History Larry Watson's Personal Photo Collection

What a great start to the day. Thanks Rik!
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I'd forgotten about the white fenderwell trend. I got in on the tail end of that.

 

Fantastic pics Rik! Thanks for all the postings.

 

Super art of painting,sure is great idea maker for any one wishing to paint there car much better then other wise.

 

Damn Rik! Again! What a great shot of a great looking car. I'm in love. Again.

 

my mom worked at that "peanut house" when she was young and was good friends with Bill decarr (ortega)

 

thanks for the update Rik! Keep em coming!

 

Thanks Dave (Rot 'n Kustom)! (Wish I had taken more pictures when I was a kid)...

-Dave

 

surely there must more pictures to share rik! please!

 

Here are a couple more pics of that -51 Chev, here with Raders in the rear & no caps up front. Personally I liked it better with the 55-56 dog dishes... Thanks again Rik for sharing the Watson pics! Please keep going.

 

Cool! I love the expanded metal insert in front of the rad.

 

is Bill Decarr still alive?

 

Yes

 

Not all the cars where lowered in the late 1950/early 1960's. This 1952 Chevy sitting on chrome reverse wheels looks to be stock height on the front but raised at the back for this almost street race look. Larry Watson painted the stock body in a really great looking banana peal pearl yellow. I'm not sure if the yellow fog in the sky is just aging of the photo, a "local" forrest fire, or fog...








Another really great samples of Larry Watsons perfect feel for colors is this 1955 Ford for Larry Quatrone’s. The car used to belong to Bill Burnett who had Ed Schelhaas do the body work. This included the installation of the 1954 Chevy grille with extra teeth and 1956 Packard taillights as most obvious changes. But Ed also shaved the body emblems and the door handles. The Ford headlights where molded to the front fenders for a smooth look. Then the car was painted bronze with a set of Dean Jeffries gold scallops with white pin striping. This is how the car was featured in the September issue of Custom Cars magazine. That same year Bill sold the car to Larry Quatrone who enjoyed it as it was for a couple of years. Then in 1960 he took the car - after it got damaged a bit in a small mishap at the stop lights - to Larry Watson for a redo. The body damage was fixed and Larry painted the car against the owners advise in a wonderful candy root beer with a perl lime top. An unique color combination which I think looks really well with the car. The car sits just perfect with the right white wall hubcaps combination an no skirts for the theme perfectly. The exterior is very clean with no pin striping glittering the subtile body work and perfect paint. But this photo shows the heavy pin striped dash inside, which was a left over from the time that Bill Burnett still owned the car, and was done by Dean Jeffries.








Typical mid 1960's paint job from Larry Watson. Simple two tone on this mostly stock 1957 Chevy. Larry painted the car in a brilliant candy orange with a pearl golden peach on the top. By this time Larry had found out he could make much more money when he did more simple paint jobs than the wild panel, fade, flame and special effects paint jobs he did in the late 1950's and early 1960's. For the new style he was able to get the car done so much quicker. Larry and his team where now able to turn out so many more cars from their shop. And the Customers where just as happy. Even though the outside of the unidentified 1957 Chevy is stock it looks like it has a pretty wild all custom interior.








Great snapshot of Larry Watson's 1957 Cadillac Brougham showing the very nice interior. Larry send out everything that was plated on the car to have it re-plated including the interior door panels which came chrome plated from the factory. Central Plating in Los Angeles was the only place where they could do the plating of the aluminum and pot metal. Look at those wild chrome plated interior door panes on the passenger side. The rest of the interior was upholstered in white pearl vinyl Tuck & Roll by none other than Eddie Martinez. And he did an excellent job on this car. Larry once mentioned that this was Eddie's first pearl white vinyl interior he did. The floors and most of the trunk were covered with pink fur for carpeting. This photo shows the car in its second version with the chrome tape over silver paint in the cove on the lower body. This version also had a silver painted dash, while the original version was white with raspberry fogged in.







Late afternoon photo of this unidentified 1957 Chevy at the Larry Watson Rosecrans Blvd shop in 1959. Larry painted this mildly customized 1957 Chevy Sedan in pearl white and added panels to outline the character lines of the Chevy and added the panels in pearl light blue and fogged them in with candy blue. This created a really wild effect which must have turned a lot of heads at shows and on the road. Before Larry applied the paint the car was shaved a bit, hood and trunk and the aluminum panel was removed from the rear quarters. The car had wide white walls with Custom three bar spinners and full lake pipes, dummy spotlights and lowered stance. On the left we can see the Candy green and gold 1958 Chevy from Dennis Morgan. The low setting sun gives some more magic to this great photo.

 

This collection is awsome. Does anyone know of or have any photos of any of these cars (and Larry's paint) still around today or are they all long gone? It would be great to see some survivors, as this is art and art should be preserved!

 

Man! That is one sweet Crown Vic.!
As always, thanks for posting up these great pics. and keeping the Legend alive Rik.

 

Love those Crown Vickys. Amazing that they were just around a while and few other manufacturers copied that top and they disappeared. That is really a cool custom and if it was around Detroit in the day, it would have had bubble skirts by Jimmy Jones. Looks like Sierra Gold but a little darker. GM popular color. Can't place the top color, probably custom mixed.

 

Wish I coulda' seen Larry's Caddy in person.

The 57 sedan gets it for me. It's so classy-cool.

 

Favorite thread on the hamb.

 

Thanks Rik

 

Thanks for all the work on this Rik.

Any new pics to share?

 

Snapshot from the Larry Watson Photo Collection showing the Fred LeFevre’s 1959 Chevy El Camino in front of Bill DeCarr old shop. Later in its life Larry would paint this car in one of his famous outline paint jobs that to me really show how great Larry was with color and styling. But in this photo the car's body is still in its factory “Roman” red with primer spotted in. Bill had just finished the first part of the customizing shaving the door handles and trim, reshaping the taillights/rear fenders and modifying the grille eye brows. The car has already been dressed up with Dummy spotlights and a tube grille. Fred would drive the car like this for some time, until he had some more cash to take it one step further.








Another photo of Fred LeFevre’s 1959 Chevy El Camino.. unfortunately a very blurry one, but this is all there is left of this version of the car.
In late 1959 Fred took the car back to Bill DeCarr for the next stage of his dream custom. This time Bill would fill in the openings on the front of the hood and upper grille bar - the “eye brows” and extend the hood all the way down to the grille opening. The removal of the eye brows - when done right - is always an instant improved look of the front on a 1959 Chevy. And to make it the front even better it was decided to use a 1960 Mercury grille in the modified grille opening. The Mercury grille was brand new in late 1959 when Bill installed it.
Bill used round rod to extend the head and taillight openings. The car was lowered the car by removing material from the coils until it sat closer to the ground, nice and near level. The rear portions of the exhaust pipes was removed, and replace with chrome plated Bellflower pipes which move outboard just behind the rear tires and gives extra optical length to the car. After Bill was all done with his work the car went to Larry Watsen who painted it in an incredible pale pearl lemon yellow. In this snapshot the car was put back together and the drivers side headlights where not yet installed.






The next photo of Fred LeFevre's incredible 1959 El Camino from the Larry Watson Collection shows the car in the next stage. In early 1960 Fred wanted something new for his Chevy again. So he drove the car to Larry Watsons Rosecrans Ave shop to have him add some outlines in candy dark lime green. I think that the outlines Larry did on this car are amongst the best he ever did. He gave the car a lot more visual length and highlighted all the wonderful body contours with just paint. The green around the side trim with the white painted centre works extremely well, as are the very subtile outlines around the wheel openings following the body contours. The roof of the car was done in a reverse way with the main portion in candy lime green and the outline in pale pearl yellow. By now Fred also had installed a set of 1959 Dodge Lancer hubcaps on medium wide whites. I think this version is the best version of the car. Clean, simple, and very effective. It was photographed like this for Custom Cars magazine, and appeared on the cover of the June 1960 issue and one photo inside the July 1960 issue of the magazine. The magazine cover color shows a much more orange yellow paint on the car. But that must have to be because of the way they did the color reproductions back then. None of the colors came out really accurate in the magazines.







This really nice 3/4 rear view shoos that the back of this car is as interesting as the front end.
Bill deCarr had shaved the emblem of the tailgate and used round rod to reshape the stock Chevy taillight opening. He cut perforated chrome plated sheet metal to shape and mounted twin 1959 Cadillac taillights on them. This was 1960 when this was done, and back then the 1959 Cadillac taillight was not over used as it might look today. The four lights look perfect on this car. A license plate surround was molded into the tailgate. This view also shows the cleaned up and painted body color cargo area really well. The brilliant pearl lemon looks so bright that you need sunglasses to look inside on a bright sunny day. Larry's out lines in green accentuate all the body lines of the Chevy really well. The small dip below the C-Pillar breaks up the long body lines just a little bit. The subtile reversed treatments on the roof and pillars work like an visual chopped top. And gives accent to the stainless. I think that there have been multiple El Camino's with similar paint job all inspired on this version of the Larry Watson paint job.








Here is another view of Fred LeFevres's El Camino. This time a nice side shot from the Larry Watson Collection. It shows the perfect Californian forward angle which looks absolutely dynamite with this car. This photo also shows a the 1959 Cadillac taillights a bit...







The Custom Car annual of 1961 had a full page on Fred's 1959 El Camino in the best version of this car, lemon pearl and dark lime green outlines. But by the time the annual was printed and in the book stored Fred had actually sold the car to his brother Ron. And the car did not even looked the same anymore.
Ron decided it was time for another update for a new car show season. So he brought it back to Larry watson for some more of his cleaver painting. The rage then was paneling. Ron wanted Larry to add panels to his car, so Larry masked of the panels on the large positions of the pearl lemon body panels and covered them with pearl white followed by figging in a darker green color. And even though Larry did a great job on the panels to make them look as good as possible with the rest of the paint and body work. I think the magic on this car is now lost. The photos in Larry's Personal Collection of this version are the last we have of it. I have not been able to find any information about the car after this version, and any knowledge if the car is still around today or not.










Front 3/4 view of Fred LeFevre's 1959 Chevy El Camino, now owned by his brother Ron. This photo from the Larry Watson Collection was just ike the others I showed photographed at the Larry Watson 9012 Rosecrans blvd. shop in Bellflower. This view of the car sure shows the craftsmanship Larry had to create these panels on an already outlined car. And still make them look really good, like they have always where meant this way. Still I feel the white and dark green class a bit with the lemon pearl yellow and dark lime green of the earlier version. The Peanut House in the background the next door building and was used as a bar. It was called Peanut House because they served a big bowl of Peanuts with the order and the floor was covered with peanut shells.

 

that elky is wild!

 

Very interesting to see the evolution of that El Camino! Thanks for posting, Rik.

Gotta agree that the first yellow/green version is the best, though I like the white bed cover and the bullets that were added to the center of the Lancers for the paneled version.

 

I agree that the outlined version looks best. Thank for posting the progress on this great looking car.

 

Who wouldn't like to own that El Camino. very nice!

 

Rick, Thanks again for posting Larry’s’ pictures. I know the day will come when you say this is the last pic you have to post. That will be a sad day.

Tom

 

I'm not crazy about the tail lights, but the rest of that El Camino is superb.
Beautiful machine.