The Dream of Customizing!

There was a time when custom cars were the rage. Sweeping fins, frenched headlights, recessed taillights, shaved door handles, scooped hoods, sectioned bodies and a hundred other modifications have regaled millions of people since the last Thirties. As candy colors and dramatically styled cars dazzled spectators, the hobby blossomed! 

Model enthusiasts a generation and a half ago responded with their own creative visions. You cannot read early copies of Car Model or Model Car Science or peruse virtually any late -'50/early-60s copy of Rod and Custom or Car Craft without seeing an article or column dedicated to model car builders, particularly the customizers. To be sure, as with the full scale cars, many custom model cars were hideous, but there were some really pleasing designs. I can still recall the youthful thrill of regularly visiting Skip's Hobby Shop in suburban Salt Lake City to see the newest custom model fashioned by an older builder.

Then, the muscle car era hit the streets, competition cars also became popular, and suddenly the custom car magazines vanished like dew on a summer morning. Those publications that survived started to carry street machine features. Where tin bending how-tos once occupied pages, drag strip articles now blossomed like vicious weeds. Model car magazines were not immune either. Model Car Science and Car Model no longer carried customizing "how-tos" and feature articles on miniature customs also dried up because model car customizers had either moved to other topics or stopped building altogether. The days of imagination were over, or so it seemed.

Yet fans of customizing never really went away; they just went into hibernation until the automotive culture became more hospitable, or maybe just less hostile. In the last decade, the Kustom Kemps of America jump-started interest in custom cars, and several publications have jumped in to meet the market demand. Rod and Custom, Custom Rodder, Custom Cars, the long-standing KKOA's Trend Setter, and John Berry's Kustom Kemps in Miniature are all out there advocating custom body work in whatever scale. The stunning reappearance of custom cars at high profile shows like the Grand National (Oakland) Roadster Show and on the pages of Custom Rodder, tin bending has certainly re-emerged as an insurgent art form. Likewise, model car customizing has also come roaring back.

My Custom Clinic Clinic page is dedicated to customizing in all scales. Here, the large and enthusiastic staff and I will feature many of the most famous custom cars in history. Ranging from the incredible work of Darryl Starbird to the work of Barris or the Alexander Bros., or Winfield or Cushenbery we'll give you photos and the text from magazine articles that once featured those cars. You can also enjoy photos of historic customs undergoing restoration now or in the recent past, and we'll also take a look at modern customizing efforts like Titus' Voodoo Spider.

We'll also enjoy and celebrate scale model car customizing by featuring the models of famous scale customizers as well as my many projects. You can also enjoy custom car memorabilia, as well as custom car show programs, historic magazines as well as special projects associated with famous custom cars (found at www.ThePredictaProject.org) as well as taking a look at the search for lost factory dream cars ( www.TheLynxProject.org)

We've also opened up a new feature for the Custom Clinic site – photos of vintage hot rods from the early Fifties. Though just a bit off topic, these cars also shared the automotive landscape with the first age of custom cars. In a related way, we'll also feature an array of full-on custom hot rods, including Barris' Ala Kart and Roth's Outlaw, Beatnik Bandit and Tweedy Pie.  

We're also going to take a look at new books on custom cars in a new area to the site - Custom Clinic Book Reviews. We'll give you the straight scoop and rank the books on the custom clinic graph – from the lowest level of a dirty old lead paddle to the top level represented by a fresh candy pearl red finish, and everything in between. 

So, gather up your custom car dreams, grab your favorite customizing magazines, open a can of bondo for the sake of its sweet aroma, rub your fingers roughly across an array of sandpaper, get misty eyed about customizing, and let's have some fun. Let's throw some putty!