What do you think?
Rate this book
Street Rod
Ricky Madison's parents were as square as the Cleavers or the Nelsons. Ricky's friends' were allowed to have their own rods, but would his parents let him in on the fun? Heck no! So here he was, the only guy in Dellville without his own set of wheels, the town "car suck." His friend Link said he ought to threaten to leave home. That worked for Link; he had his rod. But Ricky's parents weren't so easily bluffed, and though his father finally did decide that Ricky should be allowed to have a car, Ricky's mind was already made up. Before his Dad could tell him he'd had a change of heart, Ricky went and bought a beat-up `39 Ford coupe from Merle, the somewhat shady town mechanic, with crazy dreams of souping it up to be the best street rod in town.
- GenresYoung AdultFiction
154 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1953
2 people are currently reading
110 people want to read
About the author
Henry Gregor Felsen
75 books14 followersFelsen was born and attended school in Brooklyn, N.Y.C. He taught part-time at Drake University (1964-1969), and in 1977 left Iowa to spend his remaining years traveling.
After struggling financially during the Depression, Felsen sold nine books and hundreds of stories in his first eighteen months of full-time freelance writing in the early 1940s. After war service with the Marine Corps, during which he edited the corps magazine Leatherneck and also wrote magazine articles while stationed in the Pacific, he returned to Iowa where he lived for most of his life.
Felsen was a prolific author. He wrote more than 60 books and hundreds of articles and short stories. Felsen's most popular writings were his car series books. The series (Hot Rod, Street Rod, Rag Top, Crash Club) was especially popular with teenage males, and sold more than eight million copies. Hot Rod (1950) was the most popular title and remained on the best-seller list for 27 years. Even though his books were about young men, fast cars, and girlfriends, Felsen used many of them to moralistically explore the evils of drug abuse, sexism, and racism. He claimed that "I was years ahead of my time to approach and explore these topics in literature aimed at the young reader. "The car series also appealed to young readers because it realistically paralleled the car culture of the 1950s and the craze of "hot rodding." The realism in his writing was also evident in the unhappy endings and heroes who were often rebels. Felsen's books reflected the morals, values, and prejudices of the time.
He is also credited with one screenplay, the 1968 film Fever Heat, based on his novel of the same name which had been published under the pen name of Angus Vicker.
Felsen was married twice and had two children and two stepchildren. In 1977 he left West Des Moines to move to Vermont and later lived in Michigan. Felsen spent much of the last two decades of his life traveling. He lived in Grandville, Michigan, and died of a heart ailment in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1995.
After struggling financially during the Depression, Felsen sold nine books and hundreds of stories in his first eighteen months of full-time freelance writing in the early 1940s. After war service with the Marine Corps, during which he edited the corps magazine Leatherneck and also wrote magazine articles while stationed in the Pacific, he returned to Iowa where he lived for most of his life.
Felsen was a prolific author. He wrote more than 60 books and hundreds of articles and short stories. Felsen's most popular writings were his car series books. The series (Hot Rod, Street Rod, Rag Top, Crash Club) was especially popular with teenage males, and sold more than eight million copies. Hot Rod (1950) was the most popular title and remained on the best-seller list for 27 years. Even though his books were about young men, fast cars, and girlfriends, Felsen used many of them to moralistically explore the evils of drug abuse, sexism, and racism. He claimed that "I was years ahead of my time to approach and explore these topics in literature aimed at the young reader. "The car series also appealed to young readers because it realistically paralleled the car culture of the 1950s and the craze of "hot rodding." The realism in his writing was also evident in the unhappy endings and heroes who were often rebels. Felsen's books reflected the morals, values, and prejudices of the time.
He is also credited with one screenplay, the 1968 film Fever Heat, based on his novel of the same name which had been published under the pen name of Angus Vicker.
Felsen was married twice and had two children and two stepchildren. In 1977 he left West Des Moines to move to Vermont and later lived in Michigan. Felsen spent much of the last two decades of his life traveling. He lived in Grandville, Michigan, and died of a heart ailment in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1995.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 11, 2011
I rarely read Young Adult books when I was a child in the 60s because I found them to be insipid and condescending. The topics that could get past the censors and PTA were very limited. This novel, Street Rod was a major exception and one of the few YA novels good enough to remember from my youth. The novel about a teenage boy who wanted a racing car was a precursor to the S. E. Hinton books. In my opinion, it was better. Perhaps the major thing going for it was a downbeat ending that would probably be censored in a current day YA book. The novel is out of print probably because it is very much dated in the 50s and 60s. However I do consider it one of the first YA novels that didn't treat teenagers like children and was not afraid to place a little reality in its pages.
June 24, 2016
"The eye-opening novel about street-rodders -- the kids who build and drive the stripped-down, souped-up bombs on wheels!"
Now, I ask you, with a cheesy teaser come-on like that on the cover, how the hell could I resist? I bought this thing ... hell, yeah! 1950s hot-rod pulp exploitation at its finest -- kids hopped up on wicked chocolate malts, peeling out and displacing loose gravel like hellions... lobbing firecrackers at the unwary squares of Dellville, Iowa, USA, daring the cops to stop 'em ... comin' at ya like V8-fueled speed demons out of the bowels of Hell!
Ward and June Cleaver didn't go through World War II to put up with this teenage rebel shit.
I have a Bantam paperback with the same illustration as above but with an orange border (the edition above has a different teaser text; My edition can be seen at the bottom of the review).
I wrote the above paragraphs prior to reading this book, and I've kept those initial impressions because, even though the book surprised me by its relative depth, I still wanted to convey why this book drew me in the first place. Honestly, yes, I thought this might be fun trash at which to hurl snarky and unfair contemporary invective.
However, having read it, I actually respect the book. It's not great literature, and it's certainly very moralistic, but there's nothing inherently wrong in the message it conveys, and its author had genuine talent.
Henry Gregor Felsen was a prolific writer of short stories and pulp novels, but is probably best known among young readers of his generation as the author of a series of books related to the hot-rod car culture of the 1950s and 1960s. Street Rod, it seems, was one of the more memorable efforts in his oeuvre. It has a bleak ending that caught young readers off guard, and, based on some reviews, seems to have stayed with those readers for more than half a century.
The story's main character is a high school senior, Ricky Madison, a kid who lives in a tiny, boring Iowa town. He has a keen fascination for souped-up cars and is an avid reader of car magazines. He even has an aptitude for car repair and customizing, as well as an active imagination for design ideas. Problem is, every kid in town has a hot rod except him. He's too poor to buy a decent starter car, and his parents are too timid to let him buy one due to safety concerns. He's tired of being a "car suck," having to bum rides everywhere. His humiliation erupts into anger at his parents. His lack of wheels also seems to be standing in the way of him being with his favorite gal, Sharon, who has now taken up with the bullying opinion leader among the teen hot-rodders, Link. Link becomes Ricky's main rival throughout the book, and it is that rivalry that proves to be Ricky's undoing.
Defiant, Ricky draws his entire savings, $50, from the bank and buys a junker from the local good-for-nothing town-drunk mechanic, Merle. It doesn't take long for Ricky to have buyer's remorse, though, and the amount of work the car needs is way beyond his means. Everyone scolds him for paying for a heap of junk that was worth no more than $25. (These are 1950s dollars, folks, when gasoline was like 10 cents a gallon).
Ricky's father, a reasonable man, tries to compromise with his recalcitrant son, trying to talk him through his options. Although Ricky's car is no hot rod, it does run, and one day he decides to race it against his friends' cars on the public roads. The town's sheriff and Ricky's father get wind of this and the boy gets a warning. Ricky's father devises a way that the boys can satisfy their need to race while doing so within a safely regulated framework. He advocates that the boys form a "timing association," a car club dedicated to safe and controlled drag racing, a concept that had been growing in the country at the time in the face of many hot rod deaths among the youth.
Arguing that boys will be boys, much with the same logic we understand today in the era of the drug war (that drugs and users aren't going away, and efforts to criminalize them will only perpetuate the same non-constructive situation), the timing association offers a regulated way to meet the needs of all sides in the debate. Saving lives is ultimately its goal.
Trying to teach Ricky a lesson in civic engagement and in fighting for a goal in which he can take pride and ownership, his dad helps him draft a petition for the town council to set aside part of a road outside town one day a week for the drag races. The reactionary council, much the way the anti-drug forces think today, flatly refuse this solution, equating it with blackmail and disrespect for the law.
Angry at this result, Ricky and his friends wreak holy havoc on the roads. In reaction, the parents band together and forbid their daughters from riding with the boys, and the police forbid them driving questionably in the town limits. The boys tool off to Des Moines to do whatever they want, but the cops there are wise, and threaten the boys with jail if they cause trouble. They manage to get away with some roadway harassment before getting back to town.
The rest of the book details Ricky's change of heart, as he finally begins to realize the error of his ways, and pursues his dream of souping up his Buick coupe and entering it in the car show. He even has interested buyers for it, the first step in his dream to open his own customizing shop after college. Ricky's dad has finally convinced him that an engineering degree will boost his skills and prospects.
But the rivalry with Link has never gone away, and, Ricky, seemingly with the world in his grasp, chafes at this final undone goal: to finally beat Link in a drag race. Thus, the ending, which you can infer.
The strongest thing about this book is its insight into the inner frustrations of adolescent male youths, and about the poignant concerns of parents who want their children to be safe while affording them some measure of freedom and responsibility as they slowly cut the parental cord. There are some lovely moments where the town cop talks about the sense of immortality and invicibility that young boys feel, the idea that death is too remote for them to grasp. Also, he points out that Ricky's father and his peers were no better when they were adolescents; they may not have had cars, but they acted out in their own ways.
The conversations between Ricky's parents do have a Leave it to Beaver vibe, but it's not a bad thing, and you wish more parents showed this much concern and accommodation for their children.
The book also has some "ah yes" moments of recognition, showing that road rage and reactive driver behavior has not changed at all since 1953 when this book was first published:
"There's something about having another car go past that's like an insult."
"I've followed more than one man or woman who didn't go over forty until I tried to pass. And the minute I tried to go around, they sped up."
The book is an interesting relic from the post-war industrial 1950s, when so many dreams were tied up into material goods, cars in particular, and when something like drag racing and firecracker-throwing constituted heinous juvenile delinquency. Of course, this is dated on a certain level, but the human concerns the book has aren't.
I will probably forget this book but I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected, and Felsen could write. No doubt about that.
----
(kr@Ky 2016)
Now, I ask you, with a cheesy teaser come-on like that on the cover, how the hell could I resist? I bought this thing ... hell, yeah! 1950s hot-rod pulp exploitation at its finest -- kids hopped up on wicked chocolate malts, peeling out and displacing loose gravel like hellions... lobbing firecrackers at the unwary squares of Dellville, Iowa, USA, daring the cops to stop 'em ... comin' at ya like V8-fueled speed demons out of the bowels of Hell!
Ward and June Cleaver didn't go through World War II to put up with this teenage rebel shit.
I have a Bantam paperback with the same illustration as above but with an orange border (the edition above has a different teaser text; My edition can be seen at the bottom of the review).
I wrote the above paragraphs prior to reading this book, and I've kept those initial impressions because, even though the book surprised me by its relative depth, I still wanted to convey why this book drew me in the first place. Honestly, yes, I thought this might be fun trash at which to hurl snarky and unfair contemporary invective.
However, having read it, I actually respect the book. It's not great literature, and it's certainly very moralistic, but there's nothing inherently wrong in the message it conveys, and its author had genuine talent.
Henry Gregor Felsen was a prolific writer of short stories and pulp novels, but is probably best known among young readers of his generation as the author of a series of books related to the hot-rod car culture of the 1950s and 1960s. Street Rod, it seems, was one of the more memorable efforts in his oeuvre. It has a bleak ending that caught young readers off guard, and, based on some reviews, seems to have stayed with those readers for more than half a century.
The story's main character is a high school senior, Ricky Madison, a kid who lives in a tiny, boring Iowa town. He has a keen fascination for souped-up cars and is an avid reader of car magazines. He even has an aptitude for car repair and customizing, as well as an active imagination for design ideas. Problem is, every kid in town has a hot rod except him. He's too poor to buy a decent starter car, and his parents are too timid to let him buy one due to safety concerns. He's tired of being a "car suck," having to bum rides everywhere. His humiliation erupts into anger at his parents. His lack of wheels also seems to be standing in the way of him being with his favorite gal, Sharon, who has now taken up with the bullying opinion leader among the teen hot-rodders, Link. Link becomes Ricky's main rival throughout the book, and it is that rivalry that proves to be Ricky's undoing.
Defiant, Ricky draws his entire savings, $50, from the bank and buys a junker from the local good-for-nothing town-drunk mechanic, Merle. It doesn't take long for Ricky to have buyer's remorse, though, and the amount of work the car needs is way beyond his means. Everyone scolds him for paying for a heap of junk that was worth no more than $25. (These are 1950s dollars, folks, when gasoline was like 10 cents a gallon).
Ricky's father, a reasonable man, tries to compromise with his recalcitrant son, trying to talk him through his options. Although Ricky's car is no hot rod, it does run, and one day he decides to race it against his friends' cars on the public roads. The town's sheriff and Ricky's father get wind of this and the boy gets a warning. Ricky's father devises a way that the boys can satisfy their need to race while doing so within a safely regulated framework. He advocates that the boys form a "timing association," a car club dedicated to safe and controlled drag racing, a concept that had been growing in the country at the time in the face of many hot rod deaths among the youth.
Arguing that boys will be boys, much with the same logic we understand today in the era of the drug war (that drugs and users aren't going away, and efforts to criminalize them will only perpetuate the same non-constructive situation), the timing association offers a regulated way to meet the needs of all sides in the debate. Saving lives is ultimately its goal.
Trying to teach Ricky a lesson in civic engagement and in fighting for a goal in which he can take pride and ownership, his dad helps him draft a petition for the town council to set aside part of a road outside town one day a week for the drag races. The reactionary council, much the way the anti-drug forces think today, flatly refuse this solution, equating it with blackmail and disrespect for the law.
Angry at this result, Ricky and his friends wreak holy havoc on the roads. In reaction, the parents band together and forbid their daughters from riding with the boys, and the police forbid them driving questionably in the town limits. The boys tool off to Des Moines to do whatever they want, but the cops there are wise, and threaten the boys with jail if they cause trouble. They manage to get away with some roadway harassment before getting back to town.
The rest of the book details Ricky's change of heart, as he finally begins to realize the error of his ways, and pursues his dream of souping up his Buick coupe and entering it in the car show. He even has interested buyers for it, the first step in his dream to open his own customizing shop after college. Ricky's dad has finally convinced him that an engineering degree will boost his skills and prospects.
But the rivalry with Link has never gone away, and, Ricky, seemingly with the world in his grasp, chafes at this final undone goal: to finally beat Link in a drag race. Thus, the ending, which you can infer.
The strongest thing about this book is its insight into the inner frustrations of adolescent male youths, and about the poignant concerns of parents who want their children to be safe while affording them some measure of freedom and responsibility as they slowly cut the parental cord. There are some lovely moments where the town cop talks about the sense of immortality and invicibility that young boys feel, the idea that death is too remote for them to grasp. Also, he points out that Ricky's father and his peers were no better when they were adolescents; they may not have had cars, but they acted out in their own ways.
The conversations between Ricky's parents do have a Leave it to Beaver vibe, but it's not a bad thing, and you wish more parents showed this much concern and accommodation for their children.
The book also has some "ah yes" moments of recognition, showing that road rage and reactive driver behavior has not changed at all since 1953 when this book was first published:
"There's something about having another car go past that's like an insult."
"I've followed more than one man or woman who didn't go over forty until I tried to pass. And the minute I tried to go around, they sped up."
The book is an interesting relic from the post-war industrial 1950s, when so many dreams were tied up into material goods, cars in particular, and when something like drag racing and firecracker-throwing constituted heinous juvenile delinquency. Of course, this is dated on a certain level, but the human concerns the book has aren't.
I will probably forget this book but I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected, and Felsen could write. No doubt about that.
----
(kr@Ky 2016)
November 13, 2016
I read this book when i was 10 years old. I was shocked senseless by the ending. I remember looking around the front room. Everybody else in the family was behaving normally. They had no idea what I had just experienced. I walked upstairs to my bedroom with the book. Several times over the next few weeks I re-read the ending and was shocked all over again.
This book then led to a lifetime of seeking and enjoying to the max any and all books with shocking endings. And, even more, books that are filled with disaster from beginning to end . . . mountain climbing books and adventure books in general are especially desirable as they usually have multiple disasters. And I love them all, thanks to Henry Gregor Felsen.
This book then led to a lifetime of seeking and enjoying to the max any and all books with shocking endings. And, even more, books that are filled with disaster from beginning to end . . . mountain climbing books and adventure books in general are especially desirable as they usually have multiple disasters. And I love them all, thanks to Henry Gregor Felsen.
August 29, 2012
I wrote this review back in 2009 under my old name and old account. But I just deleted that account, and I want my review to stay. So... here it is again. I stand by what I said. :)
When I found out my dad had never read The Outsiders (which I love and have read with my seventh graders every year for the past 10 years) I gave him homework. After he read it, he said it reminded him of a book that was popular when he was in high school. The library couldn't keep it on the shelf; every boy he knew read it and some of the girls too. It was called Street Rod, and he wanted me to read it.
A quick search of the book (published in 1953) showed that it was out of print and very rare. When I told my dad, he secretly tracked down an old hardback copy and gave it to me for my birthday, along with a letter about his experiences reading the book and the memories it brought to mind. It was a wonderful gift.
The book is a little hard to get through due to the Beaver Cleaver way the parents speak and my personal copy made me sneeze a lot because it was so old, but it's a good book. The story is about a teenage boy who wants his own car. His parents won't get him one because they are too dangerous (his friends all have cars and are always drag racing outside of town) so he goes out and buys a piece of junk for way more than it's worth. Everyone laughs at him, but he fixes it up until it's perfect.
The book has a shocking ending, which is why it was so popular with kids back then.
When I found out my dad had never read The Outsiders (which I love and have read with my seventh graders every year for the past 10 years) I gave him homework. After he read it, he said it reminded him of a book that was popular when he was in high school. The library couldn't keep it on the shelf; every boy he knew read it and some of the girls too. It was called Street Rod, and he wanted me to read it.
A quick search of the book (published in 1953) showed that it was out of print and very rare. When I told my dad, he secretly tracked down an old hardback copy and gave it to me for my birthday, along with a letter about his experiences reading the book and the memories it brought to mind. It was a wonderful gift.
The book is a little hard to get through due to the Beaver Cleaver way the parents speak and my personal copy made me sneeze a lot because it was so old, but it's a good book. The story is about a teenage boy who wants his own car. His parents won't get him one because they are too dangerous (his friends all have cars and are always drag racing outside of town) so he goes out and buys a piece of junk for way more than it's worth. Everyone laughs at him, but he fixes it up until it's perfect.
The book has a shocking ending, which is why it was so popular with kids back then.
January 8, 2014
I read this many times as a young teenager and was always moved by this story. I think I read it again and again, hoping for a different ending, but always knowing what was going to occur on the final pages. This was my favorite of the "Hot Rodding" books by Henry Gregor Felsen.
February 6, 2014
I found this book in the school library in 1960 while in the fifth grade in Dearborn, Michigan. While most self-respecting hot-rodders painted their cars black, the main character's girlfriend talks him into a color scheme of pink, brown, and copper. This little instance of zigging while others zag, and its contribution to a tragic ending, have stayed with me ever since.
February 26, 2012
I read this way before I ever learned to drive and yet it managed to capture my attention even back then.
September 22, 2016
This book is set in the '50s and has a lot of slang and phrases from the time period. I think it was very relevant for that time and accurately depicts teens in the '50s. The characters are interesting and I began to feel for both the teenagers and their parents. I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes cars because it describes a lot of car maintenance.
Want to read
June 9, 2012Does anyone know where to read this book online?
February 26, 2013
It was great until the last few pages. What a strange way to end the book.
December 4, 2013
Loved this unforgettable, life shaping book, as a kid, and plan to read it again as an adult.
December 3, 2014
Morality play, using a teen romance and a "speed kills" message. It's much like the hot rod exploitation flicks of the same era.
Read
November 15, 2025As a teenager in the 1960s, I found myself reading several books involving cars, and young people who were knowledgeable enough to hop them up. Some were what I would call teen tragedy stories. Others were teens with cars I know as sleepers, cars that were very unassuming in appearance but very powerful and fast. This book is considered by some as the grandfather of the genre.
September 6, 2018
I am not sure that this little novel deserves any stars, but it was a favorite of mine just as I was starting to realize that books were my friends, back in the early 1960s. So even though this story is pretty lame all in all, it appealed to my pre-teen self and got me interested in reading.
September 13, 2020
Fascinating look at life in the 1950's - delinquents were a lot different. Friends were not always friendly. The end of the book is haunting, which caused me to buy a used copy of the book 30 years after I first read it, just so I could reread it.
September 10, 2009
The first chapter of H. G. Felsen's 1953 novel sets the lives of its characters on a collision course between rebellion and responsibility. With all the stock characters and moral weight of the Fifties’ Teen Exploitation genre (and lots of real gone hot rod rebop!) Street Rod reads like a pace-setter for the crazy B-flick style of Hot Rod Gang (like Felsen’s novel, long out of print). What it lacks in allusions to Rock n’ Roll it compensates with a crash n’ burn race. You might be left wondering just what the “moral” of this tale is, but if you like the campy side of Fifties Pop Culture (and if you can find a copy of Felsen’s book), sit back, enjoy a Coke while spinning Joe Clay’s vintage 1956 RCA sides, and get real gone for about two hours with Street Rod!
December 16, 2016
I have read most of Felsen's "car" books. I read them in the early 80's. I loved them. I was into the car culture. They had the strong moral story of tragedy.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews