Features Too much of a good thing? Custom Accessories.

Jive-Bomber submitted a new blog post:

Too much of a good thing? Custom Accessories.

Continue reading the Original Blog Post

 

More is not always better

 

Continental kits.

yuk.

 

Bubble skirts.

yuk.

 

Curb feelers.

yuk.

 

Anything fake or without purpose, such as dummy spots & antennas. If it's not real, don't mess with it...

 

I like a decked-out car with all the goop on it as much as a smoothed off lead sled, as long as the pieces are period. I think there was a lot more accessorized customs around here (Wisconsin) in the day than there were shaved ones.

I only dislike them when the pieces added on are too new. High back bucket seats, tilt columns, exposed stereo heads and 6x9 speakers in the package tray, modern rims, musclecar stuff on 50's cars, ect.

 

When I was a kid there was an old fellow with a '52 Chevy 2 dr. Sedan that I would see occasionally on the road. This gentleman had put every kind of "clearance" type light he could find on almost every surface of the car. Nothing more, no skirts, no continental kit, just lights everywhere, at night it looked like a Christmas tree going down the road. I honestly don't know how that 6 volt system kept up with them. I guess this would qualify as the add-on that was added on too much.

 

When I was in HS a black kid knew we were into cars and kept telling us about his Dad's custom Chevy. One day his Pop picked him up and we got to see it.

It was a 50-ish Chevy fastback and was painted green. They had made their own fender skirts out of corrugated sheet metal like used for roofing, the continental kit was supposed to mimic one of the ones on a Lincoln Continental, on the trunk lid, but they had used a round washing machine lid, painted brown to match the skirts. It had the obligatory dual rear antennas with foxtails, and every clearance light sold by Pep Boys ! It did have nice flipper hubcaps though.

Don

 

I remember a elderly white headed gentleman driving a 4 door 57 Chevy around town that had every bolt on accessory that you can imagine from J.C.Whitney catalog.

Today when someone mentions a clown car I get a mental image of this car. HRP

 

Mud flaps, cheapie hubcaps, clearance lights and fender skirts were the big sellers at the Western Auto store when I was growing up in the '50s in Maine. The cars rusted out so fast it didn't make sense to make any permanent styling changes, so bolt-on stuff was the next best thing for "hip" car guys of all ages. As a boy we'd find 'em on the side of the road - usually still attached to the part of the car they'd been bolted to...after it had rusted out and fallen off the car itself.

 

In the South in the 50's a lot of guys would put these small two tone round cushions in each corner of the package tray that matched the color of their car. If you had a two tone black and white '56 Ford you would have these black and white cushions in the back window. I say this not because they were "over-done" add-ons but that they were pretty cool to this youngster. I have no idea where they came from and it seemed to be a relatively short-lived trend. Of course you had to have the obligatory matching fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror, but when you went as far as the little pom-pons hanging around the perimeter of the headliner, you had gone too far.

 

Geez HRP, guy wasn't from PA was he? Few years ago a local '57 Chevy collector here in NH bought a PA car, '57 Chev four door, factory fuel injection that had every item I remember from JC Whitney catalog in my youth, dual antennas, kleenex dispenser, 45 record player, skirts, curb feelers, necker knob, you name it. Yeah it was a fuelie with build sheet but that was all it had going for it.

 

I'll get lit on fire for this....but I've never been a fan of spotlights, fake or real. In my eyes they only work on a 40's custom, even then that's a stretch for me. Most of the time they break up the profile of a car for me. And I have yet to see anybody use a real set of spotlights, so I often wonder why people choose to add them to their car. I get that they are a traditional accessory, but I personally never liked them.

 

I agree with Y-block. smooth out a car with thousands of hours of custom bodywork and bolt chrome blobs to the windshield posts. it is even worse when the mount them somewhere stupid like the hood.

 

I don't know what happen to the guy or the car,this was back in the mid 70's so it could have ended up in PA,stranger things have happened. HRP

 

All those mickey mouse accessories are worth a pretty penny today. I like how the bomb crowd use them on their cars.

 

I agree that spot lights never did much for me real or otherwise. I also am not a fan of lakes pipes. Too many times they just do nothing for the lines of the car. Pin stripe and flame stickers have always been another no-no for me. Oh, and that '53 Studebaker with the "scotch plaid" is really too much....and not in a good way.

 

I'd really like some saucy polka-dot decals....

 

How 'bout these?

 

clean cut creations, now thats what I'm talking about. I've always been partial to a lighted Swan Hood Ornament, fake screw on Buick portholes, red jeweled mud flaps, dingle berries around the windows, bug deflectors, numerous antenna's, curb feelers, lake pipes that are not hooked up, venetian blind's in the rear window, skirts, coon tails, and a continental wheel kit with Little Eva on it.

 

When I was in High School there was a guy who would buy $100 throw away cars in his neighborhood that didn't run. He would drag them to shop class get them on the road and the first custom touch was always taking plastic basketball trophies and bolting them to the hood. At the time it was pretty funny watching these Buick's and Oldsmobiles cruise the lot with an old trophy hood ornament. He'd just church'd them up a bit to sell and fund his next beater....pretty savvy in hindsight.


Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!

 

I like those speakers... I would put a set in my car... Would look great with a record player...

 

Our truck clubs annual show had a BOB (bolt on b***s***) award for a few years. Sometimes judging was tough. Others not so much. If there's a theme, ok. When the BOB detracts from your ride then its got to go.

 

not a visual add on, but i hate any horn that does something other than beep.

 

Visors look like crap on anything other than Peterbilts or KWs.

 

Throw all that goofy shit in the trash.

 

Two words... "Dingle-Balls"!

 

Best example I ever saw was the Corvair driven by Ed Choclokian(sp?) when we was an outside salesman for CalCustom. Had everything they made. It was a rolling salesman's sample.