Creighton Helms' 1936 Ford roadster - Wonderful Cherries From Lowly Pits Grow

Whereas the '50s transformed the custom car into a vibrant machine that looked as if it were dipped in candy and overlaid in pearl, the custom car was anything but outlandish in the period immediately after World War II. In fact, due to the popularity of darker metallic paints otherwise intended for Cadillacs, Chryslers, and Packards at the time, postwar customs looked rather conservative. The metallic maroon applied to this car started as straight toner purchased from a paint supplier as it closed out the last of its old-stock lacquer. With a light pinch of metallic dust, it replicates the look of the early Poly paints that revolutionized the image of the luxury automobile in the first half of the last century.

Beauty It's More Than Skin Deep More than merely a cool car, Creighton's '36 represents something else. In one way it celebrates what made a '40s custom car beautiful and unique, using both parts and philosophies popular at the time. The headlights, grille, license-plate insert, and bumpers all bear shades of Westergard, Bertolucci, and Calori. The oversized vents in the hood sides imply serious power, la supercharged Duesenberg (in this case, supercharged Flathead). The speedster-style top, with its hidden snaps and padded seams, repeats the shapes within the car in a way only a handful of trimmers like Bob Lee could master.

For every way it is like a postwar custom, however, there's another that distinguishes it as a very contemporary car. Run your eyes over its curves, for example, and try to find a ripple, bump, or blemish in its zaftig body. For that matter, try to find variations in the panel gaps. There's probably more time spent pecking, filing, and block sanding the underside of this car as there is in the whole topside of many others. As nice as we'd like to remember cars built in a bygone era, they weren't this close to perfect. Even if they had the technology, the incentive wasn't necessarily there, either; they were only 10-year-old production cars at that time, not the prized jewels they are now.

By what our forebears did with them, they're no longer ordinary production cars. They're overlaid with a veneer of popular culture, and that makes them far more valuable. In a way, Creighton's resolve to fulfill this dream and complete this particular car legitimizes both the car and the era.

OK, so it was a big chunk to swallow. But then again, was it worth it? To borrow a quote, "... the pain passes, but the beauty remains."