Going to paint today- white firewall-- satin black body with these flames HAND painted around the cowl and tank!!
Car looks great. You're gonna have a ball in it. Won't take long for the V-8 sharks to start circling though! You gotta do this, you gotta do that, blah ,blah, blah............ What ya gotta do is have FUN!
It might even be in a 50s 'B' movie,"Attack of the Giant Crab Claws"... Just bustin yer balls a little cuz your car is really cool Daddy-O.
IT'S PERFECT! Now go drive the wheels off it and get some rock chips in that cowl! Here's some old hand painted flames on a cowl I've got in my pile: Yours are better.
Some of 'em did around here...(No. Calif.) In 1949, Al Marceline bought a thrown together black '32 highboy roadster from '32 guy Sid Owen, (Santa Clara) This car was in print a few times, Andy Southard was a friend of Al's. I was 7, in the second grade, and Al would drive the severely chopped Deuce by Grandma's house, with red flames starting at the shell and pouring over the louvers and hood, tips ending on the cowling. There was a black '40 Coupe with red-and-yellow flames in the Burbank area, (4 miles away) also showed up at MAB's drive in on weekends. A kid from Campbell (6 miles away) had a '34 sedan, lavender with black-and-white flames, also right around that time (1049-1950) I saw some race cars with crude flames, but on the street it may have been a 'regional' thing. I suspect they were imitating Al' '32, it was the first I saw. (and I was watchin'!) My friends and I thought the flames were 'extreme', we loved 'em. I've flamed 3 of my cars over the years, but guys ask me if I'm gonna flame my F100. Hell no. I don't want a 'Fire Truck'!
Mike, I think you hit it, "regional" is the word for the flames, and many other style cues. If you saw it and thought it was cool, you tried to make your car look similar. Not much different than today except there is a whole lot more choices than in the '50s!!
1956-57 right before the LIFE magazine shoot @ Bob's Toluca Lake. In 55 the Lightn Bug was black, low & blown.
No hijacking intended- just saying flames were around in the 50's like the OP said. And in 50 more years people will be saying " Nobody painted flames on their car in 2016.....well, except for that "BangerBob" guy who built that totally cool little roadster." ( with a WHITE firewall-YES!) It's gonna be a fun summer!
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