What happened to these customs ???

[Eshaver]

I was writing one of the fellow forum members last evening and I commented on his knowledge of Custom Cars . Since he didn't know , I'm throwing it out for everyone to see. First there was Bill Cushenberry's Silhouette . For anyone interested in a little history her goes. The car was featured on the cover of Rod and Custom in January 1963, thank you (Hot-Rodasaurus). It showed the original deep Red Kandy finish with a hint of Gold on it's underside . The bare aluminum shown inthe cowling alongside where the straight exhausts were . Also prominent was it's Fuel injected 58 Buick V-8 Nailhead engine too. The car was shown this way briefly as headlights were added just after the car was shown in the magazine . Wire wheels by Budd were also added. In 1964, A M T got hold of the car and transplanted a Ford 427 into the car with twin four barrel carburation. .The car also received a new coat of Lavender A M T marketed as Evening Orchid. There , the car was featured within Car Craft Magazine in the rotogravure or "Green " pages and later a Hot Rod Spotlight book known as Custom Car Yearbook#1. The lavender-Pink car was prominently on the cover again as it was now a championship show winner . A M T then released the car in kit form with a unique matching trailer that made for some interesting trucks of the day . In 1967, the car was taken by E I Dupont for their car care program to promote Simonize 7 products. At the same time , the car was given a unique air scoop that resembled a Star Wars Air Cleaner on a Buick G S 455. It was also repainted a beautiful pearlesent Purple.. From there , I really cant tell you where the car was . I can share with you that on research, the real car was stolen in California in 1983. So where is the Shillouette? will it be found similar to the Mysterion in Mexico behind a store ?

The Fururesta was built by Daryl Starbird in early 1962. It was to be a way to promote Monogram Model Company. In 1963 It was the cover car for Car Craft Magazine . There it was pearl White with a Red interior! Running the three wheel wonder was a souped up Volkswagen engine . From the moment I first saw the car, I fell in love with it . In 1965 Monogram did indeed kit the car, in Yellow! Never understood that either as the car was shown in several publications in the day as being white too. The kit saw one re-issue in 1967 never to be heard from again ! O K , what happened to the REAL Futuresta, what happened to the dies to make the kit ? I never see any mention of this car mentioned from Starbird Customs . Still, the Predicta which was kitted by Monogram has been re-issued several times much to the delight of Mark Gustovision and Dennis Doty.

So where are these kits and cars today........... humm????????

Ed Shaver

[robertw]

Thanks for the history Ed, I'd been trying to find pics of the Starbird car just this past weekend.

I built both in the mid '60's, the Silhouette as a custom and the Futurista in AMT Candy Red laquer spray. I've been thinking lately of redoing both and while the Silhouette kit is easy to find the Starbird model may be very difficult to find. I could strip and rebuild my original but I'm a believer that 40+ year old builds that are still in good shape should be preserved since it's part of my personal modelling history.

robw

[Guest promodmerc]

The cars them selves could be here.

http://www.darrylstarbird.com/museum.htm

[Eshaver]

Uh Promodmerc, I have seen that site and I even went so far as to try and contact Mr. Starbird directly. See, first I used to run into one of his former employees when I still owned a Van accessory manufacturing company in Houston years ago.The link works but strangely , the Futuresta dosen't appear and trying to contact Mr. Starbird wont go through. Yahoo kicked back several e-mails I sent .

As for the model kit ever being re-released, I suggest we contact Revell-Monogram such as people did to get the Lil Coffin and the Predicta reissued . Since the modee companies want to hear from us ( HAH HAH HAH HAH HAHAHAHAHA) uh mebbie a few e-mails to the cooperate bean counters might work !!!!!!!!!!!!! Ed Shaver

[Olle F]

Ed,

I'm not a custom expert, so I don't even know what those cars looke like. But I visited Starbirds museum about a year ago so if you could post pictures, I can look through the pictures I took and see if they are there.

[Chromecop]

......................will it be found similar to the Mysterion in Mexico behind a store ?........................

Sorry for being a "nit-picker" but the Roth custom recently found in Mexico was the Orbitron, not the Mysterion.

//Darryl

[Terry Sumner]

you know the Little Coffin was modified to the point of being nearly unrecognizeable. that old favorite is supposedly still in the Starbird collection.

Dave

Dave,

Where did you get that idea? I think more like any changes are unrecognizeable. The Lil Coffin has been restored yes, but it's pretty darn close to original. It was on display recently at the 2009 Daryl Starbird Show and someone from the KC Slammers took a bunch of great photos of it and put them in a Fotki album here... http://public.fotki.com/kcslammers/darryl-...darryl-starbir/

Here is picture of how it looked in 1962...

Hosted on Fotki

And here is how it looks now....just one of KC Slammer's photos...

Hosted on Fotki

[Terry Sumner]

Terry, the last pics i had seen of hte car it was in front of Darryl's house with no top, wire wheels and alot of other changes. i didn't know it was "restored" back to it's original looks! one of those pictures is in the book "the American Custom Car".

Dave

No problem

Sure looks great now doesn't it! Personally, I'm very glad the Lil Coffin has been restored. It's one of those iconic show cars from my youth that I remember so fondly....and did such a lousy job of building the model!

Terry

[samdiego]

I agree. The Lil Coffin has been one of my favorite showrods for decades. It was rearranged badly in the 80's, it's good to see it back in nearly original form. I think the roof looks funny on the restored version.

Here's all of the original cover. This was when the car belonged to Larry Farber, the first owner. Note the interior at this point.

How crazy is it that the LC is the only real car to be found, front or back of a 1962 "real car" mag?

The back of my copy was signed by Ed Roth in Tucson.

Ads for Roth T-shirts and Revell Roth models made up the inside front cover, the inside back cover and the back cover!

Edited January 23, 2009 by samdiego

[old-hermit]

Everybodys seen the Silhouette so heres the futurista.

Edited January 23, 2009 by old-hermit

[Danno]

Unfortunately, the Futurista was destroyed when it was dropped from a transporter while Monogram was touring it around the country. Starbird bought the salvage from the insurance company but never rebuilt it. Eventually, he used portions of the salvage to build the "Star Trek Coupe," a strange-looking 70's-ish psychedelic thing that was nowhere nearly as beautiful or graceful as the Futurista.

Regarding the Lil Coffin, it was originally owned and built in 1954 by Dave Stuckey, an employee of Starbird's Star Kustom Shop in Wichita. Starbird collaborated with Stuckey on a rebuild of the car that was finished in 1956; that's when the iconic rear was formed from two '53 Studebaker rear pans. Next, Starbird built a custom nose for the car with dual vertical quad headlamps, similar in appearance to the Ala Kart's nose. Then, in 1960, Stuckey started his own shop in Wichita. Larry Farber bought the Coffin from Stuckey and had him craft the Coffin's trademark cantilever roof. Farber toured it on the show circuit for a couple of years. In 1962, Starbird was Monogram's model car styling consultant and persuaded Monogram to buy the Lil Coffin from Farber and release the 1/24 scale kit. Starbird later bought the car from Monogram, and many years later restyled it several times. One version had a sedan delivery body grafted to the rear of the famous cantilever roof and was called the "Monkey Ward Delivery." Later, Starbird whacked off the roof entirely and restyled the car into the "Fabulous Phaeton." It was this version that caught fire and burned. After the fire, Starbird rebuilt it with a new metal roof and a very un-Coffin-like design (1993). Starbird has recently rebuilt the car in its most famous "Lil Coffin" style, although the new cantilever roof looks slightly thicker and bulkier than the original.

[george 53]

You can see in the Pics of the old/new LC that the roof looks alot thicker on the rebuilt one. And Sam, that's REALLY cool the way Big Daddy signed your mag!!! That's a family heirloom now!TOO COOL!

[Terry Sumner]

a very interesting history for the Little Coffin! sounds like a cool article for the Rodder's Journal to do too, hopefully with some cool pictures of the car through it's many changes.

Dave

Yeah! Wouldn't it be cool to have a model built as each one of the Lil Coffin's reincarnations from start to finish? Man what a project THAT would be! Woo-hoo...a lot of work indeed!

Terry Sumner

[samdiego]

I do have it framed, George. I remember the seeing the coffin in Custom Rodder when it had the sedan delivery conversion.

Kind of a 36 Dodge humped roof style. I cried. I really am a sucker for the '60's show rod. Maybe more now than then. I love seeing the old Monogram stuff making it back to the shelves.

Edited January 31, 2009 by samdiego

[Billy Kingsley]

Sadly I doubt the Silhouette will ever been seen again. I think if it is still out there, it would have turned up by now.

We can always hope, I suppose.

[pharoah]

Does anyone have a good picture or scan of the Monogram Futurista display? This is what they displayed a finished model on at the LHS. I found some pictures on Google,but they're kinda small. I'm making a replica of the display. I can't make out what it says on the lower left under 'Chrome plated volkswagen engine'.

Thanks in advance!

Here's a pic

Edited February 7, 2015 by pharoah

[Casey]

You might try to contact Dean Milano, John, as he has/had an original store display base at one time.

[pharoah]

Thanks for the information Casey!

[gtx6970]

cool subject.

I'm not a show car builder type. But I do have a few of these kits on hand ,,, and do plan to replicate a few of these cars from back then someday . I've always liked the Starbird cars over just about anything Roth did .

The sixtes was sure was wild time for the customizers .

And it sure would be cool to know which ones survived,,and which ones didnt

[Jon Haigwood]

Early versions of the Little Coffin (some before it was called the LC)

For some reason I can't figure out how to post a link but there is a bunch of info on the Kustomrama.com site.

[Draggon]

It was the Orbitron that was found languishing in Mexico. Its been restored, but that pimp my ride fellow Boeckmann bolloxed it all up. Compare the stance of the original with the pimpin' stance it has now:

[jbwelda]

never was one of Eds better creations, looks as crappy restored as the original did

jb

[Casey]

never was one of Eds better creations, looks as crappy restored as the original did

Slightly better than the Druid Princess, and that's not saying much.

Speaking of the Orbitron, I came across this article last night, and it made for some interesting ready. Not exactly something you'd want to read to the kiddies as a bedtime story due to some language, but not the worst, either: http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/03/orbitron-apocalypto.html

[oldnslow]

WOW! Now that's a story.

[jbwelda]

quote from the article:

>Like the Beatnik Bandit and Mysterion it featured a bubbletop blown at Acry Plastics

that's kind of strange because in the Thacker book with Ed Roth, he talks about how those bubble tops were formed over bucks at the local pizza oven place. maybe I am confused, but I am pretty sure that's what he (Roth) said.

edit to add: after reading the whole thing, it kinda sounds like maybe Brian Williams had a hand in writing it.

jb

Edited February 11, 2015 by jbwelda