Late in the afternoon a almost-winter sun glowed pink through hazy clouds, I walked across the parking lot at the Roadster Shop in Mundelein.  Earlier in the day while at Starbucks Dan asked me if I had seen the Road Rage street rod which had been taken to the SEMA show? Dan is a fabricator at the Roadster Shop.  I could see that he was excited about the car.  So, I promised to stop in later in the day.  He instructed me to ask for him.

I have photographed many street rods built at Roadster Shop.  Their business  is one that I can relate to. I remember working on hot rods in the late 1960s. My introduction to working on a street rod involved a car on jack stands in a garage. A transmission was loosened bolt by bolt.  With release of the final bolt the heavy unit was eased onto the belly of my friend Johnny who lay on a wheeled creeper under the car.  He began yelling, — I helped pull him from under the car with the weighty tranny resting on his chest.

Time has moved on thankfully.  Such a primitive approach would never be used at the Roadster Shop for their builds.

I was led through a noisy fabrication bay into a large white, quiet dyno room.  Road Rage was parked, like a singular work of art, in a gallery space.  My first glimpse of the body work prompted me to ask, “Is that a street car?”  It appeared race ready.  A 1970 Camaro body has been modified by wheel fairings to hold four 18 inch wide Michelin Pilot Super Sport tires.  The car sits low due to the custom cantilever suspension system.  The front-end carbon fiber ground effect air dam is not more than several inches from the pavement.

Resting under a raised hood sits a 454 ci LSX aftermarket V8.  Twin throttle bodies of a Kinsler fuel injector-system is reminiscent of the A/FX, factory experimental drag cars of the 1960s.  Those track “weapons” had injector stacks visible through the hood cutout.  Anodized gold metal is liberally used to direct attention to the valve covers, the massive wheels, and other features.

It seems to me that Road Rage was built for two purposes:  the visuals of the vehicle are awe inspiring.  This is the apotheosis of a street rod, the ultimate expression of the industrial age, an age of steel, gasoline, and the open road.  The car is also meant to scream, with the robust power plant producing in the neighborhood of 700 to 800 hp, and with the specialized coil over suspension, this vehicle hugs the pavement.  This machine surely sings a wicked song when it voraciously draws air into the eight intakes and the exhaust is at full-throated roar.

A strange thought occurred to me.

So this is what a visitor to the Parthenon might have felt upon entering the sacred precincts on the Acropolis in ancient Athens about 415 BC. Within the Parthenon was displayed a sculpted image of the patron goddess of Athens, Athena Parthenos, Athena-of-the-Maidens, the pre-eminent symbol of Athens and Greek Attica.  The statue which rose 43 feet high, fashioned of bronze, ivory, and gold plates took six years for the sculptors Pheidias, Agorakirtos, and Alkamenes to complete.  In the extended right hand of the statue stood a solid-gold statue of Nike, god of victory.

By elegance of form Road Rage, with gold accents is an emotionally moving experience for anyone who understands the automotive art-form.  The work represents much more than the components of it’s construction.  It stands for an industry conceived by Henry Ford and others of his time. It represents the rapture, hands-on learning, and character-formation which marked generations of Americans from California to the Carolinas who bonded around their hot rods.

At the SEMA show in Las Vegas, Road Rage was a winner in the Top Twelve Battle of the Builders contest. A SEMA Goodguys Gold Award sticker is afixed to the inside corner of the windshield.

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Mysterium Tremendum–The experience of something so different, that one can only react in silence, — to wonder and to comprehend that which is beyond one’s ordinary experience.  A hint of danger is sensed, as one compares one’s personal impotence to the manifestation of perfection and power.

–From Rudolph Otto’s analysis of the experience that underlies all religion.