What is a Jeep Rat Rod?
Rat rods are the low-key cousins of hot rods. And Jeep rat rods are a fun addition to this branch of the family.
Written by Alex Reale
Reviewed by Lisa Steuer McArdle
Table of Contents
DIY car projects can be as varied as the people who undertake them. Some bedazzle license plate holders, and others glue eyelashes to headlights, but only the most hardcore scour the junkyard for a chassis.
If you’re among this last group, and you have an interest in Jeeps, you might already have a built-in hobby.
Jerry
, the trustworthy insurance comparison app
, shares a bit about the world of rat rods, and their Jeep
variant.Into the rod-verse
Sorting through the differences between the different kinds of rods (street, hot, rat) can feel like a fruitless hair-splitting exercise, so let’s not.
All you need to know for our purposes: “rod” used in this context is essentially shorthand for “custom build.” You’re taking an existing car, and you’re adding new parts, stripping others away, maybe trying out an outlandish engine swap.
This practice has been popular for decades now, but found its start in the Southern California hot rod culture of the 1930s. From there, the “rods” proliferated and evolved, and by the 1980s, the “rat rod” had been enshrined as a legitimate offshoot of the hot rod. And rat rods are of, shall we say, a lower tier.
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Putting the rat in rod
MotorTrend
calls the term rat rod a “spin-off of ‘rat bike,’ referring to custom motorcycles built on the cheap.” So if you’re going the rat rod route, you’re keeping it low-budget—sourcing your materials from scrap, not being precious about rust, and enjoying the mix-and-matchiness of it all. Hagerty
advises, if you happen upon an exhibition of rat rods, that you observe “the use of random nuts and bolts, repurposed parts, and old tools fabricated into items such as brackets, suspension pieces and steering components.” Rat rod builders take pride in their imperviousness: who cares if this car has a little door swing mishap in the parking lot? It’s a rat rod!MORE: Mad About Gas Prices? Give Your Jeep Angry Eyes
Jeep rat rods
So what is a “Jeep rat rod,” then? It’s exactly what it sounds like: it’s a Jeep chassis with all kinds of modifications made to it, usually by way of helpful scrap material and parts. Frames from Jeeps make popular bases for rat rods because their uncomplicated structure makes them DIY-friendly.
MotorTrend
goes beat-by-beat on one Jeep rat rod project. We start with a crunchy frame from a 1948 CJ-2A, a classic old school Army Jeep (which is then switched out to a frame from an M38A1, also from a military background), and the project gets all the way to…well, hopefully a rat rod, but there appears to be no finished product to show off. Maybe this DIYer is still tinkering, enjoying all the rat rod possibilities. It’s happened before.
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