Steamjet 54
Moonshiner's choice
A midnight blue 1950 Ford Custom. A perfect choice for running moonshine on the back roads of Anywhere USA.
The moonshine distilleries favorite Rum Runner car during the 1940's and through the mid 50's was a Ford. The flathead V-8 could be souped up! Moonshine Rummers were never flashy vehicles- no chrome pipes, no loud mufflers, no distinctive paint jobs - plain and dark colored cars were the norm .
Like old thoroughbreds the aging moonshine-hauling cars sit at the ready. Their rear suspensions are still ultra-stiff and ready to conceal the weight of more than 100 gallons of white lightning that the cars would haul out of the foothills to Winston-Salem, Lexington, or other points east.
They wait for loads that will never come from creek-side stills that no longer exist. The customers are gone, too. The moonshine culture is dead—killed not so much by the persistence of law enforcement as by the spread of legal liquor and ABC stores into previously dry Southern states and counties. The backwoods still, an American tradition that predates the founding of the United States, has all but disappeared from the ravines and hollows of the southern Appalachians.
On the brink of its demise, after flourishing since colonial times, the moonshine business went out in a blaze of iconic glory and real-life drama born of its integration into another uniquely American custom—the hot rod. Big loads, fast cars, and tough law all came together in the 1950s and 1960s in a pageant of high-speed chases, roadblocks, wild escapes, crashes—and on rare occasions, gunplay.
Most of the old moonshiners are now up there in years. Call is 65. They could still stir the mash if push came to shove, but making bootleg liquor is some of the hardest work a man can do. Even if the market still existed, they have long since lost the need to bother. But they did quite well for themselves in the underground business, despite the cars that were confiscated, the stills that were blown sky-high, and the pieces of their lives lost to prison terms.
- Rich Chenet
Hot Rod Magazine
Moonshiner's choice
A midnight blue 1950 Ford Custom. A perfect choice for running moonshine on the back roads of Anywhere USA.
The moonshine distilleries favorite Rum Runner car during the 1940's and through the mid 50's was a Ford. The flathead V-8 could be souped up! Moonshine Rummers were never flashy vehicles- no chrome pipes, no loud mufflers, no distinctive paint jobs - plain and dark colored cars were the norm .
Like old thoroughbreds the aging moonshine-hauling cars sit at the ready. Their rear suspensions are still ultra-stiff and ready to conceal the weight of more than 100 gallons of white lightning that the cars would haul out of the foothills to Winston-Salem, Lexington, or other points east.
They wait for loads that will never come from creek-side stills that no longer exist. The customers are gone, too. The moonshine culture is dead—killed not so much by the persistence of law enforcement as by the spread of legal liquor and ABC stores into previously dry Southern states and counties. The backwoods still, an American tradition that predates the founding of the United States, has all but disappeared from the ravines and hollows of the southern Appalachians.
On the brink of its demise, after flourishing since colonial times, the moonshine business went out in a blaze of iconic glory and real-life drama born of its integration into another uniquely American custom—the hot rod. Big loads, fast cars, and tough law all came together in the 1950s and 1960s in a pageant of high-speed chases, roadblocks, wild escapes, crashes—and on rare occasions, gunplay.
Most of the old moonshiners are now up there in years. Call is 65. They could still stir the mash if push came to shove, but making bootleg liquor is some of the hardest work a man can do. Even if the market still existed, they have long since lost the need to bother. But they did quite well for themselves in the underground business, despite the cars that were confiscated, the stills that were blown sky-high, and the pieces of their lives lost to prison terms.
- Rich Chenet
Hot Rod Magazine