History Larry Watson's Personal Photo Collection

his photo of Larry Watson's 1957 Cadillac Brougham shows how well detailed the car was. Wonderful pearl white tuck&roll upholstery with soft pink carpeting. I love the detail on the fully upholstered gas filler inside the trunk. Larry added some additional chrome parts, including a fully chrome jack and a chromed box on the right which I cant tell what it is...







Another photo of the Delmer Brink/Bill Niekamp Roadster sitting in front of the Bill DeCarr/Larry Watson Artesia Blvd shop in 1960. The photo was taken halfway the rebuilt of the car after Larry had painted it will its full fade away front to rear Candy red paint job.

 

I think that 58 Chevy convertible might possibly be my favourite car ever.
Paul

 

Possibly a chromed tool box?

 

The battery in the Eldorado Brougham's are located in that box (usually not chromed though).


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Thanks

 

Some Ranchero's Larry Watson did...

Jim Warner's 1958 Ford Ranchero in front of the Bill DeCarr/Larry Watson shop at Artesia Blvd. somewhere in 1960. This is a very nice mild custom pick up with some really nice body work by Bill DeCarr. Bill rounded the corners, created custom headlights shapes from round tubing. Shaved the door handles and some of the other trim pieces, and added a flipped front section of the side trim and mounted it on the lower edge of the body. At the rear the car got a set of 1958 Edsel station wagon taillights. And the car rides on some very nice wire wheels with the perfect set of narrow white walls. Larry painted the car in a soft green pearl paint with a gold inset.








Another nice Ranchero Larry painted was this 1957 Ford for Nick De Mattie. This photo came with one more name - Charles Kuhl - and right now I don't know if he was the original owner of this car, or Nicks was. At the moment this photo was taken at the indoor show Nick was the owner.
In any event I have always loved the free style airbrushed flames on this one. Something completely new by Larry. I don't recall ever seeing him do it on another car than this one. The car was painted in a brilliant fine silver with candy root beer. The interior was done in a wild pearl tuck&roll.








Here is another photo of the Nick De Mattie 1957 Ranchero. It shows the beauty of the Candy paint job and the sparkling silver fine flake paint. This photo also shows the fantastic upholstered headliner and of coarse Larry's wild work on the flames.

 

Rik, thanks for all these pictures. I'm loving every one of them. Today, I'm drooling over the Ranchero. I have totally loved that once since I saw a lone picture of it on Pat Ganahl's "Where Were You in '62?" article in Street Rodder waaaaay back when.

 

This '56 is an absolute stunner! Why aren't lucky tri-five owners today building more cars like this? E

 

...

 

Rikster. Again I want to thank you for bringing all these photos to the hamb. I wish I could have seen all these cars in person. Thanks again.

 

OH MAN , RIK ! thanks somuch for posting all this. It gets my heart racing and gives me insperation to work harder. !!

 

Am I the only one who thinks this thread needs to be compiled into a book?

 

Great pics!

 

I see the back end of a '57 Plymouth behind the truck!

Love this thread BTW.

 

Really nice snapshot of LaVonne Bathke's 1958 Corvette in front of Larry famous 9012 Rosecrans blvd. Bellflower Shop. The long shadow and soft yellow orange sunlight indicates the photo was taken at the end of the day. Larry painted this 1958 Corvette at least twice for LaVonne. THis is the first version and the panel paint gives the near stock body a much slimmer look. The Custom hubcaps, lake pipes and dummy spotlights give is the perfect custom touch. One of the best Corvettes Larry ever did.







A nice aged snapshot of the Larry Watson Photo Collection is this low angle photo of an unidentified 1959 Pontiac. The car has been painted in one of Larry's trademark outline paint jobs in candy medium blue over a pale peal blue. The nice subtile outlines makes this huge cal look a lot slimmer. Somebody knows the name of the owner?







Great overhead view of an unidentified Corvette in front of the Bill DeCarr/Larry Watson shop. In the background we can see the primered 1957 Plymouth from Terry Hollaway. The Plymouth was in the Bill DeCarr shop for a complete updated front and back. And possibly it was waiting to be painted by Larry. The 1940 Ford sports 1946-48 Ford bumpers, and since we have seen it at the shop before I think it might have been on of the employees personal cars...








A really great early evening photo of a really great 1960 Ford Starliner Custom in the front of Larry Watson's shop. Unfortunately I could find only one photo of this car in Larry's Personal collection. Which I think is really sad because everything on it is just so right. The colors which appear to be dark champaign pearl with a dark candy brown on the top. But this is hard to tell in the late eventing sunlight. The stance on this car is really working well for it making it look like its going fast standing still. The perfect combination of thin-line white walls and chrome reverse rims... And only minimal body work... we need to see more cars done like this.








Another Corvette snapshot from the Watson Collection. Most likely Bill DeCarr removed the door handles and emblems on this lovely lady's Corvette. And now she is waiting for Larry to paint here car. Larry was always a ladies man so he did not let this opportunity go past without taking a nice photo of here and the car. There is no info with the photo, so I don't know who the lady is, or what the car looked like after Larry painted it...

 

I think thats a great idea!

 

Rick I think Mcnaught said the girl on the hood was Lavonne, she had an upstairs apt close by. As for the 59 Pontiac, the dairyman's sons would go to the pontiac dealer and get a new one , as the became old enough. The only thing Larry said that he painted more than pontiacs was corvettes. I grew up eating my heartout for a mild custom pontiac

 

some cool pictures, i dig the women on her vet. she is about to get spoiled with a killer paint job and knows.. smile says it all.. lots of cool cars too.. sweet,
chris.

 

John Busman's 1956 Chevy is better known when it had the Larry Watson painted purple with silver to white flames. Or at least it received some more publicity back then and in recent years. But in 1960's John had Larry repaint his very nice 1956 Chevy in a solid purple candy with pearl pink behind the side trim. A striking combination which looks extremely good on this car. A '56 Chevy which is only mildly customized with some trim removal, Spotlights, Lancer four bar hubcaps (not visible in this photo) and a fantastic all white tuck&roll interior...






This 1958 Pontiac was mildly customized - shaved door handles and shaved some of the trim overload - before Larry Watson painted it in pearl light Butterscotch for the main body and Candy butterscotch on the top and inside the side trim. Most of the times we see the 58 Pontiac being customized they are lowered all around, but not this one. This land yacht was put on a Californian rake with thin line white walls and chrome reverse rims.

 

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Oh man, that is plain and simple PERFECTION! Love it.-MIKE

 

TERD? Are you hearing this?

 

Wow, that Starliner's insane. Love the tires-wheels combo--and, of course, everything else.

 

The rake on the '58 Poncho and that Starliner were pretty standard around here at that time, as I recall. That was the look on 99 out of a hundred cars that you'd see driving around on the streets.

 

Spot on PREFECT!!!!

 

Beautiful job on that '58 Pontiac!

 

Another great snapshot of Larry's personal 1957 Cadillac Brougham.
This time it shows us a good view of the really nicely done interior done by Eddie Martinez in white pearl leatherette and pink fur carpeting. We also get a good look at the chrome plated door panels. Larry had a lot of parts chrome plated on this car. This photo is showing the car in the later version with the silver inset panel decorated with the horizontal chrome tape.








Larry Watson painted this 1957 Cadillac in a deep dark candy Brown with a dark Coral pearl on the top. The car was relieved from the unneeded chrome ornaments which helped the overall design of this car. A set of chrome reverse wheels - which is kind of unusual for this kind of car - and medium size white walls give this Cadillac a fantastic look. This is the only photo of the car in Larry's Collection, and unfortunately there is no info on the owner or any other details... alls we know is that this is one cool 1957 Cadillac.








Another Cadillac from the Larry Watson Collection. This time a 1960 on a Californian rake. We have seen this car in the background of at least one other photo I have posted here. Larry painted this smoothed Caddy in a very dark candy purple with a lavender pear top. Also this car runs reverse rims, just like the Caddy I posted yesterday. Something that you don't see much these days anymore. The huge fin's bellflower exhaust tips and California rake make this one look like its running 100 miles an hour standing still.







Another photo of the Larry Watson painted and still unidentified 1959 Pontiac. This time we can see what Larry did to the front of the car where the hood peak and side trip scallop outlines come together and give the Pontiac a whole different and much sleeker look.








Another fuzzy and scratchy snapshot from Ed Roth ROTAR fresh out of the Larry Watson paint booth. The red was painted last and Ed Roth was in the process of removing all the tape and paper used to cover the white and blue portions of the car. Its hard to see in this photo but he still has to remove the taped of white starts on the horizontal body parts.

 

still a delight Rik ! i hope you've got a lot more to share!

 

Thanks for Posting!

 

this thread is absolutely amazing. Watson's work was and is unreal.