Real life encounters with real unsafe rat rod is an eye opening experence. Some have no floors! Some have no suspension at all! Some have very small rear brakes with nothing at all on the front. Some have jaged rusty steel protusions sticking out that can cut you on contact. I've seen very poor welds, and even poor tack welds, they didn't even bother trying a full weld. The list is endless. If you have the oppertunity to see a real rat rod up close, you walk away wondering how it even got where it was sitting. Some are so bad, I wouldn't even want to push it across the street let alone riding anywhere in it. If you get the oppertunity to speak with a real rat rodder their attitude comes out. They are volger and "built" their car simply for the shock factor with no intension of ever making it near safe.

If you see the real thing and talk with the owner, you would have a completely different view of an unfinished car that has actually being built with an intent of being a safe ride. Rat rods and unfinished cars are not the same, and after seeing a rat rod, you would probably not mix up the two again. That would be provided of course you actually looked at the car in question and not walked by with your nose in the air because the paint wasn't perfect. Gene