Customs Change for the sake of change?

So my friends and I are sitting watching the awards at the 1990 Lead sled Spectacular in Hamilton Ohio, and Harry Bradley is giving his speach, when all of a sudden, all I here is Harry's voice nothing else...and his speach goes like this" customizing a car should be to improve the OVERALL look of the car, not just changing things for the sake of change, the profile of the car should be seen as a whole, and not piece by piece, when you look at a custom it should flow and your eyes should be able to follow the profile with out interuption.
He goes on to say that customs were built to help the original styling of the car, to improve what the factory already had started, to make the car personal and look expensive and luxurious, when building a custom look at the car from a far and study the overall profile, not just each piece, a custom should be pleasing to the eye, and make you look at it" 19 years later I still remember this like it was yesterday.

All to often I see guys that build customs with out looking at the whole car, they change the taillights, and chop the hell out of the roof, and crazy grills and bumpers just to change things not to improve the overall look of the car. I am not trying to cause a shit storm, I was at my shop and pushed out my chopped 51 I am building, and stood back 50 feet, my neighbor asked what the hell I was doing, I told him I was looking at the profile and to see if it flows, he thought I was crazy.

What are you thoughts on this, have we lost touch of what a custom should be? or are they built for shock value now?

John

 

You see articles that say things like 400 body mods made, you can't even tell they've been done! ummm so what's the point if you can't tell? Bill Burnham once asked why anyone would add spotlights where they'd be the 1st thing to go if OEM.

 

I totally agree with Harry. I'm tired of cartoon cars and such.

 

Hey John,

Alota the kustoms I see built today ain't built by kustom guys! I see "clownmobiles" with butchered chops and "attention -whore" graphics, but not much that looks as if it will stand the test of time! As a kid I remember goin to the old Ed Roth shows at the old Long Beach Auditorium when the Kustom was in its' downhill swing. The Muscle Car and later Van crowd was commin on big time, and what few kustoms were around were gettin weird(kinda like the shit we're seein' now) if one tail lamp was cool why not five?
The paint jobs had started down that bad "Van airbrush, bad fishscale -moonscape crap, a look I made good money at fuckin up brand new vans in the 70s doin'" All of this was well before the VW & Mini-Truck crowd and later Jap Car croud really shit in the punch bowl! At that time I remember thinkin' if this is what kustoms have come to, maybe I'ts best they now belong to history.
Change ain't always/often a good thing! I love seein' MBA toatin' Yuppie's faces on milk cartons!

Swankey Devils C.C.

 

"Customizing" today is simple:
Vent Visors and a bug deflector.
If your REALLY cool you add some smoked headlite and taillite covers as well.

Oh! And underglows.....

Add a Fartcan and your a Street racer/Tuner! LoL

Whats this...."FLOW"??????

 

one of the worst recent trends is to over chop and slam the car to the pavement.

change for the sake of change makes me thing of Bailons scoopy 58 Impala, scoops and crap all over, guess you got points for every scoop, style counted for nothing.

 

Harry sounds dead on. Like the huge girl trying to wear spandex, just because they make it, doesn't mean it's for you.

 

"Its finished, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away".

 

this is the car that won that year, seems to flow pretty well!

 

I always thought what Harry was talking about was common knowledge...but it isn't.

-Abone.

 

common sense is not so common anymore!!!!

 

I talk to so many people, who say the first thing they are gone do is chop it.....
I hate to hear that. Most people hack it out and end up with a poor looking car that is uncomortable to drive. Then they butcher up some suicide doors for no reason either...

The over all look is so important.

 

thank Ol Skool Rodz

 

I think a lot of these folks are minitruck & "tuner" car burnouts lookin' for something else to fuck up.

It's a lemming thing!

 

any more pics???

 

Kind of on/ot , but I always wondered what some of these people were thinking when they would but that pepboys chrome edging on everybody gap. Emphasizing shit the designers wish they could eliminate if they had their way.

 

this is why i love Collectible Automobile magazine; when they do an in-depth article on a car, they show as many of the concept drawings as they can manage. sometimes they scream "WTF?" and sometimes they whisper "damn thats coooool".... and then the engineers had to make the IDEA actually WORK as component parts! yikes. i wonder how many times they had to make tooling changes to stamp out '59 chevy side panels?

and "flow" is a matter of perception, like looking at art. i waste more time staring at my Falcon trying to "see" what i can make better or how than i spend actually doing anything unless i really get disciplined about it.
"lower it!" or "chop it!" or "slam it!" (WTF?) not going to happen.... not that i don't have an appreciation for that kind of stuff, it's not how i see the car.

 

Whats the point??? That is the piont. You want to look at a Kustom and wonder whats been altered. The best compliment you could give a Kustom car is 'Wow I couldn't even tell you changed that".
There will always be the obvious stuff but when I'm done I want people to walk away wonderin , "was it like that before or did he change that"? Thats the whole point.

 

That sums it up very well.

 

To me what is challenging is to build a car that still looks cool 20 years from now. Trends are always changing and the crowd soon follows along, but the original lines of the car are often what attracted us to a particular design to begin with. Very often subtle changes add tremendous class to an otherwise popular but common car.

We all have different tastes and we all have walked up to a car that makes you feel like "holy chicken tits...this car is perfectly done", and some fool to your right is shaking his head saying "it looks like a puddle of monkey poo".

So yeah! stand back several times a day and look at the profile. Drinks some beer and look at the profile. It's not going to be easy so why do it wrong?

 

The trend I've seen the last few years, especially with the younger guys new to customizing an old car is they want radical more then good looks. A 2 1/2 to 3 inch chop might really improve what the factory did but they ask for 6 to 7 inches, gotta be radical no matter how it looks. And as someone said, I think we can thank Old School Rodz and other publications for it, these young guys read this sh** and think that's how it done, and worse, they think that's how it was "back in the day". No different then them reading in those same mags about r** r*** and believing thats how hot rods use to be.
I've turned down a lot of jobs where someone is just thinking "radical"

 

I agree, I think it's finally gotten to the point where some cars are too low (Yup, I said it!) and the lids are too chopped. Too many squashed tops!

We live in a world where "Xtreme" is valued more than good old subtle taste...unfortunately.

 

Actualy change for the sake of change goes back to the '60s show circuit. There was a point where cars got scored more on the number of modifications they had, even if the result looked like ass, rather than if the changes made the car look good. The result? A lot of really forgettable customs with a bright spot here and there.

Unfortunately that tastelessness has never completely gone away - I think some of the more ridiculous rat rods are just an extension of the same trend.

I love customs and I like a lot of the more radical cars but it's easy to pick off the bits and pieces that don't flow. Probably 10+ years of messing with the old AMT 3-in-1 kits helped me, no matter who designed the custom pieces or what car the custom version is based on, those all flow pretty well from front to back. Best of all, they did it in multiple versions. Some cars don't need a lot to clean them up, but you can go all out and if you do it right they look great.

 

Im new here... and 40 yep! Starting late. From the time I was a kid it has been my <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
Dream to own an old hot rod, to be able to drive it, show it take the kids out in. I look a around the HAMB all the time at all the great stuff here. And there are many cars that are amazing and some that look the same and many that do not. I&#8217;m no customized/ fabricator....want to be but again starting late. I&#8217;m trying to make something with my car that looks cool and is not expensive to do. Like my dad would have had to do growing up in the 50. He tells me stories of this 50 merc he had when he just got in the service, which him and a buddy painted black with a mop. And you know he loved that car. Drove the hell out of it, but many would have given him crap for painting his car that way. But he was young and the Air Force didn&#8217;t pay much. But I look up to that,( and my favorite story) because he used means that were there.<o></o>
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I&#8217;m just trying to do the same. I wish I could afford to build a car like the one that car in the picture, but brother in these times it&#8217;s hard to. But dose that mean I can be apart of the hobby. Did the leadgens start of doing changes just to change? Or did they do what they could afford to personalize there rides? I just changed the grill on my 51 and I came here to ask for advice and opinions. And thank you to the ones who gave them. Good or bad. I was thankful for all of them. And I did change just to change, to make it personalized&#8230; (Yeah the one with the silly knobs) but it&#8217;s all I can afford right now. I wish I could afford lots of chrome teeth but dam! They are a lot of money. And I haven&#8217;t come across ones on the cheep yet. But im still in the hunt...that is the fun part. <o></o>
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I agree allot of guys are going for shock factor but many are just trying to build a low budget ride or just using what is available to them.<o></o>
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IM just a guy with an old car that wants to hang out you guys. And be around you guys that can afford or have the means to build these custom cars. Maybe I can learn something or meet someone cool&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;Johnny<o></o>
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The old adage "less is more" applies here. I've never understood, dummy spots, lakes pipes (kick stands), or any other Pep Boys crap that disturbs the flow. The mini-truck laying frame, can't be low enough craze is just plain stupid & ugly. I could go on, but I'm just preaching to the choir.

 

John, I think that is why so many of us are in love with your cars. When you do one and park it next to a restored stocker or other custom of the same vintage the other car often looks over done and often a bit gaudy.

I've argued with one of my friends to no end that if a vehicle is chopped it doesn't need to be "over chopped" I went 4 inches on my truck and he went 5 on his and side by side his looks squashed to me.

I've always felt that a lot of the modifications for modifications sake were due to the judging system of ISCA shows in the 60's and maybe even now. So many points for each modification be they good or bad. A lot of show winners in that era won simply because they added up points on the tally sheet for modifications. Fins, check 10 points, scoops, check 10 points, chopped, check, 15 points an so on.

The list of mods intended for the 48 is long but each is intended to flow into the other and blend into the whole package. It will still fully look like what it is with no guessing, just somewhat longer and a lot lower. Not quite traditional by some folks standards but honoring the traditional theme in the overall picture.

I'll agree that way too many people and especially those transitioning from another vehicular hobby form tend to grab onto the fad of the moment and run with it. I'm afraid that will always be the case though. It's hard to convince a former H.O.G. member that tacking on every piece of chrome that he finds in a blister pack at the store is not "customizing".

So, It's time to roll the projects out of the garage and stand way back and look at them from all angles and see how they are shaping up.
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I agree totally. There have been many cars that I have looked at 4 and 5 times and still find things that have been changed just enough to make you think twice.

I have a friend that built a '34 Ford pu that watched the judges at a car show completely missed most of the mods on his truck until he casually pointed them out to them.

Sometimes sudlety(sp) and flow make all the difference in the world.


Larry

 

For those who have seen the newest (December) R & C; too bad Roger O'Dell didn't hear the Bradley speech before he started on his '36 Ford roadster. Seldom, if ever, have I seen so much craftsmanship and (obviously) money combined to result in such an ill proportioned, ugly car. Look at the side(profile) shot: nose too far forward and too vertical, extended wheelbase wasted by moving the cowl forward, etc., etc.

 

It's the little things. Its the subtle changes that make you wonder what was changed. When you look at a car and can't quite tell if that was stock or had been modified. When the car flows, and works. Not gaudy or over done, not too low, not too wild.

That's the car I like to look at.

 

Magazines can sell shock..they can sell radical...they have a tougher time showing taste or flow..perhaps it doesn't sell rags fast enough or is more difficult to photograph.
If some folks emulate the shock they buy in magazines..then even more radical seems to be their path..
Taste and flow can't be promoted as "lifestyle"..radical and shock is.. Get the herd to buy into "lifestyle" and you sell all manner of grab..trinkets..and enui..

Selling crap is what magazine do..buy into it..and grab the sawzall..break out the welder..
..even if a talented technician..taste and flow is artistic..not just mechaical technician...art.

Taste and flow is talent..radical and shock is a sawzall..and welder...sometimes..rarely...they intersect..