We've been playing in the shop again...

Two years ago this December we finished up the shop-sponsored car, a 1993 Buick LeSabre. It started out as a $750, gold, nothing driver. The owner had it painted bright green, added 22" spinners, frenched antennaes, louvers and custom grill, and then we started playing with the interior and trunk area. It was supposed to be just some green piping to set off the interior a bit, but it sort of steamrolled into the "Pro Stitch car." At least that's how I hear it referred to a lot. I also tell him it's The Green Weenie.

It's been to several shows, in parades, at our booth on display at a lot of events, and was stored for awhile when he was driving some of his other cars. It's held up really well, but we haven't done a whole lot of additional stuff to it.

In October we're taking it to a show in Shelbyville, IL to be part of the shop booth display. It's a judged show, and you have to have the hood open to get judged. This thing isn't a muscle car or hot rod. It just has a 3800 6-cyl that's had nothing done to it. The shock towers haven't even been painted. So we wanted to do something odd and still get judged.

Instead of doing the engine, we did an engine cover. The trunk is button tufted on the base and side panels, and smooth under the deck, so we made these panels mimmick the back. On the underhood panels, we did put the Buick logo and name in embossing. I'm not a big fan of embossing because it's done wrong so many times and bubbles and falls apart. But that's a popular style around here, and this car is our showcase for what we can do. The big question is if the judges will consider the panels as an acceptable engine presentation. My argument is that a lot of the pro-built hot rods anymore have metal paneling to hide just about every part of the engine (Chip Foose likes clean engine compartments). This is no different except it's using cloth and buttons.

It'll be a lot easier having the car sitting out at the booth than what I did last weekend. It was the Route 66 Mother Road Festival in Springfield, IL. The past few years we've had the car and our booth set up for car showers to stop by and talk. But this year the show was under new management and the prices went up and they didn't really want small, local guys in attendance. So I loaded up the backpack with 1,000 flyers, some T-shirts, mugs and pens and started walking around. I got 600 flyers out and talked to a lot of people. A few people even chased me down the block to get a flyer. I've already gotten three hits on the flyers, not to mention the five or six on the day of who said they would be in touch.

Now that this is done, it's time to get back to work.


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HOLY COW!! UNBELIEVABLE....Great Job

looking good nice work brotha

Wouldn't that affect engine performance and cooling or is it strictly for show cars that aren't driven?

Seems kinda silly to me.

eeewww

Way to step yo game up playa

Arch Bishop Don Juan would be all up in dat mug mang

Mixed reactions are par for the course with this car. On another forum I visit, the reactions went from thinking it was cool and over the top to gross and hideous. We hear the same thing at shows when people are walking around the car. It's more heavily weighted towards liking it, however, but there are some old codger hot rodders who just cluck their tongues at it. The owner has also had offers to buy it, and when he is out driving it (it was his daily driver for the first year after we finished the interior) I'll get calls from people standing in parking lots reading my number off the window and asking about my doing their cars. So it has more than paid for itself.

BUT, and it's the reason we do it, this thing can be sitting in a sea of hot rods and muscle cars at a show and people will make a bee line towards it. on Saturday there was a done up 38 Dodge right behind us, and other hot rods all around and this had people around it all day. It's a nice addition to my show booth that I set up (it's in the background).


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Kids seem to love it. They turn the spinners and like to read the pillows. I told Shane, the owner, that we're going to end up replacing the corners of the engine cover because everyone who walked around the car trailed their fingers over the puffy stuff to touch it. It was funny to watch.

Oh, and it also got a Top 20 award from about 80 cars entered.

As for the engine bay treatment, yes, it's only for show. The hood won't even close all the way down with everythign in place. We have no chrome or pretties on the engine itself, so this is the engine treatment. The judges were a bit on the fence about that, but it's really no different from Troy Trepanier doing color-matched sheet metal panels in an engine compartment to totally obscure an engine, or people putting fake Hemi head caps on their regular small-block engine. It's all presentation.