It is an outgrowth of the rat rod movement. The problem with a lot of them is they are not really safe from what I have seen. Not really my thing either. I don't have a problem with cars that could be called beaters, heck my '67 probably falls into that catagory now. But these folks take it a bit far.
--louis
to me a beater is something that happens due to lack of time, money or both. these guys appear to take pride in ruining a car!! They are nowhere near safe, as far as I can tell. There were a few real screwballs that used to "build" crap like this in the Bay Area when I worked at BH. Same guys that never had jobs, always were filthy dirty from laying in gutter to scrabble under their cars to admire how they had worn the 6mm sump nuts flush with case....
An extreme case i remember.....the King of the Idiots....he had a barndoor Bus...and did a backyard conversion to make the poor thing RHD and his goal was to get the Bus so low it would grind the steering box on the ground as he drove. Unfortunately, he succeded. He removed
ALL of the torsion leaves in the beam, and used bungee cords to retain trailing arms into beam tubes. The only thing holding body up was the 125 temp tires rubbing inside fender wells.

ARE THE INITIALS OF THIS PERSON JM