A buddy of mine also came up with a pretty radical idea to save money on my build, or at least put off spending it...Rat Rod! I'm starting to look into that now.
To me personally ratrod always screams middle aged yuppie that wants to looks like a car guy. The difference between a beater driver and a ratrod is the beater is actually driven and is not intentionally looking like crap. The whole ratrod trend is just that, a trend.
I have drove many cars with holes rusting through them and things cobbled together, it was never because I wanted it to look like a cobbled together car.