Hot Rod Music

Hot rod music was a short-lived American pop style of 1963–1965, the automotive counterpart of surf music, in which vocal groups and guitar combos sang about drag racing, cruising and custom cars. Produced chiefly in California by the same writers, singers and session players as the surf scene, its records pair close vocal harmonies or twanging guitar instrumentals with lyrics dense in technical slang — engine sizes, gear ratios, track times — addressed to teenage car culture. Songwriter-producer *Gary Usher* and *The Beach Boys* defined the style, whose brief chart run ended as the British Invasion redirected American pop.