Dan Landon Chevy Photos

DAN LANDON CHEVY PHOTOS

For issue #33 of the Rodder’s Journal I did a series of colorized black and white photos. It was also planned to include a photo of Dan Landon’s 1949 Chevy in this series, but I ran out of time.



[dropcap]In[/dropcap] 2005 I was working on a personal project, colorizing black and white custom car photos. The result of the first few samples I did turned out so well that I decided to send them to my favorite magazine, The Rodder’s Journal, to see if they were interested in publishing them. After a few weeks they got back to me with a big YES. We discussed about which photos we could do best, and sample scans were made. From this the best photos were picked to colorize. Half way during the process some more photos came available. A series of photos of the Dan Landon 1949 Chevy taken at an un-identified parking lot. Several complete shots as well as several detail photos. Really great photos, some with a nice low angle point of view. Not the best quality, with lots of dust and scratches, but I thought that would look very nice. I was tempted to do one of the detail shots, but in the end we decided to do a front and possibly also a rear 3/4 view. High res scans were made of those photos.

Then the deadline of the magazine came closer and the material I had already finished was send to the magazine. A layout was created and during this time I had started with the colorizing of the front 3/4 view photo of the Dan Landon Chevy. Later it was decided there was no space, nor time to add the Landon Chevy, so I never finished the colorizing of this photo. Perhaps one day…

There are not to many photos of the Dan Landon Chevy around, so its time to show these nice photos here at the Custom Car Chronicle. And take a look how beautiful this car is. The car has always been listed as a Barris Kustoms Shop creation, but there is also some information that the car had been customized at the Ayala shop and was later finished by Barris. The look and feel of the car is very much Ayala. We have never been able to confirm who did the custom body work on this car so far. No in progress photos have been found or shared so far, and Dan Landon has passed away.

Lets take a look at the photo.

The Rodder’s Journal issue 33 with the Kolorized Kustoms article for which the Dan Landon Chevy photos were planned.
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The low angle front 3/4 view was picked by me to colorize at first. The car had a wonderful stance, and the low angle photo makes it look like it is speeding out of the water like a speed boat.
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The rear quarter view shows the wonderful flow of the top and rear fenders. 
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And this is how far I got with the colorizing of the front 3/4 photo. Far from finished!
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The front and rear 3/4 photos were scanned in high res allowing us to make a few nice blow ups to have a better look at some of the details on the Dan Landon 1949 Chevy



One piece Oldsmobile windshield, Packard side trim with Barris crest, filled in belt line, Appleton spotlights and an two tone headliner.
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Frenched headlights, new molded in grille opening, custom grille with 1951 DeSoto teeth and Frazer end-piecesand a pontiac front bumper.
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Extended rear fenders with 1951 Frazer taillights. 1951 Oldsmobile 98 rear bumper with exhaust tops thru the ends.
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The shape of the rear fenders with the Frazer taillights matches the heavily chopped top extremely well.
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The three samples scans, shown below were part of the series that was considered to colorize for the Rodder’s Journal article. I was tempted to do the last one, showing the rear quarters of the Landon Chevy, from a low point of view with the nice large tank in the back ground. I thought it would make a nice full page in the magazine with nice contracting colors in mind. But in the end it was decided to go with the photos showing the complete car. These photos came from the Greg Sharp Collection and I was told there were a few more in this series. Some of them were large prints, while others were only cut-out proof sheets. It looks like the larger prints that were picked for the article were either created using the proof sheets, or badly done from the original negatives. However since there are only very few photos of the Dan Landon Chevy shared these are very welcome.















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