The Gribble Starliner

I’ve always had a thing for early ’60s customs, but let’s be honest—those years were ruled by Chevrolet. Bubble tops, sci-fi fins, and enough chrome to blind a man at noon. Customizers couldn’t resist the flash, and who could blame them? The cars practically begged to be cut up, sprayed in candy, and tossed under spotlights. But me? I’ve always leaned toward Fords from the same era. They didn’t shout—they whispered. Clean lines, graceful curves, more jet-age sculpture than jukebox.

And maybe no car captured that quiet cool better than Howard Gribble’s ’61 Ford Starliner. I actually wrote about the car back in 2014 when some shitty little print magazine asked me for a feature. Turned it in. Never got paid. Never saw it in print. Typical. But the words stuck with me. So here we are—ten years later—and I figure it’s time to let this thing see daylight.

Back in 1965, Howard Gribble was just a guy in Torrance, California, looking for new transportation. He found it on a used lot on Hawthorne Blvd.—a crisp white Starliner with red guts and a “Police Interceptor” 390 under the hood. Triple deuces, heavy-duty three-speed, stiffer suspension. Factory muscle before the term even had a name. Cost him $700, minus a $300 trade-in on his ’57 Chevy sedan.

He strapped on some used cheater slicks and hit the street like he was gunning for blood. But mechanical mayhem caught up fast: a blown head gasket, a wrecked transmission, a cooked rear end—probably all thanks to the sticky rubber and a heavy foot. It was hot rod heartbreak 101.

By summer, Howard was pulling paychecks from North American Aviation and had a little money to burn. Around the same time, two friends opened a one-car custom shop and offered to help him turn the Starliner into something special. The shop folded in short order, but one of the guys—Carl Darling—stuck around. And that’s where the real story begins.

The match was lit at the Long Beach Arena, where Howard caught sight of Larry Watson’s handiwork—Don Loster’s ’59 Galaxie and Jim Boyd’s ’63. Those cars seared into his brain. The next thing you know, Howard and Carl were in Tijuana getting a full Naugahyde tuck-and-roll job for a hundred bucks flat—seats, doors, headliner, dash. The whole shootin’ match.

The dash didn’t last long. The stitching came loose on the way home and threw a glare across the windshield like a searchlight. They ripped it out, then rolled over to Larry Watson’s shop in Paramount for some green pearl paint. Watson seemed surprised someone actually wanted to buy paint, but he sold them enough to spray the dash. Carl juiced it with extra pearl and it came out slick.

Next came the drop. Carl heated the front coils and brought the nose down. Hydraulics were considered but shelved—too expensive, too mysterious. They had bigger things to focus on. Carl reworked the front end, shaving the inner headlights and molding the outers into the fenders. Then he fabbed up a tube grille, inspired by a local Starliner they’d seen cruising Torrance.

The rear was even wilder. With the original taillights relocated to the front, they had a clean slate. They found a pair of ’57 Ford headlight bezels, matched them with fabricated metal tubes from a shop in Redondo Beach, and mounted the stock taillights 18 inches deep into the tunnels. You could lose an arm in there.

One night, Howard got pulled over. Midnight, red lights, four cops, and a whole lot of flashlights. They thought the car was too low. Turns out, technically it was—the headlights sat below the legal limit—but nobody had a tape measure, so they let him go with a nod and a warning. One cop even took a peek down the taillight tunnels. Luckily, he didn’t ask why they were buried halfway to hell.

When the New Year rolled around, it was time for paint. Carl—sleep-deprived and rattled—rented a compressor and sprayed green metalflake in a garage off 228th Street. Too much pressure, too much flake on the floor, but the car still came out looking like a rolling disco ball. Not perfect. But eye-catching as hell.

They hustled it to the San Bernardino show—wind howling, tumbleweeds the size of Buicks. Howard laid out white rocks for his display and walked away with a participation trophy like every other poor bastard. Didn’t matter. He was hooked.

Then, just like that, it was over. A pickup blew a red and nailed the Starliner in an intersection. Could’ve been fixed, but Howard didn’t have the heart. He was ready for something nastier anyway, and that summer he bought a brand new Plymouth with a 426 Hemi.

He sold the wreck to Carl for $200. Carl salvaged what he could and built a near replica—a new Starliner, pearl green with lace panels and hydraulic lifts. It hit the show circuit and made some noise, but Carl was always chasing the next build. Eventually he moved on—lifted trucks, new ideas.

Carl Darling died in ’76, but not before leaving behind a trail of sharp, strange customs. And Howard? He never forgot the Starliner. Built on borrowed time, sprayed in metalflake, and powered by pure grit. A cruiser with soul. Gangster to the end.