Whats your favorite 60's maybe a little later "show" car?????

I'm talking Tom Daniels, type boothill express, etc. etc. type cars. TV cars, etc. Model kits that were made into cars or cars that were made into model kits.

i know some guys arent into it...but.

I have vowed that after I build my hemi sedan and winged express replica, I will be building my Dragula replica.

-Rob

post some pics.

 

Dragula is one of my favorites, along with some of the other Barris collection.

Jonney

 

DEORA!

Here's a link with some cool models off it, and similar vehicles as models.
http://www.bonediggers.com/1-2/deora/deora.html

 

....

 

It's also the little coffin for me, even the earlier versions of it.

Also the uncertain "T", although I don't know if a model was ever issued of that one. correction, looks like it was made as a model.

 

i like the Deora, i have a bunch of hotwheels deoras...

i dig a alot of the TOm Daniels stuff too.

 

All of that type of "cartoon car" were the poison that killed the era of the real "Custom Car" and caused the Dark Ages of disinterest that were the 70's.

Deora was a great concept and beautifully styled but even then, as a teenager, I knew it was just plain WRONG to use a tempered glass back window for a windshield and to me a custom needs to be at least hypothetically drivable, on the highway, or I wasn't much interested.
(Deora used a '60 Ford wagon back window for a windshield and to the best of my knowledge they didn't remake the glass in laminated.)

My all time favorite Custom - Matador but that was built late 50's early 60's on the show circuit
Close second - Jeffries' Mantaray
Up there are Barris' Villa Riviera
And Gene's Jade Idol, also early 60's.
Ray Goulart's Olds was cool but it's hard to put a build date on it because it "evolved"
One of the very few Customs that came out of the 70's worth remembering was the Zocchi and other's owned and built "Cool 50" Mercury with the '70 Riviera side trim.

Cars like Boothill Express "buried" Custom Cars.

 

so are you saying that a lot of Roths cars buried custom cars to? i mean, from what I can see you couldnt even put the bubble down on the beatnik bandit.

 

Dean Jeffries Mantaray


Gene Winfields Reactor

 

THE ONE AND ONLY BEATNIK BANDIT! I saw this car when I was 5 years old and I was hooked for life. Thanks Big Daddy! -stick

 

My favorite paint/car,Winfield's Jade Idol. Favorite 'car of the future' The Predicta(sp?) The Lil' coffin' would be a close second. Sparky

 

One of the first shows I remember watching, and being impressed with the car, was "The Green Hornet"...

Yeah, ugly compared to some of your choices... but you friggin' asked!

 

Okay

I'm retarded
I read the post as meaning
T.V. "show" cars...

(slinking back into my dirty corner now)

 

I was thinking about that very car when typing that, wondering if I did think of it in the same light.
I type what I'm thinking at the moment sometimes and occasionally disagree with my Gemini otherself..
He knows the board password too.

I was quite dissapointed when I realized Roth didn't fit in it.
But then, I think Roth's rolling sculptures were in a different class of automotive sculptural art work.
Sorta like Picasso and Braque were the cubists and everyone else shoulda left the style alone because it wasn't their's to copy.

Back in the 60's R&C ran a "Who's the King of the Customizers?" series between Roth And George Barris and while I thought Roths creations were fun as hell, they weren't "Customs" they were as I said, rolling sculptures.
Barris "Customized" actual cars.

If cars like Boothill Express were built as a reaction to Roth's type of car, then yes, I'd have to say Roth started it, but can't be held responsible for the glut of "Cartoon cars" that followed.
At the same time I'd have to say Watson may have ended scupltural customizing by customizing with paint on the surface of mostly stock cars.
Or just accept that Detriot had caught up with the customizers style.
All the new cars today come from the factory with "rolled pans" instead of visible bumpers don't they?
Or I could say customizing came to a hault because a large percentage of the guys doing it got drafted and sent over there...
Or a combination of them all.
I kinda like the Munster's Coach,but not Dragula. I dont know why...
The PacMan Rod was the worst.

 

Well, the thread seems to have taken a different tack and to continue taking it down the "wrong" road my vote would be a little T roadster by Roth, I believe, called the "Tweetie Pie" (?). I built that model when I was a wee lad and still have it, although it could use a rebuild. Probably someone on here has a picture of it?

 

wow.


ummmmmmmmmmm hahaha.



also, believe you me, i like "drivable" cars too!

 

I'm no homo but the Pink Panter was over-the-top. Saw it at the Detroit Autorama in the 60's.

 

Tossup between the Invader and the Outhouse. The Outhouse could cut some mean do-nuts BTW.







Also really liked the Milk Truck

 

Pink Panter???............Over the top???........."I'm no homo"?????


God, I love typos.......



Mutt

 

The Pink Panther WAS driveable. That wired gyro joystick was unreal for it's time. I watched them scrape up the bottom of it pulling into the old Paxman's drive in on First street here in Idaho Falls before a show. They used to take all the "California Show Cars" and run them around town before the car show to prove to people they were real and drum up more paying customers.

 

That would have been quite a sight, the Pink Panther running down main street.
I saw that car at a show as recent as the 90's. You know yer lookin' at a show rod when you see color coordinated throw pillows inside the car.

 

Yea, but that little TV was just black and white. I had a better one in my van...
Oops, forget I just mentioned the van...

Keep on Truckin!

 

You could look at Deora, and some of the others like it, as "proto-types" or "exercises in style" if it'll help you get past a few safety issues, Dr.J. Besides...the title of the thread is ".....SHOW CARS...."!!! Not "...STREET Customs...".

 

#1 Red Baron -- the original large scale model kit, Monogram/Tom Daniel
#2 Pie Wagon -- Monogram/Tom Daniel

Neither of these ever had a full-size counterpart that accurately captured Tom Daniel's excellent and subtle (?) designs. Too bad, because although they were whimsical and tongue-in-cheek, they were also really nice forms.

DrJ, you're right, customs were untimately killed off by the mailbox car, the Coke machine car, the urinal car, all that over-the-top stuff, but it was fun while it lasted. I think that Tom Daniel, who could arguably by credited with starting the whole idiom, did it really well. Maybe their highest purpose was to be fantasy objects as model kits, and no one should ever have tried to make them real cars.

 

Yes, I know what the title is, and I thought about what it means before my first post, but there are show cars that aren't driven because the owners want to keep them pristine, for the term that they put them in shows, but could and often do drive them after they get "over" the showing of them. Then there are show cars that aren't driven because they either aren't driveable, beyond getting them out of the trailer and onto the show floor, or maybe in slow parades as mentioned, or as built are unsafe and or unlicensable(?) to drive.

I remember seeing Ron Aguirre driving his bubble top Corvette around the parking lot at the Long Beach Arena before putting in the show, and I was standing next to him as he "drove" the car with a Model Airplane R/C transmitter as the car ran around the lot with no one in it like a 1 to 1 scale R/C car!
That part was cool!
What made me kind of sad about the car was the windshield area of the bubble top was cut out of the top. It had the top but not the part that made it "legal" to drive.
Maybe it got a stress crack and he trimmed it or was putting the shield in seperate but wasn't done yet, I don't know.
I know, I was a very judgemental 14 year old at the time, but would have liked it "right". I'm just reporting what I remember from being there.

A friend who is in the Tridents told me when Barris brought the real original Batmobile to one of the shows, he and another guy actually went on a burger run to a Jack in the Box IN THE BATMOBILE! and George was waiting for them when they got back... and that one still isn't over....

Maybe I'm weird, well I know I'm weird, but I mean about this, I am way more impressed with cars that are WILD and functional actual cars than I am with just wild "models".
Anyone can make something look wild if they don't actually have to make it work.
WILD and FUNCTIONAL are what make some of them special to me.
Like a backwards sign on a truck that looks perfectly OK in a rear view mirror

 

Ed Roth's Outlaw
Tom Daniels Pie wagon
Red Baron
Boothill Express
Lil' Coffin
later shawn

 

Has to be the Milk Truck.Still have a model of it I built years ago.

Doc;you mentioned the Deora using a non safety glass backlite for a windshield.Actually European cars have used single sheet safety glass(as opposed to laminated in US cars)for many years with no ill effects.We used to get a lot of Euro spec Mercedes in at the dealership I worked at and in order to make it USA compliant,we would have to change the windshields(among other things).

 

King of all model kits.... the badman 55

 

I have to cast my vote for the Red Baron