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Blame it on BMX. Long before “extreme” was a cultural buzzword or a niche-marketed lifestyle replete with is own sanitized version of punk rock diluted enough for the cool kids find it palatable, Cambridge, Illinois’ Tim Strange was out there on the dirt tracks of the Midwest as a fairly successful teenage amateur bicycle motocross racer. And, like this author, he discovered the unheard music through his love of BMX. Long before today’s antiauthoritarian mallgoers were able to drop into the local galleria and buy a perfectly distressed outfit reeking of manufactured suburban nihilism, it was a culture one had to seek out; one spoken of in loud-yet-hushed tones: Hüsker Dü and Black Flag records advertised in a 1/3 vertical SST records ad hidden somewhere in an issue of the now-defunct Freestylin’ magazine. More importantly, what in blazes does this rambling riff on knobby-tired bicycles and buzzsaw guitar chords have to do with hot rods and custom cars?
Plenty, as it turns out. An individual sport like dirt-track sprint bicycle racing helps build a self-reliant type of personality; there’s a single-minded determination to get to the end of the track before everyone else that holds taking one for the team in blatant disregard. The individualistic ideals of punk music—combined with its self-expressive nature and do-it-yourself ethos—created a fertile ground for idealistic thinkers to tread a different path, realizing their dreams on their own terms. Tim Strange has done just that. In fact, Strange’s business, Strange Motion Rod & Custom Construction, is entirely self-contained. His wife, Carrie, an integral part of the operation, has her own on-site upholstery shop, which makes life much easier for the rest of the crew. “She can mock up panels when the car’s still in primer. If you’re doing everything at the same time it’s a lot easier to make things cleaner and smoother.”
Growing up on a farm in rural Illinois, Strange held his first paint gun at the age of eight. His dad built rigid choppers for years until the unsprung machines’ punishing ride wreaked havoc on his kidneys, forcing him abandon cycles for cars. On nights and weekends, father and son painted farm trucks for extra cash. When he was 14 years old, Tim bought a ‘64 Chevelle SS and began fixing it up. I once commenting to Strange that when I was 16 I had a mullet and an El Camino. “Yeah? When I was sixteen I had a Chevelle and a Mohawk!” Oh, and he was in 4-H at the same time. One gets the distinct impression that Tim Strange is not your average denim-shorted, polo-shirted, braided-belt wearing baseball-capped high-end hot rod builder.
Interestingly enough, however, in the rarefied world of the vastly-entertaining and often informative HAMB (the Jalopy Journal’s Hokey Ass Message Board-www.jalopyjournal.com), a massive flame war erupted over Tim’s ‘51 Vicky after it appeared in Rod and Custom. Strange, irked that he’d been badged as a “gold-chainer” unleashed a righteous fusillade upon those who would think he’s simply another Boydabee, while other traditional rodders debated the merits and demerits of his style vis a vis traditional sleds. The common consensus tended toward, “Well, if it was in primer and had different wheels, we’d be all over it.” Essentially, the trad rodders were exhibiting the herd mentality that turns formerly antiauthoritarian art into a prepackaged commodity: anytime anybody steps out of the bounds of perceived outsider normalcy, they’re branded a sellout—no matter how much work, passion and sacrifice they’ve put into a project. Strange, however, didn’t bristle at criticism of his car, going so far as to point out that he works with parts he can get cheap or free; that he himself didn’t post the car on the forum because he felt it wasn’t appropriate for the audience, and basically was just irritated that an anonymous schmoe pegged him as a moneyed aristocrat. Tim’s a hardscrabble, blue-collar guy with an eye for stance, an inventive mind, and the technical prowess to realize his own visions. As he says, “Each car we build for ourselves-it could be our last one.”
The last car Strange built for himself is definitely a doozy. Rebuilt in a last-minute thrash before this year’s SEMA show, Strange Motion’s “Evolution” ‘54 Bel Air began life ten years ago as a then-in-vogue Pro Street machine. Strange points out that the difference in styles isn't quite as radical as one would think, commenting, “When you’re using these big wheels, you’re essentially building a Pro Street car anyway. And besides, I like that cartoony look.” What sets Strange’s rides apart from the slammed ‘n’ big billets pack is a little thing called stance. Strange’s cars simply sit right—no godawful negative camber; the wheels are perfectly masked by the fenderwells. It’s a tease rather than an in-your-face, “I-spent-this-much-money” statement. They’re wild and outrageous without being egregious. A tough line to walk, but Strange manages to straddle the gulf with unique aplomb.
Due to his rural upbringing, Strange’s cars—as wild as they are—have an odd sense of Midwestern practicality about them. To him, Air Ride was a godsend because it allowed the cars to actually be driven on the rough farm roads around Cambridge. He tends to use Chevy motors because, as he explains, “If you break down on Sunday you can go to Autozone and get a part.”
There’s an element of passion in the cars that Tim Strange builds that’s oddly lacking in other pro-built customs of this style. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at first; all I knew is that they immediately flipped my switch, despite the fact that so many of his standard design elements—wild paint, billet wheels, a severe drop—generally register in this scribe’s book as tired, boring cliches that are merely at worst a lesser copy of what Coddington churned out a decade prior, and at best a refinement of said Boyd-isms. But in his own low-buck, high-effort style, Strange’s creations become something more; they’re the primal scream turned literate in a visual and tactile sense; the purest expression of rodding and customizing aiming for a zenith of execution. Strange has yet to build his ultimate car—in this hack’s feeble mind, his universally-acclaimed ‘63 Riviera is the closest he’s come to realizing it-but when he does, take cover, children. One night at last year’s SEMA show I was at a party with Tim and Carrie, Salinas Boy Cole Foster and Zane Cullen of Creative Concepts. The amount of young, visionary talent in the room that night gave me every reason to believe that the crotchety old dudes’ fears are unfounded. Hot rodding as the highest form of lowbrow art will live on in the hands of these guys. And Strange, willingly sticking it out in the middle of nowhere, plugged in and deaf to the whining and complaining of others, will be even more of a force in the years to come.
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