Built For Speed

Combining old-school curb appeal with modern performance, this silver dream machine from the kings of rockabilly offers that new-car smell for the price of an old banger

- Ed Mitchell

If you spend enough time glued to the gogglebox, you’ll find you can’t move for American car-restoration shows. The plots are always a bit on the thin side. And there’s usually a stupid deadline… a deadline that can’t possibly be met. Yet something that looks as though it was pulled from the trash compactor on the Death Star is transformed into a sleek new conveyance with minutes to spare. Every. Single. Episode.

Quite often these shows will produce something described as a “Rat Rod”. Beloved by rockabilly cats and kittens, these things are the antithesis of megabucks hot-rods with their expensive paint and polished chrome. Rat Rods generally boast visible wear and tear and flat primer-style paint. Luckily, the new Gretsch G5410T Electromatic “Rat Rod” that just rolled onto our forecourt has plenty of the latter and none of the former.

Built in Korea, this hollow-bodied behemoth is basically a modified take on the iconic G6120, which is the guitar the doomed rocker Eddie Cochran, Nashville boss Chet Atkins and Stray Cat Brian Setzer all bestowed iconic status upon.

At the heart of the beast you’ll find the top, back and sides pressed from sheets of laminate maple and bound in aged white plastic and black purfling. That’s your cake. The icing is the 50s-style bound oversized f-holes, classic chrome ‘G-Arrow’ control knobs, not to mention the obligatory old-school wiggle stick, in this case a stifffeeling but workable licensed Bigsby B60 True Vibrato. The latter is partnered with a six-saddle Adjusto-Matic bridge with an anchored wooden base.