RECALLING VANCOUVER’S HOTROD HEYDAY
Bernie Loughran was 10 years old when he saw his first hotrod. He was riding with his parents late at night when two pair of lights were coming toward them. His mother gasped as his father quickly pulled to the side of Vancouver’s Fraser Street as two low-slung coupes roared by, side by side.
This was the lad’s first taste of the hotrod racing that had taken over Vancouver streets beginning in the late-1940s. He was hooked.
Growing up in Vancouver’s east end, Loughran would see the cutdown coupes and roadsters with chromed-up modified engines parked at the Aristocratic Drive-in restaurant at Fraser and Kingsway or Kings Burgers further up Kingsway, where hamburgers cost 19 cents. In 1952, he and his buddy rode their bicycles to see the lineup of hotrods at the first meetings of the British Columbia Custom Car Association, held at the Horticultural Hall on 20th Avenue at Clark Drive. Vancouver’s teenagers were deep into the hotrod and custom car culture that spread north from Southern California.
Loughran has relived many of those motoring memories in a self-published book that chronicles the street scene in Vancouver, beginning in 1948, that captivated the city’s youth and horrified many of its citizens. The retired autobody shop owner, graphic artist and lifelong hotrod enthusiast has compiled hundreds of photos and descriptions to relive the golden age of hotrodding, rock and roll, drive-in movies and teen dances.
After the war, Vancouver’s yards and alleys were a treasure trove of discarded Model T Fords, Model A roadsters and coupes from the early 1930s. Teenagers wanted to build their own cars and hotrod and custom car magazines from California showed them how. The opening of Digney Speedway, off Kingsway in Burnaby, was a place for some to race their cars. But street racing and catch-me-if-you can police baiting became the sport of choice with the lightweight, high powered hotrods easily outrunning Vancouver police-issue six-cylinder Plymouth coupes.
Loughran’s book details the infamous hotrod race of January 1949 when a 1932 Ford roadster hotrod driven by teenager Larry McBride locked front wheels with a 1933 Ford sedan being driven down Fraser Street at high speed by Len Biskey. McBride’s roadster went out of control, slid up a hydro guide wire, sheared off the pole, left part of the car hanging 40 feet in the air, and severely injured its occupants. Newspaper headlines screamed, “Hot rod crash injures two” and “Hot rod drivers lose licenses for 3 years.” This brought community concern to near hysteria.
Loughran writes that Vancouver police traffic officers Alan Rossiter and Bernie Smith helped turn the unused wartime Abbotsford Airport into a drag strip to be run by the B.C. Custom Car Association as a move to get racing off the streets.
When drag racing got underway in 1954, Bernie Loughran begged his mother to drive him and two friends to Abbotsford to see hotrods face off on the strip.
Photos of all the cars built in Vancouver through the Fabulous Fifties and the young people who created them illustrate how the city was ahead of any other in the country for fostering the strong hotrod and custom car culture that continues today.
In September 1953, Loughran and friends took the bus to attend Canada’s first hotrod show, with 35 of the city’s best rides displayed on the skating rink floor of the new Kerrisdale Arena. It would be the first of what would be annual Pacific International Motorama shows held into the 1970s at the Pacific International Exhibition.
Photos of the 1953 show feature Jim McGowan’s 1932 Ford roadster, the 1932 Ford Victoria hotrod built by Jim Greenlees from the car his parents bought new, and the radically customized Oldsmobile-powered 1950 Ford convertible built by Gord McDougall.
Loughran writes about his first hotrod, built when he was 16, in 1957 — the peak of the hotrod rage in Vancouver. He bought a 1926 Ford Model T roadster pickup body and mounted it on the chassis of a 1932 Ford sedan with a V8 motor purchased for $50. He was thrilled when he won a case of oil at his first hotrod show at the newly opened Simpson-Sears shopping centre in Burnaby in 1958.
His book compiles photos and information collected over 10 years, with information based on being part of Vancouver’s hotrod scene for nearly 70 years.
Bernie Loughran and wife Caroline have two hotrods garaged at their south Vancouver home: a 1926 Ford Model T touring car — commonly known as a bathtub — and a rare 1915 Ford Model T “centre door” sedan.
The cover of the book features a youthful Bob George in 1954 building a hotrod in the lane behind his parents’ False Creek-area home. The photo captures what many consider to be the best of times in Vancouver, when young people used their energy and creativity to build engineering and design marvels in the form of hotrods.
Hot Rod Memories can be purchased by contacting author Bernie Loughran at berniebathtub@ gmail.com.