Chopping and channeling
form of automobile customization
Chopping and channeling is a form of automobile customization in the "kustom kulture" and among hot rodders. The procedures are often combined, but can be performed separately. While chopping takes in only a car's pillars and windows, the more involved work of sectioning a car is carried out on the entire lower body.
Chopping
Chopping a car, known more fully as "chopping the top," goes back to the early days of hot rodding and is an attempt to reduce the frontal profile of a car and increase its speed potential. To chop a roof, a shop cuts down the pillars and windows, lowering the overall roofline. Some racers on the dry lakes chopped the tops of their cars so severely that the windows were only a few inches tall, and sometimes called "mail slot" windows. Roof chopping became popular with drag racers for much the same reasons as it did for lakes racers, and was applied also to custom cars, kustoms, and lead sleds. The first roof chopper is considered to be Sam Barris (brother of auto customizer George Barris), who chopped and customized his brand new 1949 Mercury. Barris also pioneered a more advanced form, removing the B-pillar and turning the car into a pillarless hardtop in the process.
Automakers themselves may lower the roofs of concept cars based on production models, as AMC did with its AMX-GT, to make them look sleeker and "racy", even if impractical for normal use.
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