hey bill(bullet nose),that chevy you rolled around in back in 57 is great.Any photos of the work done or stories you could share about what it was like to own and work on a custom back in the day....we want to hear more.
regarding the Outer Limits Blue Danube episode, I second the motion!!! Thanks for the info and thanks to Kustomrama for the videos.
I'm afraid I don't have an interesting story about some famous builder doing my car. It was purchased after my 1941 Chevy Coupe I was working on got stolen from high school. My uncle, who lived across the street from us, was a body and fender man and helped with some of the customizing. He shaved all the emblems and leaded them in. I had limited funds from my part time job setting pins at my dad's bowling alley in Redondo Beach. I joined the Vampires - So. Calif and later the Magoos - Hermosa Beach and some of my friends helped me work on the car. I guess I must have removed the lowering blocks, as shown in the picture below, about a hundred times because it went from being lowered in the back to the rake. On some of our cruises to out of town areas, we would load up the trunk with some large rocks to get it as low as it would go. Here the car still has the stock grill before I removed the lower bars and added the 54 teeth. Those side pipes were functional and with the split manifold on the six the sounds coming from the glass packs was sweet music to my ears. We cruised Pacific Coast Highway from Redondo to Culver City and Hawthorne Blvd from Torrance to Inglewood. Other cruise spots were Long Beach and Downey. Barris Kustoms was a shop we visited on occasion to see what cars were being built and the price list I posted earlier was picked up on one of the visits there. I believe I had already gone to Tijuana for the turquois and white tuck & roll upholstery job when this photo was taken. It looks higher in the front than some later photos so I may not have added the dropped spindles yet. That was an adventure; after working all day on swapping them out, when I lowered the jack the car came to rest on the ground. Had to get some new springs from the junk yard. After the car was painted by H & H Body shop in Redondo Beach, I had Dean Jeffries lay on the scallops because everyone was doing it. I'm not sure they really did anything to enhance the looks and I never could get him to finish them with pinstriping. I later had Ed Roth pinstripe it and paint a name on the side, again like everyone else was doing. Because the car was so low, with dropped spindles and cut coils, it had very little spring travel left in the front and it bounced alot. My friends nicknamed it the Gallopin' Groundhog and that's what Roth painted on the quarter panels. I got several tickets for the car being too low and then one morning on my way to work, one of the lower A-frames fell off because I had worn through the metal under the bolt from it scraping on the ground. I raised it up and sold it, never to see it again. Thanks to everyone for the kind comments. Hopefully you'll all have some good memories about the cars you have when you get to be my age.
Bullet Nose, That was a great post. It made for excellent reading. Ha Ha, I like the big rocks in the trunk story. Keeping with '50's frugality, I guess you could find big rocks for free, while sacks of cement would cost money.
Call me dillusional but I swear I saw pics of that sucker at Roths shop in some outdoor weekend photo taken by Andy Southard.Someone check his books!
Thanks for the collaboration between TwoChops and 00MACK.... Now we are talking. But we need more... much more. Then we can publish it in a book...
Custom Cars of the 50's page 54. The car is light purple mild custom,same fastback just like this and on the rear quarters it reads " Sno Go" and there are flames coming off of the front and rear fenders. It states that the owners name of the purple chevy fastback was Kelly.
------------------------------------------------------------------ here's another nice one from the east coast. TwoCHOPS
The car pictured above was owned by Herb "Slim" Gellings of Pompton Lakes N.J. and was featured in plenty of magazines as well.The work was done by a local body shop that performed the mods as Slim explained them. The car was known as the "Gator" when it was white and as the "Blue Gator" when it was blue. Aside from what you see here, it had a 41 Chevy rear roof section and window grafted on. Slim is still very active in the custom world. Unfortunately this car was the victim of what was supposedly a jealousy inspired arson and burnt to a crisp. While cars like this do not exhibit the same stylistic perfection of Southern California cars of the early 50s, they were anything but ugly to a kid standing on a Jersey street corner as he drove by in 1958. These are the type of east coast cars that should be publisized. Its as though a whole side of the country is condemned because of three builders in Connecticut.
from the Barry Mazza Collection Same in white And the car after it caught fire in a garage and before it was crushed.
------------------------------------------------------------ My 57 Ford in its second show,Lumbard Il. TwoChops
The rear 3/4 of that car is pretty sexy but not too pretty from the front. It was better in white for the front view, then again some don't photograph as well as they look in person. I agree with the idea of cars from the rest of the country, especially east coasters. I'm afraid I'm not old enuff or "hip" enuff to understand the Connecticut statement. I grew up here in Motown and have seen in person and pics a few great ones from here. Sadly I have no collection but would love to get inspired and nostalgic over some of em. Thanks for everything so far. Anyone have anything on Don Hughes (Don's Custom Shop, Lincoln Park MI)?
I don't think it was in the book you mention, but there is a story with pictures of the car in a new book called Car Club Memories by Fred Thomas. There is a short excerpt from the book about my friend Jack Carpenter on the Rod & Custom website ..... Car Club Memories
Here is a photo of Jack's chopped 41 Chevy convertible taken in the early 40's. This picture is from the book.
Yeah...Once Jeff spoke of the flames, I got the exact visual on my brain, even the way the other car was lettered. The Jack Carpenter car looks like a dazzler. Its amazing how good the top looks even without a real sloping roof line. That just goes to show how important it is to have a carson top with enough padding. What also helped is that in those days there were not many fake converts! LOL
It's interesting that Jack's convertible had the chrome trim removed from the hood but they left the door handles on. Wonder what year shaving the door handles started. Notice that it had DeSoto bumpers, spotlights and flipper hubcaps on the front. It also has a somewhat bald left front tire. I think Jack said this photo was taken when he returned from the Navy around 1943 or 1944 and he was all upset because it was no longer lowered. His mom had been driving it while he was gone and didn't like the way it rode so she had new springs installed in the front and had the lowering blocks removed from the back.
It really is... A few more photos of it. And it looks like it did really well at the shows as well!!!
The Jalopy Journal
