Little, Broken, But Still Good

Think there weren’t hot rodders around in the late 1800s? Just check out those horse-drawn carriages: big ’n’ little wheels, pinstriped panels, lacquer paint, and leather upholstery are all design characteristics that could be found back in the day. (Did you know Studebaker started out by making covered wagons back in 1852?) And of course by the late 1800s several companies had figured out they could add a steam engine to their carriage, which would lay the groundwork for what would eventually become the automobile.

Steam power was all the rage before the turn of the last century, but what would today’s hot rodders have built if they were around back then? That concept is what makes the basis for an art movement popular today called Steampunk. Incorporating aspects of industrial machinery and steam-powered devices (think: springs, gears, levers, gauges with arrows, riveted steel or aluminum, relief valves, and a fair share of bumps and bulges), the Steampunk of today is about as far away as you can get from the look of those smoothy hot rods that were the fad back in the late 1900s. (Read the original article)