George Barris

You know, you can learn a lot about where George Barris stands in this world just by visiting his website. The webpage opens up when you click it, and everything is displayed over a soundtrack of twangy surf guitar. A whole automotive culture cascades through the spillways. A torrent of memories tumble through your consciousness: early rock, TV legends, automotive history, glue globs on kit parts, the whole tapestry of California car culture at its zenith.

And yet, there's still more to it. George Barris (and his late brother, Sam) were some of the most important heirs to Southern California's heritage of custom coachbuilding. They followed coachbuilders such as Don Lee, Bohman & Schwartz and Darrin in coming up with stunning, artistic reinterpretations of automotive body shapes. What's more important was that just as the great era of Hollywood coachbuilding came to an end, they brought it firmly into the hands of ordinary people who wanted to own a hugely distinctive car. The Barris kustom--always spelled with a "K"--was the next generation of California coachbuilding, and it's still going strong today. George Barris is a lasting link to a cadre of customizers such as the Ayala brothers, Jimmy Summers and Valley Custom, all of whom transformed ordinary automobiles into breathtaking sculptures. Don't believe us? Then let us point out that customs, including several built by George, graced this year's show field at the Pebble Beach Concours, the stars of their own category. Now that's artful.

Before we talk about George's spectacular lifetime of aesthetic accomplishment, let's explain why "full customs," as they're called, have enjoyed a marked revival, a respect for the place they firmly occupy in the gestation of automotive styling. The practice started right around the same time that the Olympian coachbuilding era was coming to a close, undermined by the diminished expectations of the Depression. Initially, the custom culture was an outgrowth of Southern California hot rodding, which could trace its own origins back to the 1920s in Los Angeles. Some people were more interested in styling and profiling. They either personalized their cars themselves, or else commissioned a local body shop to do the work in the years before they were overwhelmed with more profitable insurance collision repairs. But where a traditional coachbuilt car might have been a Cadillac or a Packard, these newbies concentrated on lower-market cars such as Chevrolets, Fords and Mercurys, mostly from around 1940. Nobody knows exactly when this all started, but Carson tops for convertibles were first marketed in 1927 and real metalworking started not long after that. One of the earliest true customs was the 1940 Ford of Link Paola, built in 1939 just before the 1940 models were officially released. In what would become prototypical custom practice, it was chopped, nosed and decked. This, we submit, demonstrates that customs are a legitimate part of our world. As we interviewed him, George was about to decamp from his shops to Pebble Beach, where several of his creations graced the show field in a special class for custom Mercurys, right alongside all the beautiful Full Classics.

George was born in November 1925 in booming Chicago. It was the wild Prohibition era, and cars choked the streets from Lake Shore Drive to Michigan Avenue. George was paying attention to them, and then some. "When I was three years old, I got into the car situation. Then I was moved to Sacramento and Roseville, California, and as soon as I got out there, I knew this was what I wanted to do," George recalled. "My first custom job was a 1932 Ford that I put cats-eye taillamps in, and I called it a kustom, with a K. I wish I would have trademarked it. I'd be rich today."

From the 1970s, you may recall the Bugazzi, a modified Lincoln Continental Mark IV.

George also tried to put his early years in perspective. "It just seems that when I was in school, I was an athlete, and the teachers there wanted me to take cooking and sewing and classes like that. But I just liked cars. I loved their four wheels, and I liked the way they looked. I wanted to customize them. I went down to the railroad track in Roseville, where a guy owned a body shop. He gave me a torch, a dolly and a hammer and he said, 'Go ahead, kid. Go ahead and play.' I was 13 years old."

George and his year-older brother, Sam, moved to Los Angeles--actually to Lynwood, a suburb--in 1944. They opened a shop and started chopping tops, a basic full-custom technique that sees the roof lowered until the windshield openings are practically slits. When World War II ended, George took his own 1941 Buick convertible and turned it into what many aficionados consider the first full custom ever. George severely chopped the windshield frame, added a head-brushing Carson top and did the metalwork to create fadeaway fenders that went 4/5ths of the way down the Buick's body. It was incredible; you couldn't take your eyes off it. It was still the mid-1940s, when a lot of American servicemen were returning stateside, their pockets jammed with wartime bonuses. That resource, plus a lot of 1930s cars that were being frantically traded as the first postwar cars reached the market, were the raw materials that turned George into an automotive legend.

The Emperor captured the prized America's Most Beautiful Roadster award.

The Barris brothers rapidly defined their own style. Sam took the torch to his own 1940 Mercury after being mustered out of the service. It featured a chopped windshield frame, swapped grille and bumpers. The brothers began to fabricate subtle chrome trim spears and a family crest that were applied to their work. "It turned out great. In fact it's one of the cars shown at Pebble Beach," George said. "I had been expanding my metalworking skills the whole time since I'd come down here from Sacramento," he told us. "I just loved taking metal and changing its contours; knowing how to weld, how to hammer weld." However, we will make the case here that George sparked a long-term transformation of American automotive styling sometime around 1950, when he created the custom hardtop for a car he customized for Nick Matranga. George eliminated the chopped 1940 Mercury coupe's B-pillar and filled the space with two curved window frames that were delicate and airy. No such thing had previously existed. Now, go take a look at, say, a 1961 Ford Starliner and examine the roof contours. Still think nobody in Detroit was paying attention to what the Barris shop was doing?

The Barris brothers then did the metalwork and assembly of a 1951 Mercury owned by Bob Hirohata. They were the first customizers to put the chop to a 1951 Mercury. George did the chopping with Sam, who died in 1967, applied Buick trim and faux side vents, adopted the window frames from the Matranga car and added luscious two-tone paint. The "Hirohata Merc," as its long been called, was completed in time for the 1952 Motorama show at the Pan-Pacific Auditorium in L.A. It is arguably the most fabled and aesthetically perfect car of the custom era, and firmly established the Barrises as America's foremost automotive artisans, premier latter-day coachbuilders. They seamlessly adopted the business of personalized bodywork that had been so prevalent before the war. Though the custom era eventually waned, George has outlasted everyone. Los Angeles is an entertainment town, and that industry discovered him. George would use those alliances to the fullest and create the second act of his life with cars.

An iconic car, the 1949-1951 Mercury, and the homegrown styling legend who made it into a palette for metalworking beauty.

We're talking, naturally, about his TV work. George turned out to be a masterful promoter, and linked himself both to Hollywood and the model car industry, which was growing explosively in the 1950s and 1960s. Like his soon-to-be Kustom rival, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, George made a substantial living from cars he built that were later turned into 1⁄25th-scale kits. Many of them represented real cars that George was contracted to build for movies and TV series.

A partial list: The Batmobile, commissioned for the campy 1966 series; the truck the Clampetts used in The Beverly Hillbillies, the Munster Koach and Drag-U-La, the red-and-white Ford Torino, Zebra Three, that was mercilessly hammered on Starsky & Hutch. All were reproduced as top-selling kits. So was the Ala Kart, a Barris custom that was later redone and resurrected. The Barris name became a household word, at least in households where custom cars were venerated, and in those who watched these top-rated TV programs and movies. And they remembered George Barris. Today, he stands as an established icon of Kustom Kulture, automotive design, and the great California automotive adventure.

"You know how some people are singers, entertainers, cooks? I had the world of cars and four wheels," George said. "That was mine."