Steam Trunk Industries Ratrod!
I love Ratrods, but many of the ones that you see at shows have become so formulaic that I now find them dull. Stream Trunk Industries has done a brilliant job taking the best of the mainstream Ratrod scene and blending in some Steampunk to build a car that I am seriously lusting after!
It is a truism that the people out there doing the most interesting things and having the most fun often don't have the time or inclination to post what they're up to on the internet. Fortunately, they often have friends that recognize how impossibly cool the things that they're doing are and egg them on!
Fortunately for us, my new friend Annie (follow her on twitter and read her column at Gamer Melodico) is also friends with Tien Linton and Guiness Oathout of Stream Trunk Industries, the builders of this amazing car.
Annie writes:
The fellows of Steam Trunk Industries originally acquired the car from an older gentleman in Southern Indiana, "Way out in the middle of nowhere". They had also recently seen the insides of a jet engine and were fascinated with all the various pipes and tubes. "It looked very mysterious", says Guiness, a lifelong auto enthusiast. "You can't really tell what's inside, or where it's going, and we wanted to try to build the car around that concept". Tien says that they opted for copper instead of rubber or plastic hoses, and the car's design evolved from there.
Everything about this car is gorgeous! I love the prize-fighter-missing-teeth front grill and the copper alternator shield looks like something from the lab of the man who actually invented the 3-phase alternator, Nikola Tesla!
The copper plumbing is SO much prettier that the tired look of braided stainless with anodized fittings!
I also love the improvised found-object air cleaner which I believe, and I may be mistaken here, originally bore the name 'Electrolux' or perhaps 'Kitchenaide.'
Everything about this car is gorgeous. I am particularly impressed with the perfection of the chop/channel job on the cab, the proportions are perfect and that's not always easy to achieve.
I'm not sure where Steam Trunk Industries is located, but I sincerely hope that sometime in the future I'm able to drop by and get a closer look at this beauty!
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Jake von Slatt
I believe the alternator shield looks less like something from Tesla’s workshop and more like some $1.70 pipe hangers from Lowe’s that are bolted over the alternator.
I mean, come on. The Barcode stickers are still on them. I find it impossible to believe that they built this car at all. It looks like someone’s project that they sold on Craigslist which these people then purchased and using their entire lack of metal fabricating abilities, they gussied it up with whatever they could find in the copper pipe section of their home improvement stores. That is why all of those details are;
A: clearly newer than the rest of the work.
B: obviously just slapped on.
I think maybe you are missing the point of *Rat* rod.
Von Slatt is right. I am not a big fan of rat rods. As I am a builder of beautiful and well finished show cars. I work hard on every detail and make my own version of art. Most Rat rods are thrown together junk. They are terrible, highly unsafe, almost useless. But not this machine. It has thought and detail work. There was a plan formed from a vision in someone’s head and brought to life. I believe that should be the definition of art.