Back home, I cleaned it up and installed a set of white wall tires that I "borrowed" from my buddy Tom's Victorian project! It came out great, and after driving it for a couple of weeks I began having second thoughts about turning it into a late 1950s show custom. It was a beater, my daily driver, and it came handy while I was restoring the house. It looked great with the worn, faded light blue paint, black wheels and white wall tires. I really enjoyed it in this configuration, and the only worry I had was gas money
Haha, thanks for the offer! My plan was actually to bring it over for the second Customs by the Sea show. That was before we decided to go for the 1952 year limit, so now it's staying home
So what about the t-shirt design? Well I gave it many attempts. But all the details gave me a headache, so it's still not done! This is were I left it...I'm not giving up and I have plans for a simpler version
As I mentioned before, the day before I bought the Ranchero, I drove my brother Olav and Brad Masterson to the airport in Oslo. Olav was following his dreams, and he had decided to move to California and enroll at an Auto & Body class at Cerritos College. He was teaching the modern craft at School during the days, while he spent the evenings, nights and weekends with Brad, at the old Barris Kustoms shop, practicing body work like they did back in the good old days. Gas welding, leading, and brazing. Brad learned the craft from old masters such as Bill Hines and George Barris. Now he was passing the torch on to his student Olav. You can read more about Olav's amazing journey abroad on the Kustomrama Lynwood Division Blog: http://kustomrama.com/index.php?title=Kustomrama_Lynwood_Division
After 6 months abroad, Olav returned to Norway in December of 2013 to celebrate Christmas with the family. Olav shared my vision for a Ranchero version of the Maze, so he asked his shop teacher before he left if he could stay a little longer while he was in Norway, to work on the Ranchero. His teacher gave him the thumb up as long as he took many photos and documented everything. He also had to take some tests over the net while he was away. The day Olav arrived we went straight down to my garage to make plans for the build.
The Kvipt family are born and raised up in the high mountains of Telemark, so the next day we took good bye with the Ranchero in Oslo, and went home. There was a lot of Ranchero talk around the table that Christmas, and below is one of the photoshops I made of the car before we returned to Oslo to start the build.
So is Telemark where Telemarketing was born? but wait there's more. Next 10 replies get a free set of steak knives courtesy of Kustomrama
KOOL.....and I'm I the only one that thinks Norway....the pic of the F100....looks a little like the sandy USA ?.....also if you need a nice factory seat for the Ranchero....send me a PM....
Thanks to the Internet, the world has become a lot smaller. While researching the history of the Maze, I ended up on the Facebook profile of founding San Jose Rod & Wheelers member Joe Crisafulli. Joe was a very kind old man, and he mailed me scans of some of old photos he had taken while he was a member of the same club as Jerry back in the 1950s and 1960s. One of the photos Joe sent me contained a snapshot of the Maze. It was a great photo, and it held a new important clue for my research! From the magazines Jerry had sent me, I knew that it was "Babb and Wirth's Body Shop" that had restyled the first mild version of the Maze. What confused me was the display sign in the photo above, according to this photos the scallops were applied by "J&J Auto Painting" of San Jose. I googled the company without having any luck. I knew Joe was active as a custom painter and pinstriper in the 1950s and the 1960s, so I asked him if he knew the company. He sure did, and he could tell me that "J&J Auto Painting" of San Jose was a shortlived company he ran out of his parents garage!
Ding Ding Ding! It felt like I had struck gold again! I immediately asked Joe if he had more photos of the car to share. Unfortunately this was the only photo he could locate of the Maze. I asked Joe if he could tell me more about his custom painting days, and he told that in December of 1956, while working as an apprentice painter at a GMC truck shop, he bought a 1956 Oldsmobile. He was 20 years old at the time, and had saved for a long time just for the down payment. The truck shop let him use the torches at the shop to weld the hole in the hood after he had shaved it. He was not allowed to use the paint booth, so he gave the car a shiny black paint job with gold scallops in the family garage, on a cool summer night in 1957. A photo of Joe's freshly painted Oldsmobile. The garage was a garage with a dirt floor and no doors. Joe had a compressor in the shop that was made out of a refrigerator pump and a hot water heater tank. He did the body work in the garage, but painted elsewhere. Like Tony Alvez' 1950 Cadillac, that he painted on the lube rack in Fred Spitilary's Flying 'A' gas station. Tony won an award at the Oakland Roadster Show with the Cadillac after Joe had painted it. J & J Auto Painting never made it past Joe's dad's garage. Around 1958, Joe started to work for Flyer Tabata at Flyers Body Shop. Joe had worked for Flyer before becoming an apprentice painter at the GMC truck shop. After about a year the shop was closed down, but Flyer told Joe he would call him when he opened up another shop. Late in 1959 Joe restyled and painted his own 1951 Oldsmobile at J & J Auto Painting. A photo of Joe proudly posing next to the '51 Olds.
If it got a nice old white tuck and roll upholstery I'm interested You don't happen to have an old original radio for sale as well?
But wait, there's more! One day, while Joe was working for Flyer, Bill Babb of Wirth's Body Shop stopped by. Babb was manufacturing and selling flexible bondo in addition to running the custom shop. Flyer was a hard Japanese to sell to, so Joe saw Babb a lot. Joe and Babb would bullshit about cars and painting, and one day Babb asked Joe to come over on a weekend to see his shop. Joe remembers that the shop did not look very good, but it was a fun shop, as they were always in a good humor. After visiting the shop, Joe started to paint cars for Wirth's Body Shop. Babb and Wirth did not tell Joe how to do the job, and they liked what he did. Joe got paid when the job was done, so he was satisfied on his side! Here's a photo from Wirth's Body Shop. This photo was published in Trend Book 175 Custom Cars 1959 Annual in a story about how the custom body shops influenced the styling. Here's a photo of Paul Sobeck's 1950 Ford, that Joe painted for Wirth's. Here's an odd job that Joe did for the guys at Wirth's
Just as the research I did on the Maze, this story seems to have a tendency of spinning out in different directions. I still have weekly contact with Joe, and as we started to take parts off the Ranchero in January of 2014 I had many thoughts spinning around in my head. First of all, a 1957 Ranchero is a very good looking car/truck. Some mild modifications, similar to the ones Babb and Wirth performed on the first version of the Maze would make it look really good! I was thinking that maybe we should go for the second version paint job on the first version car instead? That would make it a "safer" build! I am also a fan of the paint job Joe Crisafulli gave it in 1957. So I wasn't a stranger to doing that version instead. I mean, on photos, the beaks over the headlights on the second version looks crazy. It's way over my top, and there aren't many builders out there that would have taken this route in 2014! A couple of garage beers later, I had decided to go all the way! There are so few people building authentic late 1950s styled customs today. Many builds are started, but most people tends to chicken out and take safe routes, giving the car a modern look in the end. We were not going to make that "mistake", so after realizing we would end up building a car I will have major problems ever selling in Norway, we decided to start restyle the driver side taillight and fin!
Here's a fun fact! Below you can see the difference in the size of the fin on a Racnhero and a passenger car!
The second version of the Maze featured 6 inch tunneled taillights, so our first move was to cut out the stock taillight housing. Olav then formed a new taillight ring that he brazed on to a ventilation tube that we found. The ventilation tube was a tad smaller than the taillight lense, so it was a good fit for the build. He then brazed the ring onto the body with a proper distance.
Next task was to extend the fin 4 inches, just like Jerry did on the second version of the Maze. Jerry had provided us with all of his photos of the car. These were printed out, measured and used as guidance trough the build!
Sweet! I've been dreaming of a kustom Ranchero lately. Good for you for picking up this clean old Ranchero! I'll be looking forward to updates!
Olav gas welding the beaks over the headlights. We're pretty satisfied with the shape of the fin! It took a lot of tweaking and head scratching to get here
The beak almost ready to be leaded. At this stage we decided to do our own little twist on the fin. We decided not to fill the area above the tailllight, and instead insert a piece of tunneled expanded metal. The Kustomrama Dream Truck, or the Mazero, is not supposed to be a clone, but a tribute build. That is pretty obvious since we are doing it on a Ranchero We still want to keep most of the modifications as close to the original Maze as possible.
The Jalopy Journal
