I found a 59 Chevy (4 door ), gonna go mild custom, and i'm looking for some different ideas on how to proceed. It's too late a car to do dummy spots, wide whites and sombreros, fine with me, that look is getting overdone. Anyone care to write up a primer on the different eras of kustoms, and how that look is made?
Watch "Cars" the movie! cool 59 60 custom cartoon! My $.02 "Salt racer". Blackwalls, Moon discs, lowered a few inches (or more!), add gas and drive! Dave
Try "The American Custom Car" by Pat Ganahl, or buy a few late 1950s/early 1960s custom car magazines on eBay or half.com. In general, late '50s look is: slammed low, not chopped, narrow whitewalls, chrome wheels or early mags, sparkly paint (metallic or candy or pearl), and often scallops or panel jobs. Think high contrast (dark red and white) or solid color (candy gold, etc.). No fender skirts, no lakes pipes, no spotlights, no flames. Louvered hood optional. White interior, possibly with contrasting piping. Eliminate all emblems and either all the side trim or most of it. Modify the grill, headlights, and/or taillights, but no major mods to the body metal itself. There are also a couple outstanding examples in "Custom Cars of the 1950s" by Southard.
Sweet, this is nearly dead on what I had in mind already.I don't want to add extra **** to make it a Kustom, I want to take unnecessary **** out. lakes, spots, flames are definitely out. all emblems, side trim, door handles, gone. I've already been planning a tube grill with matching inserts in the "nostrils" above. skirts are a possiblity, just the factory ones, not bubbles or cruisers. I'll probably get the skirts, paint them, add them on and decide I hate them. Wheels I'm unsure about. Astros and skinny whites would be period correct, right? I'm not a big fan of Astros though. What early mags are out there besides astros, cragars, and slot mags?
If the car is complete and in good shape, keep the body and trim "stock". Just paint it a "mild" but custom color, lower it by cutting ONE coil and put on either Lakes pipes or Bellflower pipes, but not both. Some Crager S/S or Astro Supremes or Dayton straight laced wire$ wheel$ and skinny whites, and simple white or pearl white tuck & roll is all you need on that car. That is the only custom "tradition" for a '59 sedan.
Actually found both these two 4 door sedans in a 1962 "Speed and Custom"(!) Wouldn't recommend this look though, personally I'm allergic to skirts... Since it's a 4 door I'd go easy on the mods, usually tends to look "wrong" with too much work done... How about just a nice low stance & a set of chrome reverse wheels with matching bias plys?
Spam alert!! Buy them from me! See my cl***ified ad for many different little books from 1961 that have exactly what you are looking for. Lots of great ideas, and a good investment.
There isn't an issue of black and white in these styles. There was a lot of overlap in syltes, as well as different styles in the same era. East Coast, West Coast, Midwest. Lots of the late 50's cars were still being done in mid 50's style, wide whites, and caps, while others were pioneering the new look, early mags, and pin whites, or double pin whites,( mags...Astros, Shore Calendars, Radirs, Chrome Reverses, even Micket T's, & Hursts would look authentic on ealry 60's stuff. Bonnieville look, vs Bellflower. Radical show stuff like Bill Hines "Excidean" or Starbird's bubble topped 59 or 60. Watson styled cars, little or no body mmods, just lowered, with wild paint schemes, seaweed flames, panel paining, cobwebbing. Lots of choices!
http://public.fotki.com/Rikster/ Pictures of tons of cars. You are sure to find what you are looking for here.
'59 four door hardtops have the cool flat-top roofline which I like. Four door sedans can be turned into two door sedans with the right parts if you're willing to go that far. I like emblems shaved but side trim I'd probably leave on to break it up a bit. When every bit of trim is shaved they start to look a little late 1980's monochromatic to me. '60 Mercury grilles are a popular swap into a '59 Chevy, as are '59 Imperial grilles. Another thought is, I've seen a couple of '59 Edsels running around with '59 Chevy taillights, maybe you could try a set of '59 Edsel tails in the Chevy?
Almost all of the pictures I have of 1959/1960 cars customized in that era have chome plated stock wheels, standard or reverse offset. Some have wheelcovers and some have 5-spoke mags, but very very few. It's true that there were overlapping styles at that time, but the general trend was low and no skirts, even on the early 1950s cars built in the late '50s.
Here's my old tech piece http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=78120 Seeing as your car has an extra post behind the back door, your donor pieces will need to be cut off up into the roof a bit more, you'll use more of it than I did. But it's still very do-able. Honestly if you have the parts it's not that hard and you basically triple the value of the car.
<TABLE id=HB_Mail_Container height="100%" cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0 UNSELECTABLE="on"><TBODY><TR height="100%" width="100%" UNSELECTABLE="on"><TD id=HB_Focus_Element vAlign=top width="100%" background="" height=250 UNSELECTABLE="off">I grew up in the fifties and sixties and my Dad had a 59 Chevy two door hard top. It had chrome rims and baby moons with wide whites, dark mettalic green, slightly lowered. That was pretty much a mild kustom of the sixties, or you could run Anson Supremes mags. Rags </TD></TR><TR UNSELECTABLE="on" hb_tag="1"><TD style="FONT-SIZE: 1pt" height=1 UNSELECTABLE="on"> </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
My first car when I was 15. 1959 Biscayne, had a 235 and a 3 on the tree. The interior was gray tuck and roll. The paint was awesome in person.
Good post. DrJ is right on as well. To say that "all the extra ****" like lakes, spots, trim, etc is not early 60's would be incorrect. It does depend, to some degree, on which builders you look at and where the cars were being built geographically. Watson was all about the extra ****. Lakes on every car, spots on most of them, even through to the late 60's. Alot of Hines-built cars had the same look. Narrow whites were being offered from the factory in about 61 I think. But wide whites were still very popular, specially medium(2") whites. Dual white lines showed up on alot of cars in 61/52. As far as wheels, as mentioned, Radirs and other mags(M/T's, Halibrand, American Racing) were popular in the early 60's. Astro slots were popular. The first Astro Supreme wheel busted on the scene in 64. The ones you see today didn't come out till 65/66 and weren't even that popular till the late 60's/early 70's. Here is a scan of "New Wheel Options" from early 1964.
The Jalopy Journal
