Thread: What is a custom?

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Sure is shiny and one cool looking kustom . Glad you still here and building what alot of us grew up with .

Uh no, Dave. Keep trying, you must have one mild one in there someplace.


Don

It truly is in the eyes of the beholder (and the judge sometimes). There are mild customs and radical customs and I have seen a lot of both. My 57 Olds is a mild custom. It has been nosed, decked, smoothed, shaved, frenched and customed painted. It has the custom goodies like a customed interior, lakes, skirts, wire wheels, etc. It is not chopped, but if you are familiar with a 57 Olds, it looks like a factory chop. In any case it suits me just fine.

I went to an all Olds show years ago and was put in the Custom category. For most of the show mine was the only one in the category. About an hour from the end of the show a guy and his wife showed up with a 442 convertible and was put in as a custom because he had new wheels. He was also a member of the club who put on the show. Needless to say he took the Custom Class trophy. He and his wife acted the entire time as if there were no doubt that they would win. I am not a trophy hound but I do support fairness, told that to the organizers and told them I would not support their events in the future and would let others know of their short sightedness and bias.

I'm like you, not a trophy hound (when we moved from our old shop to our new one I put about 10 of them in the dumpster) but fair is fair. My '27 was at a show one time, and I had it in the unfinished category. The car that took the trophy was a '48 Ford coupe that was black primered with a spray can (and not good at that) There were rust holes everywhere, and the engine compartment looked like the one on the Tulsa '57 Plymouth.

People kept walking up to me later and saying "that POS won a trophy??? ) But what I think the judges were trying to do was encourage a young builder to keep going with his project by giving him a trophy. That's cool with me.

But I have seen the same car win at every show when there are obviously much better cars there. It's all who you know.................


Don