Hot Rods How to Traditionally Hot Rod a Four Door Star Chief?

That's the bottom line.

But while I'm at it:
Rocky and I have done a bunch of 55-57 Pontiacs over the years. If we got your car, it'd get cut coils and blocks, the end. It'd be a dedicated beater and would be a riot to bomb around in... If my folks gave it to me in '59, I'd die of embarassment. On the other hand, when the folks gave Rocky their old '56 Olds 4-dr, he cleaned it up and ran cheaters on the back (on steelies) and chromies up front. He's secure enough to drive a nerdmobile like that. Because he's Rocky...

 

greybeard here...used to look at Pontiacs and think how good they'd look with all that chrome gone (a Chevrolet).....TODAY I feel differently.....I love to see a full chromed Pontiac,you just don't see them often, and they do my heart GOOD.....Don't worry about the 4 door thing...A clean mild custom,lowered,WW,and a warmed up mill would give you all the looks and fun your looking for !! GO FOR IT...

 

my dad would be all into a kustom 4 door star chief. my dads first car was a 58 star chief 4 door he bought brand new when he was in high school. when i asked him why did he get a four door since he had a choice. he said the star chief came with a nice big back seat for the ladies. lol

 

The great thing about 50s cars is that they're pretty in-your-face to begin with. A ton of chrome with a touch of jet age on top. If that car were mine I'd focus on restoration more than customizing, but still follow that classic formula......

Hot V8
Cool sounding pipes
Custom wheels

Neat car for sure, looks like a ton of fun waiting to happen

 

LEAVE THE EXTERIOR ALONE, thats saying a mouth-full. you can't buy pantina like that. with some loud pipes and a desent interior. do you realize how many buddies you can take bar hopping. thats a pretty cool canadit for a low bucks cruiser

 

Hey Fadingfastsd, look to that great looking green and silver car for clues. It is really nice looking
. I was in high school a little later ( '61-'64), and those of us that had cars drove what we could afford to buy with proceeds from part time jobs. There were a lot of four doors because they could be bought in better shape than the two doors, and for less money. Others had hand me down, family 4-dr cars given to them when parents bought new ones. We didn't worry about it. We just set out, as finances allowed, to make these cars look and sound different than the Mom and Pop specials they once were.
The car guys in my school all had Almquist, Newhouse, Honest Charley Speed Shop, and J.C. Whitney catalogs for inspiration. We wanted Olds Feista or Dodge Lancer type flipper hubcaps, fender skirts, Lakes pipes, J.C. Whitney roll and pleat seat covers, and of course, duals with glasspacks. Also, a nose and deck job (at least) and a shiney enamel, single or two tone paint job. We also wanted to run lowering blocks on the rear and 14 inch wheels and tires to get the cars lower. Frame dragging was just not practical because of road conditions of the day.
We would work hard to bring back a faded paint job and didn't mind to continue working to keep the shine up. It was a labor of love...we took pride in whatever we drove. Might have had something to do with the girls prefering to ride in the sharp cars too! lol...

 

traditional.... I'm beginning to hate that word.

if you want to be true to 1959 you need to restore it totally stock. probably very few customised 55 Pontiac 4 doors in 59.

it's 2009. do whatever you want. just don't cut the top off. on a car like that less is more. the less you change the more better it will look when you are done. just shiney it up some and maybe lower it with fancy hubcaps

 

Shave the Emblems, lower it, skirts, if you really had balls... make it a 4 door hardtop with rear suicide doors. And a bitchin panel paintjob

 

With the roof and doors being the same as the Chevy, I'd probably do this if I had the car.

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=228873

New 2 door sedan doors are available now if used ones don't come along.

 

That's funny. Sick, but funny.........

 

Evidently my attempt at sarcasm didn't come thru very well via-the computer screen.

I was attempting to poke fun at all the yahoos saying that a 4 door custom is anachronistic. 4 door customs are every bit as traditional, period correct, etc. as the more popular 2 door models. Judging by the responses of some folks, everyone back then drove 2 door hardtops, cause everyone 'knows' a post or 4 dr was a grandma car. Whatever.

The information you seek is in the little books. Good luck with the project, looks/sounds promising.

 

haha sorry gwhite - was at work and the images get blocked for some reason. Didn't see any of the stuff you attached, just read the post and took it out of context.

Some sweet pics - the grill on the hood of that '50 plymouth is sick!

Sorry bud

 

I learned to drive in my Dad's '53 Olds 98 Town Sedan.
It was a big-ass Midnight Blue with a white top beautiful car, for a 4 door.
About the time I got my license He bought a '62 Olds Super 88 4 dr ht and gave me the '53. I cut the coils, painted it flat black, (this was in the '60's) and looked at it picturing me cruising to Harvey's in it, and getting the laughter with the pointing all the way through the lot... I called a junk yard and had it towed away, I didn't even want to drive it around the block because someone might see me in it.
I bought a weight set at JC Penneys with the money from the car and got buffed out and continued to ride my bicycle till I had enough to buy a car I actually wanted.

Keep the nice sedans stock and just drive them, use the cruddy ones for parts cars so they don't go out of $reach$, please.

If you have one already, and it's drive worthy, shorten it about a foot, section it 3" and make a Tri five Tbird size roadster out of it. It can be done! there was an article on that very thing with that Pontiac in an early Hot rod Mechanix magazine

 

Lower it, drive it.

 

Shave the rear door handles.

Clean up the paint and trim.

Lower it.

Make the engine reliable.

Have a blast.

 

like this

 

Personally, I like the patina it has now.....I would stripe it, lower it, powder coat the factory steelies black, moon spider caps/trim rings with some biasply wide whites and drive it and enjoy it!

 

1955-56 Pontiacs are so cool stock they really don’t even need customizing. If you’re into the whole ‘50s thing, they wouldn’t really show up in high school parking lots much back then because they were still new cars and a bit too expensive for kids. That said, traditional customizing techniques developed in the 1950s and -60s lend themselves very well to big four-door sedans like that, which after all are the kind of cars customizers back then were trying to copy. If it were me, I would stick with a mild custom, mainly custom paint and upholstery on a stock body. I would hop up the stock engine, but not change any of the running gear. If I remember right, this has a 287 cubic-inch V8, Pontiac’s first, which later aftermarket Pontiac speed equipment will fit, and a single-coupling Hydramatic, which is heavy but too cool to lose; and, of course, Pontiac/Olds rearends from that time are legendary. Good luck.

 

You gotta take a lot of what you hear here with a grain of salt. Most of the real smartasses are talking out of their rear ends. They only know what they read in a book - most of 'em coming from the SoCal mecca, or from New Jersey.

While it's true that two-door hardtops were everybody's first choice back in the day (my day, incidentally), there were lots of really nice 4-doors cruising around, too.

Most were, as has been pointed out, hand-me-downs from the parents, but with a little bit of low cost attention they were just as cool - especially with guys who had lots of friends.

SanDiegoJoe's version of your car is pretty much what a nice highschool ride would have looked like in my area during the late '50s and early '60s...only with shiny paint.

Honestly, I think it's still a pretty cool car. With glasspacks it would most certainly have been a "front row" car at any drive-in burger joint in America...except, perhaps, in Southern California, the place all the smartasses think is the center of the universe.

Keep it mostly stock, low, sleek and mean-sounding...and enjoy it to the max!

 

I think this is a four door. Just for ideas

 

Please please please, DO NOT do this to your car. Have a little bit of taste...

 

Oh, and put some bullets on the stock hub caps... maybe 4" ones.

- Joe

 

That would be the best thing you could do w/ it in my opinion.If youre on a budget i'd say lower it, bag it if youre not a traditional extremist,or if you plan on driving it everyday. Those Ponchos 53 to 58 are gorgeous, really, no matter how many doors, plus, i think 4 doors HT w/ suicide rears might be even better than a 2 door. Just my 02 eurocents. Best of luck w/ it eitherway bro.

 

Wow,
you guys are awesome!
I didn't think this thread would turn into such a good discussion.
Thanks for all the advice and ideas, I appreciate it.

I really like that photoshopped pic of the Chief, lowered with skirts, it looks perfect!
I may have to go that route, and drive it with the shitty paint and loud pipes for awhile, it would be fun for sure.

Thanks again for the ideas!

 

+1 I dig it as is!

 

Can't wait to see it Man.

 

Hey man, screw the nay-sayers.

You have a fine ol' ride there. I'd go with whatever your dream/vision is for the car.

The idea that a four door is only good for a parts car, or something to nurse along until you can get a "real" car is, IMHO, complete elitist bullshit!

The fact that a four door won't have the resale value of some other body styles has some actual merit, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna select my cars (or motorcycles) based on what the next owner's gonna like! Never have, never will. I've also never had a problem moving any of my stuff at a decent profit. Build it tasteful, build it right, and someone will be all over it when you're ready to move on.

I definitely would not try to make it a faux 2-door, there ain't a damn thing that car or the owner needs to feel apologetic about. In fact, (although I have a personal aversion to writing on a car), in this case I might even do a tasteful graphic on the trunk or behind the front wheel wells to the effect:
2 door pilots can
go piss up a rope !

 

I usually can't sell myself on a four door anything. Having said that... I really like this car. If it was mine I'd leave the finish, stripe it and doll the wheels & tires up and roll it without apology. Or... I'd paint it back the same color scheme but shave the door handles. I'd also tinker with the idea of tinting the windows and blacking out the window frames so from the profile it would look like a continuous window. I can't tell from the pic's if it will work on this car but it looks killer when done right.

Any other pic's??

 

I do have tons more pictures, you can see them here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fadingfastsd

 

If a kid was driving your car in 1959, it was his parents' car. Period.

So there's no way to do a traditional '59 Pontiac hot rod.

However, if you like it, make it a cool 2009 hot rod. Clean it up, repaint it in good colors, lower it, and put a big chugger in it. Don't try to make it something that it's not.