I just saw George Barris

Ehhh! What do I know I'm just a dumb fuck!

 

George Barris is the King of the customizers!! All you critics need to do is check out the man's track record.

 

Like that "shark" thing a few years ago, I would bet money on someone else built this car and he's just "promoting" it.

In any event George is a nice guy. We're just haivng alittle "fun" with the poster of this thread......or at least I was.

 

I saw him a few years back at Paso in a candy red jag that he displayed at the show, how kustom is that? Back in the day he said he and his brother would buy brand new cars and kustomize them. So why not do it today that not everything is traditional, even though I think that it is because that is where my heart lies. Rags

 

timebomb, great car. thats what a custom car should be. there are alot of great cars on this board. i've met george barris more than once. he's an asshole. that dosn't erase his place in custom car history. barris is largely responsible for some of the greatest customs in history.

sam barris, wow, absolute metal master. to produce the work he did with the tools and technology he had available is absolutely amazing, but ,he worked for george who did all of the design work and some of the metal work. sam is one guy i'd give anything to meet.

george learned design and metal work from harry westerguard. the man new and worked for westerguard! damn!

george barris is one of the greatest self-promoters ever, thats for sure. why? i would have to guess that it's because he wanted to build custom cars for a living. the bastard ,huh? at the same time he was also promoting custom cars and hot rods. without his self-promoting where would we be now? some of the greatest customs in history may have never seen the light of day.

some of the greatest customizers in history worked for or started at "barris' kustom city". where would some of them be with out barris? would we have ever heard of them? would they have gotten build some of the cars we all love?

i don't look at george barris through rose colored glasses. he's not even my favorite customizer. but, george barris is the" king of kustomizers" for many different reasons. i think most of the people that post all this negative shit in these many "lets kick george in nuts again" posts have no idea what he's accomplished other than the little bit they've learned on the hamb.


"SAM and george are are still looked up to by the hardcore custom people" well, i can't argue with that.

 

Did George invent the perm?

 

50,

I think it depends on each person's own viewpoint. I've heard some guys say that they don't care WHAT kind of personality problems a person has, so long as they've done something of note, or have a particular talent.

I wholeheartedly agree with most everything you wrote. George IS talented in his own right, possibly more so as a designer/concept originator; he learned from some great names; & he "brought up" some more guys who have gone on to build nice cars in their own right.

He builds things nowadays that don't really thrill me...but, things change. Maybe fifty years from now, that Barris Mustang will be considered a true work of art. I sure don't know. I do know that things we took for granted in my childhood are prized as "classics" in 2007. Wish I'd kept a few of them.

I have no problem with his self-promotion of his own work...it was certainly necessary at the beginning, & probably so (to an extent)even now.

What I do object to, & what has taken a lot of the gloss off his image (for me personally), are two things: one, he seems to take credit, either directly, or by letting people assume without correcting or clarifying, for work/cars that others have done. He's certainly not the only one; lots of "buyers" have claimed they did the work. However, it seems more shameful in his case- he of all people should know better; & his achievements HAVE been good enough that he doeesn't need to do that.

Two...the recent examples of his work that I've seen (maybe I'm wrong) seem to me to be much more "bolt-on" than true custom work, in the tradition of radical bodywork, and/or using parts integrated from other cars or non-automotive applications.

More than anything else, I guess, I feel like I'm watching a once great artist who has fallen into the trap of believing the hype; continues to add to it; & is content to coast on it. I would much rather have seen him retire & get out of the game years ago. More than anything else, it saddens me.

My $.02, & probably worth less.

 

homespun, i agree with your observations. his credit taking makes no since to me either. his portfolio of work is really second to none. so why he wants to try to add someone else's crap is beyond me. in the early days when "kustom city" was still getting rolling good only cars that came from the barris shop got the fender emblem. later he started plastering them on anything that had any minor custom work at all. he would actually walk down the street and put it on anything that he thought looked good. i guess he figures "well if it worked then...."


the new stuff. it's crap. he should quit. although in reality he's just doing what he did then. when they built the hirohata it wasn't traditional it was current trend. same as now.

this barris bashing is really common here on the hamb. it's a "fun" thing to do for some reason. it's the bandwagon mentality. people are not smart enough or too lazy to research and form there own opinion. lets just go with the flow so everyone thinks i'm cool too. fuck that, form your own opinion good or bad.

this board, of all places, should give the utmost respect to george barris. even if you don't like his work new or old. the man was a major player in the world we all emulate.

i can't help but question someone that bashes a man like barris. whats the motivation? they can't be a true kustom enthusiast. but, must be a "lifestyler" or "rat rodder". a "johnny come lately" do what everyone else is doing kinda person, because you damn sure don't know anything about george barris.

george barris is an old man. sometime in the near future he won't be with us any longer. then there will be 50 page threads on here about what great human being he was and his contribution to our hobby/lifestyle. then i guess, he'll finally get the respect he deserves, like sam does.

 

alright, that car has to be a joke, and george barris must have a stunt double. i never thought he would drive something like that.


But we all have owned at least one car that NOBODY likes!

 

well said,,,,i also am sick of all the george bashing that goes on,,,,
id LOVE to see some of the cars the CRITICS have built,,,

 

You may be thinking of SAM Barris.

 

J Barret,
That Mustang isn't as bad as some of the shit he drives around here.

 

I know some people love George Barris, and some people hate him. Doesn't matter to me, he has built some of the best customs on the planet. He's also built some ugly shit! Either way, he is in fact still the King, and nobody can take that away from him.

George and Sam both have more skill and talent than a lot of us. Maybe he's tapping into the tuner market now with that Mustang. It is ugly as hell, but something has to pay the bills. He showed another car on a TV show a while back, I think it was a new GTO maybe that he turned into a roadster. It was also ugly as shit, but someone out there loves it...and I'm sure he could sell thousands of them to the people who LOVE those new GTO's.

We all have things we love to do, but we also have things we HAVE to do to pay the bills. I'd love to sit on my ass all day long, wake up when I want to, and work on cars or watch TV all day. In reality, I'm a Pipefitter. Its not my dream job, but it does a real good job paying the bills and keeping my house and giving me spending money for my hobbies. This is life.

Ya never know, it might make him puke to make a car like that, but he'd never say it...because there is a HUGE market out there for ugly, plastic, bolt together tuner cars like that.

I will say this though, I'd rather see him drive that on the highway with that traffic than, say, the Hirohata Merc. Because if that Mustang got smashed, nobody would give a shit...but we'd all lose sleep if a full custom Merc got totalled!

That's my .02 and I want change back.