What is a custom?

Weird i know , but this ? has been bugging me. Ive been to a few shows lately, and the cars that win best kustom, in my view are not hardly kustom. To me a true kustom car is that has many mods, one that is far fom stock. The show i went to this last weekend, a 60 caddy won, it was a nice car , but it was stock, a little shiny stuff inside, and a suede black paint job with a gold and yellow metalflake roof, with gold scallops, factory body, no mods other than lowering. So what is your definition of custom?

Restyled or modified for the purpose of making it more attractive.....(and sometimes you have to remember..... "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".) :-)

Hot Rods are sometimes restyled, but it's more about being "stripped down" for performance.

Here it is , nice car, but not custom imo

This one was more custom to me

Would you believe "Personalized appearance"?

"Back in the day" ('50s & '60s) we might have called this a mild custom, since it is mostly done with lowering, paint and accessories.

Yes, the Caddy is a mild custom, a cruiser, and the Ford is a full custom, since it's chopped and otherwise modified. The old rules stated that a full custom had to be chopped and/or sectioned. The basic profile had to be changed.

I agree with R Pope. I won a trophy for my '34 Ford roadster for best custom once and I really couldn't understand that, it's a streetrod in my mind. I'm sure there were guys there that owned customs that would have agreed with me. I just felt a bit uncomfortable about accepting it but what do you do, tell them you don't want it? Is there a gracious way out of a situation like that?

Yeah, that Caddy is a custom, but a MILD custom as R Pope said. There are varying degrees of customs, from MILD to RADICAL (or full). In the "day" a nose and deck job, some skirts, different hubcaps, and simple changes like that turned a car into a custom.

I think what is confusing you is that you felt there were not enough modifications to the Caddy to fit that description, and you are right as far as a Radical Custom goes.

Don

Yeah thats it, but i have noticed this at alot of shows lately, so it made me wonder if i was missing something, i was at that show in daytona, and a mild merc won, when imo there was way more custom cars there than that one, including the aztec chevy, so it just got me wondering what a custom was.

Plus ive noticed alot of politics involved in what car wins.

yep today the do some fancy interior work it gets a kustom insignia. My years growing up a car being called a custom had sheet metal and interior work done to it. Its a little harder now days that there is not this much work put into the cars.

I think over the last decade they have expanded the definition to muse the spectators . HRD i too look at the cars in the old websters of my mind and class them there . Trick interior is just that . In 20 years a 85 crown vic will be the car shows with same from all auto makers.

Then all imports :eek:

Yup, all of mine are mild customs

Dave mustang and rancharoo is more then Mild LOL. But that will be one sweet car in shiny when you are done . All kustoms have a name and wondering what you will call it .

Oh, okay. Well then, this one must be mild

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

But hey, I'm gonna build something radical one of these days, it's on my round-to-it list!!!!! I want to build one with an English wheel and a planishing hammer instead of Detroit built leftovers!!!!!

Dave that is a good idea with your talent . When i ran body shops an adjuster for SF was doing just that. His was based more on 30s style sheet metal . Maybe it was clos to a 50's MG also but i still wonder after all these years if he ever did get it going .

Uh no, Dave. Keep trying, you must have one mild one in there someplace. :3dSMILE: :3dSMILE: :3dSMILE:


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. :mad: :3dSMILE: :3dSMILE:

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??? :eek: ) 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

Hotroddaddy,I did not ever notice you were in J- ville. i picked up my 31 from Altantic Beach! If ever down Orlando way give us a call we will treat to dinner!

Thanks 31, i`ll remember that. Same to you.

I was at a local fathers day show at the zoo, there was about 25 cars, not real big, mostly guys i knew , but we were trying to support the show, so they will have it again, well they had three classes for trophies,fathers choice,kids choice, and wildest car, the choice was made by filling out a card, and putting it in a box, well i was told that i had the wildest trophy, so i stuck around till the drawing, my boy was tired long before this, but i told him we had to wait, cause we were gonna get a prize, well time came and i got beat by a stock c-cab, then i had to explain to my crying boy why we did not get our prize. ill never do that again.