So far in our weekly series on body styles we have covered Barchettas, Berliners and Broughams, Club Coupes, Convertibles, Coupes, Business Coupes Tonneaus and Demi-Tonneau, with traditional definitions of each. This week’s topic is less defined as the others in this series, existing in a gray area encompassed by the umbrella of the term “Highboy.” What exactly is a Highboy Roadster and where did the term come from?
Roadsters were very popular in the 1940s in Southern California because the weather was more tolerant for car owners whose rides didn’t have tops, or were provided with ill-fitting canvas tops. These hot rodders were interested in going faster instead of creature comforts so their cars tended to be minimalistic in construction. This meant that the fenders and running boards came off.
Because channeling a car is more complicated and requires a lot of work to reconstruct the floorboards and body mounts, many of the younger hot rodders left the body sitting on top of the frame in the original configuration. Channeling made the bodies sit lower and look sleeker than the cars with the body sitting on the frame. Those became known as highboys roadsters.
Traditionally, the roadsters used in the construction of a highboy, or hi-boy, roadster were 1928, 1929, or 1932 Ford roadsters. While other model years have been used, these are primarily the years used by traditional rodders.
Three-window coupes, five-window coupes, Cabriolets, B400, Phaeton and roadster pickups have all been used as hot rods in the highboy style. The 1932 model year roadster being the most popular in all hot rod categories, including the highboy.
It safe to define the highboy as a roadster or coupe that had the fenders removed but maintained factory body mounting configuration.
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