Reply To: California Dreams origins.
This is perfect. One of my favorite Polish car Youtubers just released a video review of Polish Fiat 125p. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDNhZiTeGXM His shtick is playing bland and awkward Soviet bloc version of Doug DeMuro. He is even wearing contemporary nylon jacket, latest fashion chic in the eighties Poland 🙂
This will give you an idea of how underdeveloped and archaic local auto industry was at the time of Street Rod development, not to mention the lack of any care for quality. The closest anyone back then in Poland could ever get to American V8 Muscle experience would be foreign dignitaries or secret political Police driving by in a ZIS-110 (Russian copy of Packard Super Eight), ZIL-111 (Russian limo stylized on 1961 Cadillac Fleetwood Seventy-Five) or GAZ-13 (Russian limo stylized on Packards from the fifties)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIS-110
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIL-111
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAZ-13
I would even go as far as draw parallels between making games about iconic American culture symbols (Street Rod, Vegas Gambler) from behind iron curtain to extra terrestrial beings producing movies about Humans doing Human things. Very ‘3rd Rock from the Sun’, Google image search ‘animals doing Human things’ vibe. The poses match, but something still seems fishy about this Bear reading a newspaper. To pull such a feat off convincingly was really impressive.