In other threads on this forum, we've discussed how the modern Tiki Revival has mixed and overlapped with the Rockabilly, Surf, Hot Rod, and Burlesque revival movements. This is generally accepted as a modern phenomenon - It makes sense that Mid-Century Modern revival cultures connect and overlap - they accent and enhance each other and we all have the element of nostalgia in common now to bring us together.

Back in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, these cultures were distinct and not even necessarily recognized as "cultures" or "movements". They were just passions and enthusiasms of the era. If they overlapped, it was purely by accident, right?

For the longest while, the only evidence we had that Hot Rod Culture and Tiki Culture (and Surf Culture for that matter) overlapped at all was the famous Surfite model that appeared in the "Book of Tiki":

Lately, we've been seeing more overlap in bits and pieces. I recently had the opportunity to leaf through at least a hundred Hot Rod magazines from the 1960s at an estate sale and found even more connections. I still don't think that tikis were a major part of vintage Hot Rod culture, but I DO now believe that some hot rodders, (at least in Southern California), found Tikis to be very cool, and incorporated them in photographs to amp up the appeal of their cars. I have a feeling this might be because the "Exotic" nature of Polynesian restaurants and Tiki statues accented the exotic-ness of the custom cars, but that might not be the only reason.

Anyway, let's devote this thread to images of vintage hot rods and custom cars mixed with tikis or tiki restaurants, as well as discussion and debate about the intersection of the two movements back in the day. Here are some photos from my collection to get started. I wish these types of images were more common. Seeing tikis and hot rods together triggers a "cool" overload in my brain. It's hard to think of a better juxtaposition.

1. "Rod And Custom" magazine, March 1954. "The Tahitian" is a custom 1951 Ford Victoria, painted in Sunset Flame and Golden Mist, parked in front of the original Kelbo's restaurant on Fairfax & 1st in Los Angeles.

2. "Hot Rod" magazine, June 1961 - At the Winternationals Rod and Custom Show in Pomona California, a Long Beach club called the Renegades, won the Best Display award with their "Primitive" tiki-themed background:

3. "Hot Rod" magazine, March 1962 - Lawndale resident, Gary Heliker displays his custom Model-T street rod next to the local Tiki Kai restaurant to great effect:

4. "Speed and Supercar, Feb 1967" - A 1965 Dodge Coronet, named the Kon Tiki, is one of the quickest stockers running in the Midwest:

Other recent posts on TC:

TC member congawa recently posted this photo of a nice custom van parked in front of the Kono Hawaii in Santa Ana, CA, sometime in the 1970s:

TC member Lukeulele publishes a custom car magazine and recently found these great photos of Dirty Mike Gildea's tikis taken in Manhattan Beach, CA as part of a lot of hot rod photos that were submitted to him. One suspects that the original photographer might have been both a Hot Rod and Tiki aficionado. Here's the original thread and some of the photos:

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=38445&forum=1

Anyone else have any other images? Or theories on why tikis might have appealed to Hot Rod enthusiasts in the 1950s & 60s?

As a bonus, here's an AC spark plug ad from "Motor Trend" magazine, March 1963:

[ Edited by: Sabu The Coconut Boy 2011-05-22 00:38 ]

Nice idea. I am very curious about such evidence, too.

Allow me to emphasize the theme of this thread once more for our less cautious readers:

On 2011-05-21 23:54, Sabu The Coconut Boy wrote:
....let's devote this thread to images of VINTAGE hot rods and custom cars mixed with tikis or tiki restaurants, as well as discussion and debate about the intersection of the two movements BACK IN THE DAY.

Shouldn't that be more like "VINTAGE IMAGES of hot rods and custom cars mixed with tikis or tiki restaurants" rather than "images of vintage cars with tikis and restaurants, etc."? The idea is for period images made during the original Tiki Culture era, correct?

Bear

Yah, correctly termed, that is the request here, right, Sabu? The above magazine finds are great, by the way, especially the one in front of the Tiki Kai. Exceptions to the rule, though, in my estimation. But please, folks, keep'em comin' if you gottem.

No direct visual evidence, but I remembered this thread:
http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=33381&forum=2

...with these contributions by our esteemed members:

On 2009-08-10 13:59, 1961surf wrote:
The Hula Hut in El Monte was very popular in
the 1950's.My Dad met my Mom there for the first time and the rest is history.
They have been married for 51 years.My Dad has told me of the stories at the Hula
Hut which later turned into Bills drive in.This was the quintessential place that
would have been right out of "American Graffiti".The guys had slicked back DA
hair cuts with their cigarettes rolled up in their tee shirts sleeves and the girls
had the poodle skirts with bu fondue hair dues.Lots of cruise nights with cars of
all sorts would pull up there...

On 2009-08-10 16:30, Dustycajun wrote:
The Hula Hut in Whittier was frequented by Dean Moon the famous hot rod pioneer. They even had a car club called the "Hutters" named after the Hula Hut. Here is a picture of Moon and some fellow Hutters from the book Moon Equipped. Looks just like your description.

DC

Roland Leong, owned a dragster in the early 60's named the Hawaiian, it was the Grand Champion in 1965. Before BigBro jumps in and denies any relation to Tiki, this car and the team nodded to the Polynesian culture.

Thanks Sabu !!

These days, the power of the internet is making things a bit too easy (and taking the fun out of it?), when we can just do a Google search and get instant results. Most will stop their casual research there, assuming the vast wealth of a subject's content has been digitized and is available on the internet.

You did your urban (periodical?) archeology the old-fashioned way by thumbing through hundreds of old magazines at an estate sale !! :) I'm sure the 1st-generation (pre-internet boom) Tiki Revivalists here can appreciate that the most.

I think the most significant thing you uncovered is this:

Spark plugs can be Tiki !! :D

On 2011-05-22 04:09, bananabobs wrote:
Roland Leong, owned a dragster in the early 60's named the Hawaiian, it was the Grand Champion in 1965. Before BigBro jumps in and denies any relation to Tiki, this car and the team nodded to the Polynesian culture.

Well...

Maybe if there was an image of a Tiki (or the word Tiki) on that car. :)

Hasn't Hawaiian Tropic suntan lotion sponsored drag cards for years? Any of them tiki themed? Or was that too late on the timeline? 70s? (so many questions and no answers!)

While not in front of a Tiki establishment, this is Jack Walker's 1950 Olds Kustom "The Polynesian".

Cool, so we got the TAHITIAN, the HAWAIIAN, and the POLYNESIAN now! Shows how those monikers were part of peoples' world back then. Interesting how, especially in comparison to today's Tiki revival, none of those cars sport any Polynesian pop design elements (not to mention Tiki).

Well, I am not a custom car guy, but I can see that the Tahitian and Polynesian are all about stripped, clean lines, ANY ornament would have been extraneous and against their concept. But the Hawaiian, and those hot rods don't have anything Poly pop on them either (x-ept that cool Bamboo font!)

That spark plug ad rang a bell...

...and I dug up this large old water decal from my files, showing a smiling version of that mask:

I have no idea where it came from originally...

Great thread topic Sabu.

Here is a photo of the Surfite model and Tiki Surf Club hut

and a few models with the Surfite

DC

Some great pics and links in this thread.

One link that hasnt really been mentioned is that a lot of the early hot rodders served time in the US armed forces, and a lot would have served in Hawaii. They then went home and used their new mechanical skills souping up old cars to go fast. Makes sense that a bunch of these guys might have had tiki bars too I reckon, though I have nothing to prove that!

One thing I have noticed looking at vintage racing pics is that pith helmets were commonly worn at both the drags and the salt lakes. Not sure if this is a tiki influence or not?

Kasier concept cars - check the names!

Dodge Turbine car in front of the Bali Hai
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gy_fNjOy98

Not quite tiki, but definitely relevant to the intermixing of surf culture and hot rod culture 'in the day' was the Beach Boys. Prob the closest they came to tiki was the song 'Hawaii'

I grew up near Roth's Slauson Ave. shop, witnessing the koolest of 60s kustom kulture kreativity in action. Surfite was kute but kompared to many of Ed's other products like the wild bug-eyed Mysterion and his flying car, Rotar, this little job was mere movie fodder. Fortunately it survives today along with much of Big Daddy's awesomeness.

Legend Leong had many Hawaiians, soon leaving the rails behind for funny cars. His '72 Challenger had the most beautiful candy apple blue paint job covering the entire car, with gold bamboo HAWAIIAN lettering on the sides. One of the prettiest cars ever, certainly the best looker he had. You'll see it go up in flames @ 2:00 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYJQkaPD2d0

If you didn't live in the 50/60/70s, you should sue somebody!

Ed Roth's Surfite made a brief appearance in the movie "Beach Blanket Bingo"

Or theories on why tikis might have appealed to Hot Rod enthusiasts in the 1950s & 60s?

More than just a theory can link the two... Both Rodders and what could be called Tiki enthusiasts of the day were military men- The GIs returning to their homes at the conclusion of WWII.

In short and basically, you have one group of military men who brought back stories/souvenirs of being stationed in exotic Hawaii... From this birthed the 'Tiki' culture as discussed and is well known here.

At the same time though, some GIs returning from the motor pools in Europe began buying the clunkers that were cheap and readily available- converting them into 'hotrods'... Cars built for speed and excitement. They started racing their cars in the desert outside of Los Angeles and soon were building cars that exceeded 100 miles per hour. From this birthed the 'Custom' culture.

So you have 2 groups of military men in LA/Cali that surely ended up together in social settings (or reunions or via networking looking for jobs) discussing 'war stories' and what they were doing now that they were home... Supporting each other after what they went through in the war, possibly becoming friends in some instances.

There wasn't much crossover in the two or this wouldn't be a conversation, but both groups in LA had to have witnessed and shared the work being done on the separate 'movements' (which, btw, can also be classified as 2 truly American art forms).

My 2¢...

[ Edited by: Capt'n Skully 2011-05-23 12:45 ]

[ Edited by: Capt'n Skully 2011-05-23 12:46 ]

Thanks for good and on-topic input, Everybody.

Sven & Brudda Bear - You've got it right. Hoping to focus on the vintage connections in this thread, since we've already got several other threads for modern Tiki cars & trucks. That doesn't mean however that we can't post modern photos of vintage cars that had a tiki or Polynesian-pop connection. And if you find that old guy in your neighborhood who has a backyard full of old hot-rods and tikis, then BY ALL MEANS post some photos.

It's interesting how the two least-tiki looking vehicles (the Tahitian and the Polynesian) are from the early 1950s and probably influenced more from pre-tiki culture (maybe South-Seas or Beachomber bars and South Seas films?), before carved tikis had really made the scene. In the case of the Tahitian at least, the name might have been chosen because of the paint-job. It seemed to have resembled a Tahitian sunset, perhaps. Don't know what the paint-job was like on the Polynesian.

Love the bamboo-font on the Hawaiian dragster.

Bigbro - totally forgot about the Hula Hut in Whittier and the "Hutters". Would love to see more photos of that car club.

Also - great catch on that tiki mask logo being pretty much the same one on your decals. It also reminded me of the old mask-and-shield signs that appeared over some tiki restaurants as well.

hewey - I didn't know about the pith-helmet craze. Wonder what that was influenced by. Also, beautiful video of that Dodge Turbine in front of the Bali Hai - I'd never seen that before.

msteeln - it must have been great growing up so close to Ed Roth's shop in the 60s. I remember the street I lived on in the 60s & 70s had a custom chopper club at the end of the block. Beautiful Candy-Flake choppers, some in custom styles that Ed Roth would have been proud of, used to cruise up and down my street on Saturdays. Used to see a lot of dune buggies and custom vans too. I miss those sights.

Even though "The Polynesian" was a "50 Olds, it was built later in the '50's. It was the cover car for the June 1958 issue of Custom Rodder magazine, with a full feature on the car inside. Even though the article says the car was painted gold, it looks maroon on the cover & in every other picture I've ever seen of it. Lukeulele should be able to shed more light on this, as well as, come up with some more cars. I'll PM him.

Probably one of the most famous customized cars ever, was Bob Hirohata's '51 Mercury built by Barris in '51/'52. Today, everyone refers to it as the Hirohata Merc, but back then, it was called The Hawaiian (way before Leong campaigned his front engine dragster).

The Polynesian was built by Valley Customs for Jack Stewart. The color was more of an organic maroon. (Honduras Maroon)

My personal belief is that Tiki & Hot Rod/Custom Car culture is not directly linked per say, but just another example of how the Polynesian craze that swept America in that time period affected pretty much anything and everything in its path.

I can think of many cars with Poly-themed names.....The Beachcomber, Royal Tahitian, The Headhunter, etc...

Also, many car clubs of the era used Poly-themed names for their club and insignia.

On 2011-05-23 15:22, Lukeulele wrote:
Also, many car clubs of the era used Poly-themed names for their club and insignia.

Quick response there, Chucklehead!
I happen to know a really cool current club with a Poly-Pop themed name! :wink:

Typically what a car club would do back in the 50s and 60s (and, today, as well) would be to have car club plaques cast with their logo or insignia. These were aluminum plaques approximately 6"X 9" in size (about the size of a license plate). They would usually be painted in the club colors and then sanded so the top portion of the image would be aluminum and the lower relief area painted. The plaques would be hung from the rear bumper in support of the club. The images below are raw aluminum plaques before painting and sanding. These are just a few of some original clubs from the late 1950's.




Not necessarily Tiki, but fitting for this forum....

Hey Rick, what's this cool club you speak of?? :)

Very cool!...now more of the cars you mentioned! :)

That pith helmet thing for the desert races is fascinating to me. I am theorizing about three possible sources of inspiration:

1.)
Just like nowadays we dig 50s and 60s imagery, back in the 50s, people liked 1920s and earlier vintage stuff, like old timer cars and jalopies (=Model T Fords were made into Hot Rods) and slapstick movies...

...which had silly jungle explorer and African hunter characters...

Silent film cliches like that were used in the 50s with the same sense of humor with which we use mid-century Polynesian pop images today, so it was that kind of cliche joke that might have made desert racers wear these helmets.

One example for a hipster who did use this look was

2.)
Lord Buckley, famous Beatnik wordsmith and comedian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Buckley

(note: "In 1959 Buckley voiced the beatnik character Go Man Van Gogh in "Wildman of Wildsville"!")

And 3.)
Considering that Bikers used German steel helmets and iron cross insignia, perhaps (just perhaps!) they were an homage to the German Afrika Korps look:

"Desert Fox" Rommel had always been afforded a certain admiration by Americans...

...and it seems his soldiers did have a good sense of humor, too:

This is just the kind of equipment modification that Hot Rodders would have dug :)

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2011-05-24 08:49 ]

On 2011-05-23 16:24, bigbrotiki wrote:
...and it seems the soldiers had had a good sense of humor, too:

This is just the kind of equipment modification that Hot Rodders would have dug :)

Case in point...

The "SoCal Tank"

Modified ex-military auxiliary fuel belly tank.

I'd also have to say that it wasn't just ex-military guys hot rodding. Young guys have been buying older model cars and building "hopped-up jalopies" since at least the 1930s, and I have found a number of old newspaper photos in the LA Public Library photo collection from the 50s of teenagers busted for drag racing and stunting on public streets and highways. It wasn't just a military vets game.

Bear

[ Edited by: Brudda Bear 2011-05-23 18:54 ]

Maybe it was just hot out on the salt flats and the pith helmets provided shade with ventilation :lol:

it must have been great growing up so close to Ed Roth's shop in the 60s
That lil nugget set the tone for everything. The kicker was being buds with Dennis, Ed's 2nd oldest, from small kid days. The perks and experiences were often extreme, and Ed was beyond, yet still a (semi) regular Joe. Fun times, too bad the 60s didn't last forever ...not that they couldn't have been better/fairer for many. Nothing tiki, but here's a taste of the old and more current times, the surviving boys are carrying on the tradition http://www.rothoriginals.com
Great thread, and I love the club plates!

We now return you to your tiki channel...

I missed this thread (being in Tiki Caliente), but Roland Leong originally got into drag racing teamed with Danny Ongais, from Maui, who later drove for Mickey Thompson and then left drag racing to drive in the Indianapolis 500 for years. In the 70's, when the sponsor name became the main thing on the cars, Leong always kept his sponsorship with "Hawaiian" in the name--he had the Hawaiian Punch funny car for years, and then Hawaiian Vacation, sponsored by the Hawaiian travel bureau. And the first successful driver of that beautiful 60's front engine Hawaiian dragster pictured was Don "The Snake" Prudhomme, who went on his own and became commercial rivals/partners with Tom "The Mongoose" McEwen, which had kind of it's own subtle Hawaiian reference (Snake vs. Mongoose).

Caltiki Brent

This is something I've been meaning to post for a while, and this Tiki vehicle thread (unless it's fully turned into a pith helmet thread) seems to be the perfect place.

This is a Kodachrome slide of me in 1964 (circa age 2) taken by my mother during a trip to San Francisco/Bay Area I only remember in small snippets (the most memorable things to me were all the neon signs of glasses containing what I thought were spoons in them that I saw out the car window from my low child's perch in the back seat, which made my parents laugh whenever I said "Hey there's the spoon in the glass again"; turns out they were, of course, neon martini glasses with an olive and toothpick--SF's neon symbol for a bar, some of which still survive. Kids say the kwayziest things).

I still have the tin cable car I'm holding in the picture (and also a smaller one, plus a wooden log truck from that trip). However, I'm not sure whether this was the San Francisco Zoo or the Oakland Zoo. I know we went to Children's Fairyland in Oakland (which I don't think this is), and one or both of the zoos, but my mother doesn't remember which this is. Maybe a NorCal TC'er will know which zoo had the elephant tiki hut trams.

Since my mother took me to a number of SoCal tiki palaces, and took a lot of pictures, I'm still working on getting her to look through her troves of photos and slides to see if there are any of polynesian restaurants (I know she took a lot of shots of the Coco Palms in Kauai when we went there in the 70's--hoping she will turn up those as well).

Caltiki Brent