Customization
At home at a concours event, George Lange’s ’68 Camaro begs for closer inspection, as it is much more than it seems. Capable beyond most people’s wildest imagination, its laser-smooth lines are complemented beneath the flawless luster of DuPont’s Ash Gold Metallic paint. Call it “Alloway style.”
Around 1993, Bob Marion purchased a ’40 Ford cabover cab, but at the time he didn’t have anything he could do with it. He didn’t worry about it; he just thought of plans here and there, and after a full decade of on-and-off planning he finally decided it was time to do something with the old cab. He took it to Rich Brandl Sr. at Superior Custom Classics Inc.
Here in the United States, we have been conditioned to find vintage tin in many places. The availability of good cars to build into street rods has become more limited as the years have passed, but depending upon your choice of bodies, there are still quite a few options. Of course, the advent of reproduction bodies has added to the choices. Now put yourself in a foreign land and think about how hard it would be to find a good 70-plus-year-old imported American car to build. That is what Wayne Streams faced as a native of the United Kingdom. Building street rods has grown in both popularity and participation in the UK. There are many vintage English vehicles available, but American cars are the most cherished among British rodders.
Today’s 4x4s have become extremely specialized. At one end of the spectrum are one-off, purpose-built, non-street-legal rock buggies. These are the cream of the rock crop. Most have tube chassis with what seems like nearly 360 degrees of axle articulation. Often the transfer cases are doubled up to produce crawl ratios way beyond the once magical 100:1. They’re obviously awesome, and capable of handling boulders as if they were speed bumps.
Let’s face it, most of us are working within the confines of a set of unwritten, yet clearly defined, rules of hot rodding. Stance, engine choice and wheels are for the most part selected from a menu of items that come “pre-approved” by our peers. Sure these rules work most of the time, and they provide a degree of certain acceptance when you’re building a traditional pre-’49 hot rod. But all in all, it also makes us a group of conforming nonconformists. However, for some hot rodders (and they are in the minority) building hot rods is about pure ingenuity, a total lack of peer pressure and joy of mixing parts from various sources and making it all work.
Ryan Newman grew up with a steering wheel in his hands. From the age of five, he has been behind the wheel of a racecar. Now, almost 20 years later, Ryan drives for Penske Racing South on the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series. In 2003, Ryan won eight races, 11 poles and was named Speed Channel’s Driver of the Year. In 2004, he will be driving a Dodge sponsored by primary sponsor Alltel with associate sponsorship form Mobil 1 and Sony Electronics on 38 weekends.
Although there is no set list or solid criteria we look for when choosing a feature car, we typically know the instant we’ve found one. Sometimes it’s a flawless paint job and subtle body mods that draw us in; other times, it’s a fully built motor loping angrily. Other times, though, we come across a car that is just plain cool—not the fastest, or even highly modified, but the kind of car you just look at and say, “Wow, check out that…” So it was at Goodguys Charlotte this year: sitting proudly in the mist and drizzle was Doug Wayne’s ’66 Galaxie convertible. At Auto Builder, we have a soft spot for large vehicles, and, realistically, Ford is not known for making many great small cars. Even small Fords are big, and if you don’t believe us, stick an early Falcon next to a Scion. But few companies do big as well as Ford, and even from a distance, we knew this Galaxie was as cool as it is long.
Looking at the Stallion shows the influence of Unique Performance on Foose’s design. Actually, once you really sit down and look at the car, it appears to be a collage of design features from classic Mustangs, all herded together on the same car. The new front fascia replaces the stock headlight buckets with a large round light and smaller driving light, and this arrangement looks very similar to that found on the Unique G.T.500E. Horizontal billet bars replace the stock honeycomb mesh in the upper grille, shaped very much like the original ’65 grille, down to the offset Foose badge in place of the stock Mustang emblem. The lower grille contains another pair of round lights and more billet bars.
we learned that three important players in the hot rod industry—Chip Foose, Unique Performance and Year One—were coming together for a unique collaboration. Their combined goal was to build a limited-production-built car. Unique Performance already has just such a business, as it builds and sells its continuation Shelby Mustangs.
From its necessary beginnings in World War II to today, Jeep has developed into an American Icon. Jeep has become a symbol of independence and liberty for the whole world to see. It’s been abused, pampered and even celebrated, but to those who love them it’s still just a Jeep… for better or for worst.
