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Kustomrama Keeping History Alive: Kustomrama is an online encyclopedia dedicated to traditional hot rod and custom cars.

Our mission is to PROTECT, PRESERVE and SHARE traditional hot rod and custom car history from all over the world.

20/10/2026

Winter is coming!

Olav helped us bring Tom Carroll’s 1949 Chevrolet to Sandefjord, where Kjetil will spend the winter giving it some much-needed love and care.

Originally customized by the legendary Barris Kustoms in California, the Chevy is a little piece of American custom car history that somehow ended up in Norway.

Stay tuned for more!

Forty-two days and five hundred dollars.That is what it took Jerry Halak of Toledo, Ohio, a member of the Pharaohs, to t...
18/10/2026

Forty-two days and five hundred dollars.

That is what it took Jerry Halak of Toledo, Ohio, a member of the Pharaohs, to turn a 1958 Ford convertible into a custom. He did it in 1958, the same year the car was new.

The magazines back then were full of customs with months of metalwork in them. Chopped tops, sectioned bodies, bills to match. Jerry went the other way. He left the body mostly stock and the side trim where it was, and took off most of the other chrome, door handles included. The doors and trunk were set up to work electrically. Full length lakes plugs, dual spotlights, special hubcaps. At the back he pulled the stock bumper for a 1957 Ford unit, and trimmed 1958 Lincoln taillight lenses to fit the stock openings.

Then he painted it ivory and laid gold scallops over it.

The interior he did himself, in gold and white Naugahyde, with fur-like rugs on the floor.

Rod & Custom ran the car in October 1958. Custom Cars ran it again in June 1959.

What is the fastest you ever turned a stock car into something you were proud to show, and what did it cost you?

Custom or lowrider? At the Custom Hill Reunion in Japan, it is not always easy to tell.Take the black ‘36 Ford in photo ...
17/10/2026

Custom or lowrider? At the Custom Hill Reunion in Japan, it is not always easy to tell.

Take the black ‘36 Ford in photo 4. A custom grille, a traditional custom stance, and a license plate frame that says “Do it in my lowrider.”

Here is part three of Martin Skoglund’s photos from the show. Go through them and tell us in the comments: custom, lowrider, or a bit of both? Give us the photo number so we know which car you mean. And if you know the owners, tag them.

Thanks to Kustomrama contributor Martin Skoglund for the photos. The last batch is coming next week.

Every story we have shared lately started with one person who remembered.Myron Vernis remembered that his friend Dick Ba...
16/10/2026

Every story we have shared lately started with one person who remembered.

Myron Vernis remembered that his friend Dick Bair drove a stock 1939 Ford from Ohio to California after high school, just to have Barris do the work. Carlos Navarro remembered seeing the name Ran’s Auto Works before, which led us to a 1937 trade magazine. John Bozio remembered that people around Rockville, Connecticut, called John North Moose, which finally explained the name lettered on his chopped Ford.

None of it was in a book. If those three had not written in, those stories would have stayed lost.

Every scene has a person like that. The guy at the cruise night who knows who built every car, who owned it after, and where it went. Usually nobody has written any of it down.

So who is that person where you live? Tag them in the comments. And if you are lucky enough to know someone like that, sit down with them this winter and ask about the cars. Write it down, or send it to us, and we will help keep it.

Thanks to Myron Vernis, Carlos Navarro, and John Bozio for remembering.

Southern Speedway, 1938. A little custom pickup with “Ran’s Auto Works” lettered on the door. When we shared this photo,...
15/10/2026

Southern Speedway, 1938. A little custom pickup with “Ran’s Auto Works” lettered on the door. When we shared this photo, a name on a door was all we had.

Then Carlos Navarro of Hemet, California sent us a lead that cracked it. The car had been written up in a body shop trade magazine. In October 1937, Autobody Trimmer and Painter told how Ran Wilbourn, owner of Ran’s Auto Works at 5010 South Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles, turned a $50 Model A roadster into a pickup for shop use and for towing midget racers.

Lowered four inches, a veed windshield, lamps welded into the fenders, and black lacquer striped with green. About $700 all in. Ford Times ran the car again in January 1951, same license plate.

So the car has a name, an address, and a job now. What it does not have is the rest of Ran’s story.

Thanks to Kustomrama contributor Carlos Navarro for the tip.

Does anyone know more about Ran Wilbourn or his shop on South Vermont?

In 1957, John North traded in his 1936 Ford at Fitzgerald Ford, drove home a brand-new Fairlane, and sent it straight to...
14/10/2026

In 1957, John North traded in his 1936 Ford at Fitzgerald Ford, drove home a brand-new Fairlane, and sent it straight to the body shop.

North was president of the Choppers of Rockville in Rockville, Connecticut. He had Riverside Auto Body nose it, deck it, rake it, and hang lake pipes on it. Under the hood sat an E-code engine with two four-barrel carburetors and a floor-shifted manual. Sometime after the 1958 Hartford Autorama, the car picked up gold scallops, pinstriping, molded-in lake pipes, and dummy spotlights. They called it the White Pearl.

This photo shows John and his young son Mark polishing the car in the driveway, hood and trunk up. Between 1957 and 1960, the White Pearl ran in Rod & Custom, Car Craft, Hot Rod, and plenty more.

What was your local body shop custom, the one everybody in town knew?

Part two from the Custom Hill Reunion Rod & Custom Get Together in Japan, shot by our buddy Martin! These cars were too ...
13/10/2026

Part two from the Custom Hill Reunion Rod & Custom Get Together in Japan, shot by our buddy Martin! These cars were too good to leave out, but we do not know who owns them.

Know an owner? Tag them in the comments. If it is your car, say hello.

Thanks to Martin of Yttervika Rock & Amcar Club for the photos!

In 1958, a custom in the school parking lot was a Southern California teenage thing. Kids built cars to cruise the drive...
12/10/2026

In 1958, a custom in the school parking lot was a Southern California teenage thing. Kids built cars to cruise the drive-in on Friday night and to show off to their friends on Saturday. Nobody called it culture. It was just what you did with your car.

Our buddy Martin Skoglund flew from Norway to Japan this month for the Custom Hill Reunion Rod & Custom Get Together, and this is the kind of thing he found. Chopped tops, spotlights and custom grilles, straight out of the traditional custom playbook. Then patterned paint in purple, green and orange across the roofs, and wire wheels with whitewalls, borrowed from the lowriders. Two California traditions that grew up apart, parked side by side on the grass in Japan.

That is the part of this hobby we never get tired of. Something California teenagers started after the war is now kept alive in garages all over the world, and every place has found its own way to do it. You would still recognize it anywhere.

So we want to know: where are you reading this from, and what is the local twist where you live?

Photo by Martin Skoglund.

Joseph Caruso of Brookfield, Illinois, bought his 1958 Chevrolet Impala in 1959, and he still had it in 2011.It was alre...
11/10/2026

Joseph Caruso of Brookfield, Illinois, bought his 1958 Chevrolet Impala in 1959, and he still had it in 2011.

It was already a mild custom when he got it. A previous owner had nosed and louvered the hood, fitted a tube grille and cruiser skirts, and painted it black with red pinstriping.

Around 1961 Joseph went further. Door handles gone. The chrome strips off the front fenders and the trim around the fake scoops in the quarters, gone too. The upper grille opening was reworked and molded into the fenders and hood, and a 1958 Pontiac bumper and grille went in. Headlights frenched and molded. Deck lid shaved. Rocket type 1959 Cadillac lenses in the taillights. The whole car went candy red.

The interior was custom, the trunk was upholstered to match, and the engine compartment was chromed top to bottom. Chromed and reversed wheels, knock off spinners, US Royal Masters.

He called it the Ala Impala and showed it at the World of Wheels in 1963 and 1964.

That is usually where the trail goes cold. Sold, restyled, parted out, or left outside. This one went into a heated garage instead. He repainted it and redid the interior in 1987, and when Andy Lodi bought it in 2011 it was still in impeccable condition.

What happened to the show customs from your local circuit? Any of them still with the guy who built them?

Five canceled checks. An eight-page club pamphlet. A reel of 16 mm film.None of it looks like much. All of it came in th...
09/10/2026

Five canceled checks. An eight-page club pamphlet. A reel of 16 mm film.

None of it looks like much. All of it came in the mail last month, and every piece filled a hole in the history we could not have filled any other way.

In 1959, Junji Nakamura pointed a 16 mm camera at the Impala he and his brother James ran at Lions Drag Strip. Sixty-seven years later he sent us the film, and it went further than anything we have put out in a long time.

Ed Pogue kept the five checks he wrote to Darryl Starbird in the spring of 1961. Two hundred, two hundred, three hundred, forty, sixty. Thanks to those checks, we finally know when the Glitra was built and what it cost.

Al Jarvis promised us he had a pamphlet somewhere. This month he found it: "The Sierra Pickup," printed by the Drivin' Deuces of Carlstadt, New Jersey, in October 1959, about the show truck the whole club built together.

That is how most of Kustomrama gets built. Not from the famous photo everybody has seen, but from the roll of film and the piece of paper somebody did not throw away.

So here is our ask. If there is film in your house, 8 mm, Super-8 or 16 mm, shot at a show, a strip or in a garage before 1980, we want to hear about it. You do not need to know what is on it. We can help you get it digitized and figure out together what we are looking at. The same goes for receipts, checks, club pamphlets, show programs, and business cards. Send us a photo before you decide it is junk.

Thanks to Junji Nakamura, Ed Pogue, and Al Jarvis for keeping theirs.

What is sitting in a drawer at your place?

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