Fabricator Ryan Reed stuck to SO-CAL's postwar hot-rod protocol by retaining the body's stock overall dimensions. He eliminated the trunk to give the car a racier silhouette and improved the car's profile by flipping the front axle and mounting it ahead of the frame. He matched the front's stance by relocating the rear axle over the framerail.
Flanking the body is a pair of off-the-shelf SO-CAL stainless blisters; the wheels wear a set of custom-machined Mooneyes discs. While Ryan retained the stock gauges, he set them in an engine-turned dashpanel, a sheet that also boasts a hand-cast pewter Anniversary logo.
Embee Powder Coating gave the entire car a basecoat for the SO-CAL crew to adorn with the trademark red-and-white graphic. Dennis Ricklefs applied a few strokes of One-Shot to its skin, Gabe Lopez stitched a brown-leather gut for its cockpit, and G&A Metal Polish brightened whatever wasn't clad in paint or swathed in leather. Finally, Ryan badged the car's bustle with a SO-CAL Speed Shop body tag.
In case you're wondering about the handle behind the car, keep in mind that due to tall gears, most postwar lakes racers required a good push to get to speed. What better way to get there than by a '32 hood handle?
Babester: America's Most Beautiful Pedal Car?
Boyd Coddington and Boyd Coddington Hot Rod and Collectibles With his cars' innovative designs and one-off components, few people have reinvented the wheel-both literally and figuratively-as many times as Boyd Coddington has. The guy has an entire genre named after him, for Pete's sake. Or would that be Boyd's sake?
While he too dispatched of his car's body, he did so in typical Boyd Coddington fashion: He commissioned a handformed aluminum shell reminiscent of the body that earned Boydster the 1996 America's Most Beautiful Roadster title.
The baby Boydster-dare we call it Babester?-sits on an entirely handformed tubular steel chassis. The Boyd Coddington Hot Rod and Collectibles team turned out a grip of billet accessories, including a stainless grille insert, windshield posts, steering wheel, and hubs. Between those hubs is a true beam axle, handformed from stainless plate and welded together in the characteristic profile; flanking those same hubs is a Boyd trademark: a set of billet wheels, fastened to the car with hidden fasteners.
While Gabe Lopez trimmed the kid-sized cockpit in kid-glove red leather, Sherm's Plating put its own brand of shine on things. Dennis Ricklefs crested the body's sinuous lines with a few lashes of a squirrel-haired sword only after the Hot Rod and Collectibles crew plied the body in DuPont. The color? Boyd Red, of course!
Chip Off The Ol' Block
Chip Foose and Foose Design
You don't even need to own a television to know that the Chip Foose crew can transform anything modest, dilapidated, or even uninspiring into a work of art between commercial breaks and in less than an hour. Sure, the producers skew the timeline to maintain our fleeting interests, but for the past four years, the Foose Design crew has turned out some of the finest examples of rolling art and showed viewers everywhere how they did it.
It appears that, like Bobby Alloway, Chip started with a Poli Form body for his car; however, that's where all similarities end. Chip's car is markedly longer through the nose and looks decidedly smoother around its character lines-in fact, its tulip panel lacks its character line altogether.
The front features a heavily dropped tube axle that disappears under the grille shell. Behind that shell is a trio of elbowed tubes, slash-cut to mimic air scoops atop a set of Strombergs. Behind those scoops is a tubular windshield frame, handformed to reflect that on the original pedal car. Chip eliminated the fuel tank altogether and installed a full-width roll pan in its place.
Bill Dunn Interiors and Hector Cisneros transitioned the side panels to blend into the wraparound seat. The seat and panels now wear a topstitched leather hide, fashioned into a pleat 'n' roll arrangement. Charlie Hutton and Andrew Patterson laid down the black-and-tan scallop job; Dennis Ricklefs defined it with a red line.