Letter From The Editor: A Hot Rod Hybrid from the Kustomizing King
October 1, 2007
The 1932 Ford—known affectionately as the "Deuce"—celebrates its 75th anniversary this year.
Long the favored platform for hot rod aficionados, it owes its enduring
popularity to a Darwinian knack for adaptation and modification: The Deuce not
only lends itself to chopping (dropped rooflines) and channeling (lowered
suspensions), its frame accepts a variety of engines. For one salient example,
the black roadster featured on this month’s cover, was a project started decades
ago by Doane Spencer and recently completed by SO-CAL Speed Shop.
"She’s my little Deuce coupe / You don’t know what I got." When
the Beach Boys immortalized the Deuce in song, they chose a coupe—that had
already appeared on the cover of Hot
Rod magazine—for their album’s art. That
particular "Cadillac Mediterranean Blue" Deuce was built by the legendary George
Barris.
"As far as I’m concerned, George Barris and his brother Sam—the
Barris Brothers—were masters," says Pete Chapouris, president of SO-CAL Speed
Shop. "The early cars from ’46 up to ’56 were perfect in proportion,
workmanship, the colors they chose, the upholstery. They eyeballed everything,
cutting fenders with beat-up old hacksaws and shaping metal with dirty
mallets."
Decades later, Barris’s creativity continues unabated, as does
the Deuce’s evolutionary nature. Although it might sound like a contradiction in
terms, Barris—the founder of Barris Kustom Industries (www.barris.com)—believes
that a hybrid hot rod makes perfect sense.
Of course, the 82-year-old Barris has never been a conventional
thinker. The man who became famous for such automotive creations as the original
Batmobile, the Munsters coach, the Flintstones car,
and the General Lee from The Dukes of
Hazzard, practically invented "Kustom" at the
tender age of 14 when he removed the gold handles from his mother’s kitchen
cabinets and installed them on a 1925 Buick. Among his noteworthy innovations
was Candy-Apple Red paint—he achieved the pearl effect in 1948 with shimmering
golden scales scraped from the bellies of sardines.
"Last year I started looking at what’s new in the automobile
industry," Barris says, "and hybrids came in very strong." So he contacted
Toyota, and the company agreed to let him customize a Prius by painting it
yellow and green. "I had to do most of it with paint and bolt-on items because
they didn’t want me to change the warranty on the car," he says, adding with a
trace of triumph in his voice, "They let me put 18-inch wheels on it, though."
Hence, Barris’s latest contribution to the advancement of the
Deuce—the sketch is pictured below—will feature a hybrid-electric engine sourced
from a Toyota Prius. Set to debut this October at the Specialty Equipment Market
Association (SEMA), the nation’s largest automotive aftermarket tradeshow, the
hybrid Deuce will carry its batteries in the back like the Prius, and the
headlights bear a striking resemblance to the Japanese car. But that’s where the
similarities end. Barris’s hybrid boasts vertically opening doors, four-wheel
steering, detached fenders and 22-inch wheels—which increase the hybrid ‘cool’
factor by about 1,000 percent (Barris would probably spell that "k-o-o-l," just
to be different). This little Deuce roadster will give an entirely new meaning
to the Beach Boys line, "You don’t know what I got."
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