“Stripper” is a word with strong links to a world of unclad women, strategically placed paper currency, and dance poles, but since MyStarCollectorCar is an e-zine dedicated to the vintage vehicle hobby, we will stick with an automotive meaning for the word.
A stripper in car guy lingo means a vintage vehicle with very few boxes checked off on the option list.
The grim fact is some vintage rides left the dealership with exactly no options because the new owner was either a cheapskate or spent any extra dough on his Walton-sized family of kids.
Jim Sutherland
The reasons may have been varied, but the bottom line was a stripper car had four wheels, an engine, and was on the bottom rung of the status ladder, a grim fact that made both owner and car background characters in the neighborhood. Star status belonged to flashier retro cars in the ‘hood because they had at least some of the missing components from our stripper list.
The first way to identify a stripper car is pretty simple: they came without makeup. The amount of bling on the inside and outside of a vintage car was a dead giveaway even to the untrained eye. A stripper had little to no chrome, stainless steel, or any other bright work to help boost its image in the eyes of the public. Instead, a stripper car had acres of painted sheet metal with no shiny stuff to break up its body lines-r its bland interior.
The car’s lack of chrome indicated its lowly position on the totem pole of prestige and was an intentional move by the builder to shame a buyer into purchasing a cosmetic upgrade for his new car.
The second way to identify a stripper car back in the day was the number of doors on it. Most car guys are not in love with more-door cars but the two extra doors cost more than a two-door sedan at the time, so an even more basic stripper only had two doors, along with a large B-pillar because it was also not a hardtop, and a vintage no-post two door is a Holy Grail car for today’s car guys.
For the record, a vintage two-door post car is also a very desirable vehicle in today’s market. But not in days of yore.
The third way to ID a stripper car is look at the tires. Whitewall tires were king of the road during a bygone era because they were more expensive and an excellent way to show off a vehicle’s bigger price tag to the public at large. Whitewalls made any car look higher end-and that was the point for the car’s owner.
The fourth way to pick off a stripper: look at the wheel covers. Full-sized wheel covers were a solid indication the owner shelled out extra dough to buy the car, while center-only covers (commonly known as dog dish or poverty hubcaps) indicated the buyer had a very tight grip on his wallet during the sales process.
The fifth and final dead giveaway for a stripper car required a look under its hood. A car equipped with a 98 lb. weakling factory six (or sometimes four)-banger was very likely a stripper because these engines were the cheapo specials back in the day.
Throw in a 3-speed manual transmission and you, my friend, had a very basic stripper car. A 98-lb. weakling powertrain may have appealed to a careful cheapskate car buyer, but it helped erase the very last molecule of prestige left in a stripper car bought new from a dealership.
It was probably a moment of acceptance for the stripper’s buyer, but a stripper purchase was unlikely to ignite a moment of excessive jubilation at the time.
The good news is stripper cars from the past now enjoy more popularity today than the day they left the dealership because now strippers have a retro cool vibe.
Jim Sutherland
BY: Jim Sutherland
Jim Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer whose work has been published by many major print and online publications. The list includes Calgary Herald, The Truth About Cars, Red Deer Advocate, RPM Magazine, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Windsor Star, Vancouver Province, and Post Media Wheels Section.
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