the brakes are twin Hurst/AirHeart discs
So I'm guessing that the tires on the Tastee Big T were also DC 6 or aircraft tires, I found this in the LA Roadsters parking lot in 2010
Showing posts with label Barris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barris. Show all posts
Thursday, November 20, 2025
the Barris Sidewinder... has tires on it from a DC 6!
the brakes are twin Hurst/AirHeart discs
Saturday, May 03, 2025
Friday, November 22, 2024
John Glazier's car was yellow, until he took it to Barris Kustoms in 1958. Dean Jeffries striped it. Then he used it for college, and after that, parked it in the family garage in the mid 60's, where it remained unmoving for 60s year
Now it's been restored by Foose, and the asking price on Hemmings is a half million dollars
Sunday, September 08, 2024
Wednesday, September 04, 2024
yay for BOMONSTER!
BOMONSTER wrote:
I met Chip at the Boise Roadster Show after he signed about a thousand autographs and drew hundreds of pictures for fans. I introduced myself and he said, "I know who you are. Let's check out your stuff."
He stepped into our booth and security immediately closed off our booth to about a hundred people following him. He asked lots of art questions and was genuinely interested. I asked for a picture and he said "Sure." I said, "With Mrs BOMONSTER?" He said "Sure." We exchanged numbers, shook hands and he left with one of my tees.
The crowd followed and the booth was empty again. Then my tee made an appearance on a couple of his shows this month. He's a nice guy with lots of talent, good taste
This is the car I posted about in July https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2024/07/in-1958-two-brothers-took-their-1953.html
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
In 1958 two brothers took their 1953 convertible Oldsmobile Super 88 to Lynwood, and got Barris to customize it, and now, after 50 years of storage,
Barris, the customs builder, started from the front by extending the front fenders and installing stacked quad headlights. A ’58 Ford truck quad-headlight assembly was flipped 90 degrees to have the lamps one on top of the other, and the front fenders were sheared, split, and stretched to accommodate the Ford ‘lift cab’ parts.
The car was recently discovered by noted designer and customizer Chip Foose while browsing a classic car sales website. He immediately noticed the "Barris Kustom" badges on the front fenders and called the owner to learn more about the Olds. When he got confirmation that it was a true-blue Barris car, Foose traveled to see the convertible and offered to revive it so the original owner's sons could sell it at auction.
Although it's nowhere near as spectacular as the 1966 Batmobile, this Olds still retains the original paint job and features applied by Barris many decades ago. This makes it pretty special among early custom rigs, which have been altered and updated over the years. "This is the real deal, exactly the way it was built," said Foose upon finishing the inspection.
He further concludes that the Oldsmobile shouldn't be restored but cleaned up and preserved in its current condition. And that's precisely what he's planning to do when the drop-top is hauled to his shop. Of course, the car will undergo a mechanical restoration to become drivable and road-worthy again.
Although it's nowhere near as spectacular as the 1966 Batmobile, this Olds still retains the original paint job and features applied by Barris many decades ago. This makes it pretty special among early custom rigs, which have been altered and updated over the years. "This is the real deal, exactly the way it was built," said Foose upon finishing the inspection.
He further concludes that the Oldsmobile shouldn't be restored but cleaned up and preserved in its current condition. And that's precisely what he's planning to do when the drop-top is hauled to his shop. Of course, the car will undergo a mechanical restoration to become drivable and road-worthy again.
Update Sept 4th, here's a video of Foose working on the car
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Things I didn't know, and just learned... Ann Margaret liked a Falcon, and her dad had one too, that he drove her to the '62 Academy Awards in. She had hers slightly upgraded by Barris
In her 1964 Ford Falcon Sprint convertible. At 23, her Ford Falcon was her first car.
After purchasing it, she brought it to George Barris who repainted it pink. He also added a Muntz Autostereo tape deck. Barris said of her Falcon, "It was the hot rod Falcon with the 260 V8, and she really liked to make it scoot".
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Jackie Coogan, WW2 vet, the original Uncle Fester actor... had Barris make his LTD better
When the U.S. entered World War II as a result of the Pearl Harbor attack, Coogan requested transfer to the AAF as a glider pilot because of his civilian flying experience. He was sent to glider school at Lubbock, Texas, and Twentynine Palms, Calif. Upon graduation, he was made a Flight Officer. He then volunteered for hazardous duty with the 1st Air Commando Group being formed by the famous Col. Phil Cochran. In December 1943, the unit was sent to India where, using Waco CG-4A gliders, it airlifted crack British troops under Gen. Orde Wingate during the night aerial invasion of Burma (March 5, 1944), landing them in a small jungle clearing 100 miles behind Japanese lines. Coogan returned to the United States in May 1944 and was discharged in December. 1945.
Sunday, May 21, 2023
A post to realize what an impact Harry Bradley had on cool cars, racers, Barris, car magazines, and kids... his designs were everywhere, and influenced so many - even the term "Hot Wheels" from about 1968 to 1971 - the coolest stuff of that era. He died last weekend
Harry Bradley decided what would be the first 16 Hot Wheels, and kicked off the entire Hot Wheels empire, plus, the name “Hot Wheels ” was chosen after someone at Mattel saw Harry’s customized El Camino in the Mattel parking lot. He commented that “Those are some hot wheels” and the name stuck!
Harry designed the RTX Cuda https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-rtx-cuda-helluva-cool-custom-grill.html and sketched the designs for the entire original Plymouth Rapid Transit System Caravan
Plymouth’s period Rapid Transit System ad campaign, the Caravan included a Duster, Road Runner, and a clone of drag-racing star Don Prudhomme’s Plymouth funny car, and this Barracuda
Harry Bradley was assigned the job of coming up with artwork for the customs. Since he didn’t have a real Duster to base his drawings on, he had to use sketches of what the stock Duster would look like. Plymouth had to sign off on Bradley’s work before his ideas were realized in lead and paint.
Bradley came up with another cool touch—large flip-style racing-type gas caps—one for each quarter. Since the Duster only had one gas tank, the second cap was a dummy. So, if a dummy gas jockey filled you up through the dummy cap, he filled the trunk, not the tank (big deal, gas was cheap back then.) The gas cap was the same piece used on the Ford Cobras, but it wasn’t a Ford original. The Blue Oval boys had borrowed it from its original application-on an English oil truck. The same cap, by the way, is used today on Vipers.
Bob Larivee, who put on the Detroit Autorama, also pointed them toward notable custom-car builders who could bring Bradley's designs to life. Byron Grenfell was assigned a 1970 340 Duster to work over, and Roman's Chariot Shop (one of the coolest shop names ever) was handed a 1970 Hemi Roadrunner. The Rapid Transit 1970 'Cuda and 1971 Road Runner were both given to 1968 Ridler award-winning builder Chuck Miller at Styline Custom in Detroit.
and the 1969 Plymouth Super Wedge https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-1969-plymouth-super-wedge.html
and the Barris Snake Pit https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2015/12/if-this-ever-had-landspeed-record-its.html but I doubt you'll find that mentioned anywhere else
As Harry put it in a 1985 article in Super Rod and Custom magazine, "They had gotten to me -- 'they' being Pinin Farina, Harley Earl, Joe Bailon, the Barris brothers. My parents didn't have a chance against the likes of them." https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2011/06/harry-bradleys-1951-custom-chevy.html
He became a member of the Drivin’ Deuces car club and began making modifications to his 1951 Chevrolet Bel Air, changing it into the legendary "La Jolla" when he was 15 yrs old, still in high school in 1954. He talked his parents into buying it from the milkman!
When enrolling in Pratt Institute’s industrial design school, his talent was noticed by General Motors, which led to the company offering him a position as a designer when they hired him in July 1962
Within weeks of his arrival in Detroit at GM Design Staff, while working for the Cadillac design studio, Harry and the Alexander Brothers had forged a relationship that would result in more than 10 Bradley-designed custom cars over the next eight years, including legendary vehicles like the Dodge Deora, and the Alexa, a 1964 Ford fastback Galaxie that was part of the Ford Custom Caravan
Although it was against company policy, he continued to publish designs for hot rod and custom magazines under the name Mark Fadner.
Harry even made his own website and published his own art http://redlineprotos.com/Harry%20Bradley/Harry_Bradley_new.htm
his fame was enough to get his designs desired by toy companies, George Barris, Rodding and Re-styling, Customs Illustrated, and Rod & Custom magazines
and there was even a book made of his designs and art:
He grew up in the suburbs of Boston where his early artistic talent was nurtured through youth classes at the Museum of Fine Arts.
During the summer of 1949, fourteen year old Harry contracted Polio - putting him in Boston's Children's Hospital for seven months. He passed the time with drawing. Nurses would place his wheel chair by a window overlooking the street so he could sketch automobiles.
The Turbo Titan III was Bradley's vision of a turbine powered show truck in 1965.
before I move past what he did while working for GM, I want you to know that I'm not making the encyclopedia entry, just trying to show complete respect, and sitting at a laptop in San Diego, without the benefit of his family's knowledge, like his son's for example, or the Hot Rod and GM archives, I'm not able to do his work the proper service that it deserves - by someone writing a book, or magazine article retrospective. I only have what I can find in 4 hours online, because I've got stuff to do today.
We won't ever know the totality of his work at GM, for magazines, and toy model car companies, but there was a lot
Worth the time to ponder is how much he designed without getting public credit for, like the 69 Firebird Trans Am, and the 67 GM trucks (see bottom of this post)
Harry took advantage of GM's Fellowship study program for a Masters degree at Stanford University. While in California, he did some moonlighting on for custom car builders, the Alexander Brothers.
In the spring of 1966 Harry was recruited away from GM by the Mattel corporation. Mattel wanted to hire a designer from one of Detroit's "Big 3" to create the look of their new Hot Wheels die-cast cars. Bradley's mix of hot rod and mainstream car design proved the perfect combination.
Although the Hot Wheels were an enormous success, the toy company was unwilling to commit to a second series. So after less than a year with Mattel, Harry resigned to start his own design firm
He was inducted into Darryl Starbird's National Rod and Custom Hall of Fame.
from what I've posted so far, you might get the idea that his designs were all futuristic and funky 60s, but that's not the limit of his broad variety at all, so, please, also appreciate the cars made from his designs that were very cool:
above was named Afterglow
I want to repeat, the above was built by Sam Foose
he spent the majority of his career teaching at Art Center College of Pasadena, for 24 years, 1974-1998 https://archives.artcenter.edu/bradley-harry
If you want to see what the Art Center College has online about Harry, https://archives.artcenter.edu/informationobject/browse?sort=lastUpdated&topLod=0&query=Harry+Bradley&sq0=Harry+Bradley&sortDir=desc
but was still doing side work,
and the May 2003 Classic Trucks feature article is online, complete: https://www.67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard//showthread.php?t=442296
and the modern-day Oscar Mayer Wienermobile
In 1977, the Wienermobiles were put on hiatus, the brand retired the fleet and intended to do so for good, as it moved toward other forms of advertising. Then, in 1986, Oscar Mayer rolled out a singular Wienermobile for a special 50th anniversary party.
The lone Wienermobile's appearance alone attracted significant attention — so much attention, in fact, that Oscar Mayer decided to relaunch its Wienermobiles, introducing six brand-new mobiles in 1988.
and https://www.deansgarage.com/harry-bentley-bradley-part-2/
Someone wrote him a Wikipedia page, but it's not worth reading. It's just not respectable to have that little about someone who did so much more. This post was 4 hours, so far
read the fine print, it's the only interview I've found where he talked about his cars
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