Looks better in purple, but I still say lose one set or the other of those lights. I mean, they don't even point in the same direction, one aims down, one aims up.
thats the stuff... dig the white upolstery in the engine compartment,and the wheel wells . As a side note I you ever have a chance to pick up popular customs magazines, they are great! They were a sister publication to popular hot rodding , and chronicoled the end of the 60's show car era. Thier last issue was in 66, and it was all funny cars ; then it was all over for the mainstream kustoms for a number of years.
I love that car and been a fan of it since i was a kid. I just recently met someone who knew about the car wich blew me away cause it was featured in maybe 1 or 2 mags that i know of and I tried to track info down on it at one point when i got 'head over heals' into kustoms. He sent me a bunch of pics of the car wich i sent onto Rikster so check his site out for additional info and pics. I never really cared for the tailight section myself but really love the front of it with that 6x2 peeking up through. Bad@zz..
I was a vendor at the H.A.M.B. drags and had that magazine on my table. Bob K. stopped by to say hi, and noticed the mag. He told me he did some work on that car long ago. I hope he chimes in and gives us more insite on building that car.
Gene Howard's original version of this car didn't have the Plymouth taillights. If my memory serves me right, the body color was a dark "burgandy wine" with tons of gold metallic under it. I had a conversation with Gene years ago, maybe in 1974, I don't recall. He said his initial goal was to present a show car with every component either chromed, upholstered, or painted. The car was fully functional which was not always the case in the 50's & 60's show circuit. The most impressive aspect of this build in my opinion was the flawless body work. I never was particularly fond of the design either, but the work he incorporated overall was extremely well executed. Gene simply took this design out to extremes which was fairly common at the time. It was an exhibition of his skills, which were vast.
Rikster to the rescue! dude......you truly amaze me...... Is that the original version? it flows much better.And I like the fact the hood compartment is covered.
One more original version.... The red does not work for me... the original purple/lavender color looked much better. And these black and white photos look good tooo. (from the Fuzzy photo collection)
the frist time i saw pictures of this car i like it then the 60,s it got ugly does anyone have pictures of it when it was frist done?
Yep I believe that is the original version of the car. Parked out in front of the old GTE building on Empire Drive. I'm not nuts about the car as it sits now, but it was pretty cool to talk to Gene a couple times in the last few years. It was at RockNRods on 66 the past two years. It has a place in custom history for me at least from the local connection. Bill
there's a couple of little things I don't care for on the original. But overall I like it. Much nicer look.
When I got to reading that mag I found that it was not the car I was thinking it was. The car that I was reffering to was a hardtopped Chevy built by Dave Puhl at the House of Kustoms in suburban Chicago. It was shown at Navy Pier in the early sixties and owned by a guy in the south Chicago suburbs. I'll ask Fuzzy, he remembers everything, my memory is slipping I guess. Sorry for the confusion. BB
Might that possebly this car bob? ROGER LICKS 50 CHEVY originally built by Darryl Starbird and later reworked by Dick Scully....
I really like the earlier, milder version. But, that's me. Customs are personal, and we historians know that custom car builders came from either the 'less is more' school, or the 'more is more' school. As much as I love the mild West Coast style, I would love to have this car. I'd fix it up so it was all functional again, and get it looking as good as possible (back to the purple paint, too!), and then drive it! It's a freak machine, and there's something like childish glee behind it. I'd never build anything like this. I have a '50 Buick Super Sedanette and it'll be a subtle, smooth custom. But, if someone gave me this car, I'd never give it back. I'd rock that sucker all over town. ~Scotch~
That be the one I was thinking of Rik, but I remember it being in Puhl's shop, I never was in Dick's shop. There was a lot of sanding going on in prep for paint. Damn I wish my memory was better, it was only 45 years ago!! BB
Wow, I didn't know that Gene had died. I just talked to him at the rock and rods show a month ago.... I liked the purple version of it better as well......
One thing is for sure, the car should not be altered in any way, in my opinion. This is a true survivor of the wild indoor show car era and an example of the competition between builders to build the wildest car on the circuit. Some on here would screw up the liberty bell by changing it to suit their taste, or lack of taste. Some day there has to be a Kustom museum for these old warriors.
just goes to show ...the only taste some builders got is in their mouths.............But I do like the front 2/3 of it,sick huh?
Thing is in the 60s to win on the show circuits, a car had to get wilder and wilder and sometimes they made changes just for the sake of changing it - they weren't always well thought out. If you read through old Rod & Custom magazines, you'll notice about '65 the customs start to fade away - there's a few, I remember a couple of really well done late 60s cars, but for the most part the trend went to needing to be truly wild, then kinda died out. Classes and awards were based on the number of modifications to the car. It got too expensive for just anyone to build a custom - they just went out and bought a new muscle car instead. I think that's what this car suffers from - change for the sake of change. Every close-up of those taillights I've seen posted you can see the forward one points down and follows the body line, while the rearmost one points either level or up slightly (likely so it's actually visible if you were to drive this on the road). And that's what I don't get on this one - what were they thinking when they designed that? I mean, it's great to be over the top, just don't go so far over the top you fall over. I agree, as it is it's a piece of history and probably shouldn't be changed. But like I said, photoshop it with one of those light sets removed and I bet guys would like it a lot better. If the cove they added didn't turn into an ice-cream-scoop cut out of the fender, it would probably be fine to most people. That's one reason I'm still not 100% decided on what to do for taillights on my '50 Chevy... I want them to be different, simple and tasteful, and to flow through with what I do with the headlights. Try and do that and still be different... it's not easy.
The Jalopy Journal
