Peel Out!

Recipe

 

 

Spots

Back when I got into customs, all those classic cars that inspired me had them: Spotlights. Nowadays, some love them, and some don't. I'm fine with that, but it's hard to deny they once were an important ingredient of the original custom car formula.

I recently got my hands on a pair of appleton S-522. They are not perfect, some careful restoration will be necessary to make them the way they are supposed to look. Piece by piece, I am gathering all the parts for the car I've been building in my mind since I was fourteen years old. Almost done collecting now, time to build.

Here is the Larry Ernst Chevrolet. With spotlights, of course.

 

 

Rik Hoving have a few photo sets on the subject of Appletons on his site.

Icons

It is people that make cars interesting. What would the world of custom cars be without men like Sam Barris and Nick Matranga? A totally different place, for sure. 

Godspeed, Nick.

Teen Spirit

 

 

For Sale: The Titan

For a few more hours, this one is up for sale on Ebay. Rough around the edges and more to fix than meets the eye, but it has the attitude right and quite some potential. It deserves to be restored to its former glory. Besides the '51 Merc, do I also see a Deuce in the other pictures?

History in the making

 

 Things are happening in Fullerton. There is no point in describing it with words, as they will all fall flat when this car is premiered. 

Paul Bragg

 

 Shot at Santa Maria 2009. How will it look this year?

Photo by Fabian Valdez.

Summer fun

The A-Bombers' Old Style Weekend last year was a good one, as per usual. The next one is less than five months away, see you there!

Time to get this thing in motion again?

I wonder if it may be time to step out of hibernation. Image of the day: The Pete Brock Ford Convert. Ain't it just great?

Picture courtesy: Rik Hoving, as usual.

Photo Shoot

Nothing much is happening in the fun car department right now, winter means rust repair and service and hopefully it will be all set when spring is here. Meanwhile, here are some shots from last summer.

...and I like it

I managed to get my hands on a pair of tail lights from a 1941 Packard, just like on the one from the previous post. Got to say, it looks just as good as I hoped it would. This is just a quick mock-up, it will need some metal work to look good.

Use them now, or save them for the coupe?

Hunting for parts: Ain't it fun?

Sedan treatments

As I browsed through some old magazines I found this article in the march 1956 issue of Car Craft. Quite a cool treatment for a '47 Ford sedan, if I may say so. The Oldsmobile grille is a classic, and the Fiesta hub caps are excellent for any car from that era, so is the '49 Chevy license plate guard.

The choice of tail lights intrigues me, they look amazingly good on this type of car. The text says they are from a 1939 Packard, but I am not completely convinced. From the pictures I have seen of '39 Packards, they used a tail light with a similar shape, but it appears to be smaller in size and with a flatter lens.

...and a question on the HAMB solved it: 1941 Packard

What if...

If I had a nickel for everyone telling me "how hard it is to make a chop look right on a '41 business coupe"(often said with a tone that suggests it shouldn't be done at all), I'd have enough cash to get me one of those tasty In-N-Out cheeseburgers, cooked animal style, with fries. That's a lot of nickels!

What if Jesse Lopez brought a business coupe to the Barris Bros. (or the Ayalas! that would have been even cooler), and asked for it to be chopped somewhat like Jack Stewart's coupe, would I have to use my own money at In-N-Out? I guess so.

The use of "I" above may suggest that I will chop a '41 biz coupe. No. It's in safe hands.

The Tom Branch roadster

Imagine going down the freeway in a deuce roadster at 75+ mph, open headers, no top on a cool november night. Now, imagine falling asleep in the passenger seat. No? I did. Really.

To my defence, it was the end of a long, good, exhausting day and Jet Lag snuck up on me and hit me hard. Back then, Tom's roadster was in bare metal, but not anymore. Tom and Fabian turned a great roadster into one of the greatest.

More bike shots

As an irregular contributor I get Gasoline Magazine for free. If I hadn't been, it would have been the only swedish magazine I had subscribed to. I bet they who work at the other swedish publications are nice people too, so I buy two or three issues of their magazines annually, combined.

In the most recent issue, #5, I got some photos of Martin Ring's Harley chopper. The rest of the magazine is chock-full of good stuff: Top chop tech, Ulf Larsson's '29 roadster, Sweden's most beautiful custom, and much more. Get it if you can, maybe you'll learn some swedish too along the way.