Custom car builds
At GNRS 2025, bare metal builds were everywhere. Let’s be real— some of these builds aren’t finished. They’re just out here flexing. Builders are putting their raw, unpainted cars and trucks on display like they’re staring in the mirror, admiring their own reflection. We saw last year’s AMBR winner in bare metal, and it was absolutely stunning. This year? There were a few builds that could easily walk away with the trophy—if and when they ever get finished.
If you weren’t at the 2025 Detroit Autorama, you missed out on a pure, unfiltered dose of horsepower, chrome, and custom car insanity. From February 28 to March 2, Huntington Place (yeah, the old Cobo Hall) became ground zero for everything loud, fast, and meticulously built. And smack in the middle of it all? The Cavalcade of Customs—a no-holds-barred showcase of the wildest, cleanest, and most mind-blowing custom rides the country has to offer.
During the latter part of the 1950s, as America fell into a recession, the American industry machine suffered. The Big Three Detroit automakers felt the hit and quickly began building affordable cars that would appeal to the public.
When Tony Gonzalez says that it is his business to be cool, he really means it. Gonzalez owns an air conditioning repair and installation company, but what gets him hot in his spare time (read, winter) is to build and ride in his 1995 Chevy Silverado.
Say what you will, but function is back! We find more high-profile cars built to be driven, and driven hard. Everywhere you look, car owners and builders are searching out new ways to put the fun back into driving the wheels off the rides they build, and they’re looking to the past for their inspiration as they recreate older brands to kick the snot out of new, overpriced super cars. It’s an old technique, as aged as the hobby itself.
In a world often divided between Chevy and Ford lovers, these pristine pretenders bridge this gap with matching themes and paint schemes, leaving some to wonder and others to say, “Wow!”
A wave of surreal sweetness swept over Tim Pasillas as he got off the phone. Auto Connection had just informed him that his car was waiting for him at the shop. “It’s actually here,” he thought to himself as he rushed down to the importer’s warehouse to pick up his long-awaited prize.
EFIJY… It’s the show car that has taken the world by storm. Everyone from hot rodders to corporate leaders is reveling in the execution of this great design exercise. The only sad part is, this car will not see production, because it was truly an exercise in design, an effort from the car-loving designers who by day create fully functional and very popular Holden automobiles for the Australian motoring public, and who by night lust for the curvaceous lines of times past and tinker away on hot rods in their home garages. Yes, the design team at Holden is laced with true car enthusiasts, and it shows in their daily work. Even more so, it shows in the EFIJY show car they created in a mere eight months.
Growing up in a “car family” is always interesting, as many of you reading this can attest. Having raised two kids in a household dedicated to vintage automobiles, this author is an authority on the subject.
Lots of people know what they want, at least generally—as in, “I want a car” or, more specifically, a performance car. A slightly more motivated person might narrow it down to a late-model car, as opposed to an old car, or even refine his goal further to a Ford car. The ability to thoroughly define your goals is generally the province of the mature individual who, with the wisdom of a few years under his belt, has come to truly know what winds his clock.
