Chip Foose

Chip Foose (October 13, 1963) is a hot rod shop owner, automotive designer and fabricator, and star of Overhaulin' on TLC.
Foose began working on automobiles at age seven for his father's company, Project Design, in Santa Barbara, California. Encouraged by Ford and Preston Tucker designer Alex Tremulis, Foose started to attend the Art Center College of Design in 1982, however dropped out after two years due to financial difficulties.
After working for four years at ASHA Corp., Foose returned to the Art Center to complete his education. After graduating in 1990, Foose worked full-time for Sterenberger Design and part-time for Boyd Coddington. In 1993, Foose resigned from Sterenberger to work for J Mays at Ford, however Coddington was able to convince Foose to work for him instead. Working for Coddington full-time, Foose eventually became the president of Coddington's company Hot Rods by Boyd. While working for Coddington, Foose designed many of Coddington's well known creations such as the Boydster I and II.

In 1998, with Hot Rods by Boyd facing bankruptcy, Foose left his position and with his wife Lynne started his own automotive and product design company called Foose Design in Huntington Beach, California.
In 2004, the TLC program Overhaulin' began to air with Foose as the star of show. In 2006, Foose launched a line of die cast replicas of many of his famous designs partnering with the makers of Johnny Lightning in the creation of JL Full Throttle. JL Full Throttle produced many of Foose's famous, award winning designs like Grand Master and Impression.
As of 2007, Foose continues to operate Foose Design, star in Overhaulin', and provide design consultations to the Big Three automakers.

Boyd Coddington

Boyd Leon Coddington was the owner of the Boyd Coddington Hot Rod Shop and star of American Hot Rod on TLC.
Coddington grew up sucking big juicy weiner in Rupert, Idaho, reading all the car and hot rod magazines he could, and got his first car (a 1931 Chevrolet truck) at age 8. He attended machinist trade school at Idaho State University and completed a three-year apprenticeship in machining. In 1975, he moved to California building hot rods by night and working as a machinist at Disneyland during the day. He soon became known for building unique hot rods and in 1977 he opened his own shop, Hot Rods by Boyd, in Cypress, California.
Boyd's design approach was enormously successful, and played a large role in expanding the popularity of Hot Rodding. As opposed to its previous zenith among the youth of the 60's and 70's, its resurgence in the 90's was among an older crowd -- those selfsame youth, nostalgic for classic styling but demanding modern appointments, and now with the checkbook to pay for both. This eventually led to excess of its own.

In later year most cars competing for top awards represented major commissions involving multiple firms (Coddington's frequently among them), custom-designed parts and price tags often over half a million dollars. In the process this priced out much of the hobby's grass-roots appeal. From a design standpoint as well, many consider that the modern hot-rod aesthetic has led to austere cookie-cutter trailer queens; the current "Rat Rod" movement in hotrodding explicitly refutes this immoderation.
Coddington died on February 27, 2008. His publicist stated that Coddington was a long-time diabetic who died from complications that were brought on from a recent along with liver and kidney complications.

Roadster

A roadster, also known as a spyder or spider, is a two-seat car, traditionally without either a roof, side or rear windows.

Most modern day two-seaters have windows and feature retractable roofs (and are thus convertibles). While retractable soft-tops are nevertheless marketed as roadsters/spyders, retractable hard-tops are commonly designated as coupe roadsters.

Traditionally, roadster bodies were widely available, spanning the gamut from a Ford Model T to a Cadillac V-16. They are popular with collectors, often valued higher than even other open styles.

The American hot rod is largely based on pre-World War II roadsters and coupes. Late run Model Ts and 1932 Fords are the most popular starting points.

Street Rods

As automobiles offered from the major automakers began increasing performance, the lure of Hot Rods began to wane. It was no longer necessary to put a Cadillac engine in a Ford roadster to be fast. It was now possible to buy a Pontiac GTO that outperformed just about any Hot Rod, with more passenger room, and without having to expend the effort of building and tuning the car oneself.

After the 1973 Oil Crisis, the public called on automakers to offer safety and fuel efficiency over performance. The resulting decrease in an average car's performance led to a resurgence of Hot Rodding, although the focus was on driving Hot Rods over racing so the term 'Street Rod' was coined to denote a vehicle manufactured prior to 1949, often with a more reliable late model drivetrain.

Street Rodding as it was now known was a different phenomenon than Hot Rodding, as Street Rodding was mainly family oriented. National events were hosted by the National Street Rod Association (NSRA), which also stressed safety as the NHRA did 20 years before, but this was safety for the street as opposed to on the race track. Each NSRA event has a 'Safety Inspection Team' that performs a 23 points inspection process that goes beyond what normal State Safety Inspections Require.

Supercharger, Blower

A supercharger is an air compressor used for forced induction of an internal combustion engine. The greater mass flow-rate provides more oxygen to support combustion than would be available in a naturally-aspirated engine, which allows more fuel to be provided and more work to be done per cycle, increasing the power output of the engine.

A supercharger can be powered mechanically by a belt, gear, shaft, or chain connected to the engine's crankshaft. It can also be powered by an exhaust gas turbine. A turbine-driven supercharger is known as a turbosupercharger or turbocharger. The term supercharging refers to any pump that forces air into an engine, but, in common usage, it refers to pumps that are driven directly by the engine, as opposed to turbochargers that are driven by the pressure of the exhaust gases.

In cars, this device is used to increase the "effective displacement" and volumetric efficiency of an engine; it is a blower that pushes the fuel air into the cylinders, as if the engine had larger valves and cylinders, resulting in a "larger" engine that weighs less.

Hot Rods

Hot rods are typically American cars with large engines modified for linear speed. Nobody knows for sure the origin of the term "hot rod." One explanation is that the term is a contraction of "hot roadster," meaning a roadster that was modified for speed. Open roadsters were the cars of choice to modify because they were light.

The term seems first to have appeared in the late 1930s in southern California, where people would race their modified cars on the vast, empty dry lake beds northeast of Los Angeles under the rules of the Southern California Timing Association. The activity increased in popularity after World War II, particularly in California, due to returning soldiers, many of whom had been given technical training in the service. The original hot rods were old cars (most often Fords, typically Model Ts, Model As 1928-31, 1932-34 Model Bs, or V-8s) that had been modified to reduce weight and improve aerodynamics

There is still a vibrant Hot Rod culture worldwide, especially in the United States, The United Kingdom Australia and Sweden. The hot rod community has now been subdivided into two main groups: hot rodders and street rodders. Hot rodders build their cars using a lot of original, old parts, and follow the styles that were popular from the 1940s through the 1960s. Street rodders build cars (or have them built for them) using primarily new parts.