In the last fifty years, the custom vehicle market place has grown but truthfully, we do not know how large it is. It is easy to see the popularity of the custom vehicle, racing alone is larger than ever before. There are more hot rod shows, motorcycle shows, not excluding the restoration purist. If you go onto the US Department of Labor website, you will find no industry listings for racing, hot rodding, performance industry or custom vehicles. NAISC, a coding system that lists industries by skills, does not refer to any of these either. In fact, to be a proficient hot rod builder you would borrow skills from over twenty NAISC listed trades. If you contact the Economic Development Agency in your state and asked what the impact of the hot rod, motorsports, performance industry has on your state’s economy most will not even acknowledge that it exists. Most states just throw the industry in with tourism. In a recent Department of Labor job search, not one listing for hot rod related jobs existed simply because there is no category, if no category, no industry, if no industry, no jobs, if no jobs, no need for training and so it goes.

Now if we could get the government to concede that because the industry does not exist we should not have to pay taxes - that would be cool!