My grandson, Alec R. Harrell Carlson, turned 14 last month and he along with his grandparents just bought his first car—a 1937 Ford Tudor. Alec began to get serious about cars at a young age. For instance, when he was 11, at his own initiative, he asked management at the El Segundo, CA Automobile Driving Museum if he could become a docent. He was interviewed and got the position—he’s still at it. This has helped him develop a love for cars that ranges from vintage & classic cars to hotrods. His ’37 Ford is now near perfect and stock, so he plans on keeping it that way. (He will continue to earn this car with “sweat-equity” in the garage and at school over the next several years.) This is a classic but the hotrodder in him is still there.

While his parents are not particularly interested in old cars or hotrods, Alec has hotrodding in his genes. His ancestors have been building hotrods in the LA area since the 1930s. Once Alec became aware of his family history in hotrodding he has become a hotrod historian as well. He helped gather information about them, and helped track down some of their racing equipment developed in the mid-1940s. We managed to get him his first set of high-performance Harrell heads in 2008 and a Harrell intake manifold in 2009. He is an “old school hotrodder” and hooked on V8 flathead Ford engines (for a quick look at the hotrodding history he has become a part of, see:
www.hotrodhotline.com/feature/guestcolumnists/richardscorner/09harrell/ .