The Howard Gribble Collection part 2

BODY WORK AND PAINT

In this second article on the Howard Gribble photo collection, we like to focus on some of the photos showing custom cars that are a bit different from the “mainstream” cars in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. Customs that were customized with more than just paint.



Howard Gribble has been sharing his collection of 1960′s and 1970′s custom car, and low rider photos on his own Flickr photo site since 2006. Since 2008, Howard also shares his collection on the Custom Car Photo Archive. In this second article on Howard’s Collection we are concentrating on some of the photos he took himself, rather than photos he had found. We like to focus on the photos that show us that there were still some custom cars that had more than just custom paint and lowering in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
Check out the rest of the Howard Gribble Collection articles on the CCC-site





In those years, the start of the low rider era most of the cars were only milady customized with actual body work. People spend most of their time and money into lowering the car as much as possible, and on the most amazing paint jobs. But there were still a few cars around that had the old style custom body work as chopped tops, reshaped fenders and grilles etc.

lets take a look at those cars captured with Howard Gribble’s camera…

The Roy Abendroth 1955 Buick “Busonic” was built by John Schott. He customized the Buick with 1957 Lincoln rear quarters, extended, reshaped and peeked front fenders with quad headlights and new grille opening. Every body panel on the car was modified in some way to help change the overall looks of the Buick with great results. Larry Watson ended up painting the car in copper metalflake with cob webbing in the light copper colored scallops in 1964. Howard’s photo shows the “Busonic” after a makeover that was done in 1965. Once again Larry Watson was hired to do the paint, this time in a striking lime metalflake on the main body and pearl black on the top.
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Dale Gould and and George Barris created this wild 1960 Cadillac Bill Carter was listed as the painter.
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Jim Noteboom’s 1963 Buick Riviera. Gene Winfields shop did the work on this car. The photo above shows the second version of the car with the extended sail panels and shaved trim. The front was modified  with a custom grille and at the back the taillights were moved from the body into the lower bumper. Gene painted this car in his famous fade away style in candy orange caramel to white pearl.
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The car changed hands two times before it ended up being painted metalflake purple as we can see it in this photo.
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Customized 1955-56 Fod has unique extended hood which hide the windshield wipers. The headlights are deeply tunneled into extended front fenders and the smoothed body is covered in several shaded of gray blue metalflake and candy paints. The wild interior with a supper glossy, metallic plastic, button tuffed, diamond shaped material.
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Very pearl pink customized 1959 Chevy Impala with customized front and rear. Drew’s is listed for doing all the work on the car.
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Joe Bailon built this wild ’65 Impala SS in 1970 for Jess Alcala. Joe dis all the work on the car including paint in his Los Feliz shop. In 1972 the car won the Elegance award at the Grand National Roadster show.
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The last car in this article looks to be based on a 1965-68 Chevy Impala with the front of the roof cut off completely. Two separate windshields are installed on the cowl in a thirties roadster style. The door hinges are moved to make them open from the top hinged on the rockers. New trends in low-riders were born in the wild 1970’s.
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(This article is made possible by)

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