Is there such a thing as a practical custom rod? If so, Lance Overholser's '64 Ford Custom 300 may qualify. With a fuel-injected V-8, overdrive transmission, and sensible suspension, this road-worthy mild custom is as easy to cruise as it is to look at.
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Ronnie Staples Reunites His '50 Ford With Its Original Builder
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Custom Rodder has profiled many significant car builders and vehicles in this column the past several years. For our finale issue, however, it's only fitting to share the history of the man behind the National Rod & Custom Car Hall of Fame Museum, Darryl Starbird.
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My oldest brother, Don, had a '57 Ford when he got out of the Navy in 1957. I was only about 7 years old at the time, but it was my first realization that some cars were really cool. He immediately had it customized with a Continental kit, skirts, lakes pipes, and shaved emblems.
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Steve Frediani's Classically Modern '51 Ford
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I had been itching to do a traditional, non-billet, non-tech car for some time, and had this '56 Dodge racing around in my head for months. That got me to thinking about other non-Chevy Tri-Fives ('55-57 models), so I whipped together a slick '56 Ford companion.
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Check out this pristine 1957 Ford Coupe!
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It's Good To Have Friends In High Places. Chad Walen's buddy, Lee Breckheimer, was a crop duster in North Dakota who often used his lofty views to scout out old cars for Chad and his uncle. "He found everything you can imagine," Chad says, "from a '34 Ford Tudor sedan, to '48-53 Chevy trucks, Nashes
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Growing up in Brighton, Massachusetts, in the late '60s, Mike Murray was drawn to the musclecar scene thanks to numerous vicious street machines tearing up his town's streets. Although these cars possessed demonic power, they lacked the graceful lines worn by another style of car Mike fell for: cust
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Attention, Custom Rodder readers! Do not mistake this slick '55 Ford Ranch Wagon for a show car. It's a daily driver. Come rain, come shine, and yes, even come snow, Donny Seyfer cruises his mod-motored wagon around Wheat Ridge, Colorado.
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Contrary to conventional wisdom, a car doesn't always need radical bodywork, flashy wheels, and candy-colored paint to capture attention in the rod and custom realm. Sometimes you can wow your peers with subtlety and make a strong statement with simple colors, clean lines, and masterful attention to
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Although it may seem hard to fathom today, many of the well-known creations built by National Rod & Custom Hall of Fame members were lost, damaged, or destroyed after the custom car heyday faded in the 1960s. While we revere vehicles such as the Hirohata Merc, the Aztec, and the Golden Indian, at on
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Check out this incredible 1949 Ford Coupe powered by a supercharged Windsor small block engine!
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An uncompromising custom sports roadster
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Want to Get Famous?We want photos of your custom rod ('49-or-later vehicle), whether it is under construction or finished. Maybe you know where some Later Iron is just "rusting in peace." Clear, glossy, complete photos are preferred, in color or black and white; no instant photos, please. Send to: C
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Mass-produced automobiles are, by their very nature, wrought with compromise. In order to appeal to a wide consumer base, most production cars are designed to do many things moderately well at the expense of doing any one thing exceptionally well. That's why so many of us like to modify them.
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Conventional wisdom tells us that it's generally more cost effective to buy a finished or almost-finished custom car than it is to build one from the ground up. The hard truth is that most customs cost more to construct than they're worth when complete. That's
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Tom Wahl's Minnesota-Based Lumber Longroof
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When Detroit builds a car, it takes a matter of hours to traverse the assembly line. When most of us build customs, it takes much longer--sometimes months, more often years. When the television show Overhaulin' builds a custom car, it borrows a page from the Bible--seven days of creation.
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Smooth BirdTen years ago, most would have probably never imagined a custom-rodded '70 T-Bird! But that didn't stop Dearborn, Michigan's Alex Test from giving his big ol' 'Bird the smooth treatment. Along with removing the vinyl top, marker lights, side trim, and door handles, he dropped the Ford ove
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Lately, we've been seeing a lot of street rod builders building non-street rods. That isn't to say they're building "off-road" vehicles, rather post-'48 rods...in other words, custom rods! But don't automatically assume that the earlier-iron well is drying up, quite the contrary-the street rod indus
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Bobby Alloway's '49 Ford Convertible
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Have you ever seen an old car--maybe rotting away in a junk yard or behind someone's house--that you'd never imagine in a million years had the potential of being resurrected into a work of art, let alone operational? We all have, and there are even a few out
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Get the scoop on this completely redone 1960 Ford Sunliner Convertible built to cruise from Custom Rodder Magazine
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Amongst the clutter of today's automotive reality shows, you'll find a few various episodes worth watching. Sometimes, the problem is knowing which ones to watch without getting suckered into a lame one! For us, we sometimes have the "inside scoop" on projects
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