LAUNCH PAD

THE Mad Scientist of Australian Hot Rodding: Rod Hadfield was launched in June at Hadfield Hot Rods in Chewton, Victoria, with a large crowd in attendance. The car park was chockfull of hot rods and street machines, and inside the museum it was standing room only, with many punters forced to stand outside. Eddie Ford – himself a legend of the Castlemaine hot rodding milieu – kicked off proceedings with some great anecdotes from Rod’s early days. Rod returned fire and spoke of how honoured and humbled he was by the turnout.

Yours truly presented a slide-show of Rod and Carol’s adventures through the years as documented in Street Machine, and Allison (that is her in the pink, left) gave the crowd an insight into the writing of the book. During all of this, Rod had disappeared from view. What was he up to? Rod is something of a stickler for respectful behaviour on formal occasions like this, so where would he go during his own do?

All was revealed when sculptor Richard Yates pulled the cover off a life-sized wooden sculpture of Rod and his shed mate Cody the boxer – with Rod standing beside it in his orange overalls.

It was quite an occasion. Hot rod history is my thing, and it was amazing to be talking about it with people who saw much of that history happen, surrounded by the majority of the cars that Rod has built over the past five decades.