Road & Track February/March 2021

COLORIZATION: JORDAN J. LLOYD AND DYNAMICHROME / PHOTO BY DON WERNER/THE ENTHUSIAST NETWORK VIA GETTY IMAGES AT THE HEART of car culture lurks a powerful strain of creative destruction. A certain species of enthusiast chases a rare machine to the far reaches of the Internet or rummages through barn chambers. He or she then buys the car, only to deplete all resources customizing it in ways that make other species of enthusiasts cringe. In this Custom-themed double issue, we hack through the fascinating world of custom culture (and Kustom Kulture) and examine the impulse to not leave well enough alone, to transform a work of art into a new, more personal work of art. Like a lot of great moments in art, the lunatic flamejob Von Dutch painted on this…

AT THE HEART of car culture lurks a powerful strain of creative destruction. A certain species of enthusiast chases a rare machine to the far reaches of the Internet or rummages through barn chambers. He or she then buys the car, only to deplete all resources customizing it in ways that make other species of enthusiasts cringe. In this Custom-themed double issue, we hack through the fascinating world of custom culture (and Kustom Kulture) and examine the impulse to not leave well enough alone, to transform a work of art into a new, more personal work of art. Like a lot of great moments in art, the lunatic flamejob Von Dutch painted on this Mercedes 300SL Gullwing is a desecration of sorts (the car was eventually returned to its original paint scheme…

Matt Farah I’M THE HOST and producer of The Smoking Tire YouTube series and podcast and the owner of Westside Collector Car Storage in Playa Vista, California. I currently own four-, six-, eight-, and twelve-cylinder cars from 1986 to 1991. I selflessly agreed to a second loan of a McLaren 765LT so that I could help with photographing the car. I’m a giver. Also, I didn’t get around to scaring everyone I know during my first drive of the LT. Paul Kix I’m a writer and entrepreneur whose best-selling book, The Saboteur, was optioned by DreamWorks. I keep a newsletter on my website about the creative types who inspire me. Currently, I’m at work on a second book for an imprint of Macmillan. For this issue, I wrote about how Lewis Hamilton, with…

Matt Farah I’M THE HOST and producer of The Smoking Tire YouTube series and podcast and the owner of Westside Collector Car Storage in Playa Vista, California. I currently own four-, six-, eight-, and twelve-cylinder cars from 1986 to 1991. I selflessly agreed to a second loan of a McLaren 765LT so that I could help with photographing the car. I’m a giver. Also, I didn’t get around to scaring everyone I know during my first drive of the LT. Paul Kix I’m a writer and entrepreneur whose best-selling book, The Saboteur, was optioned by DreamWorks. I keep a newsletter on my website about the creative types who inspire me. Currently, I’m at work on a second book for an imprint of Macmillan. For this issue, I wrote about how…

THE COPS JUST pulled up. The K-9 unit’s here and the dog is out, sniffing around the trunk of a highly modified import. Pulses rise. A man with slicked-back hair relaxes against the powder-blue sedan, hands stuffed into his pockets. His posture is picture-perfect cool, but you can almost feel the man’s sweat-soaked pits as a second officer pulls out a notepad and pen. It’s all fake, of course—a scene ripped straight off the Instagram page of Paul Brewer, 36, of East Rochester, New York. Brewer is a paint-and-body man who moonlights as a Hot Wheels die-cast customizer. His elaborate dioramas of 1/64th-scale die-cast vehicles and tiny figurines are filled with whimsy, rendering his passion for fast cars with the delicate idealism of a Cézanne still life. While you’ll find every shade…

IN THE BEGINNING, there was only custom. Shape your own stone ax. Weave your own basket. Everything was engineered to hazy eyeball standards and built out of whatever was lying around. That changed around 1450 in Hungary when the “carriage trade” was born, and all the rich people started trying to one-up each other with super-fancy horse-drawn coaches. Mere carts and wagons were for farmers and tradesmen. The elite commissioned fine coaches. That’s when “custom” was born—for the first time. The industrial age brought standardization and mass production, and products that were once miraculous became ordinary. Anyone could have a Model T. Then, in 1919, George Riley of Los Angeles invented the “MultiLifts” that multiplied the valve lift on the Ford engine, increasing its power. This, the first known product intended…