Thread: What is a custom?

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Weird i know , but this ? has been bugging me. Ive been to a few shows lately, and the cars that win best kustom, in my view are not hardly kustom. To me a true kustom car is that has many mods, one that is far fom stock. The show i went to this last weekend, a 60 caddy won, it was a nice car , but it was stock, a little shiny stuff inside, and a suede black paint job with a gold and yellow metalflake roof, with gold scallops, factory body, no mods other than lowering. So what is your definition of custom?

Restyled or modified for the purpose of making it more attractive.....(and sometimes you have to remember..... "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".) :-)

Hot Rods are sometimes restyled, but it's more about being "stripped down" for performance.

Here it is , nice car, but not custom imo

This one was more custom to me

Would you believe "Personalized appearance"?

"Back in the day" ('50s & '60s) we might have called this a mild custom, since it is mostly done with lowering, paint and accessories.

Yes, the Caddy is a mild custom, a cruiser, and the Ford is a full custom, since it's chopped and otherwise modified. The old rules stated that a full custom had to be chopped and/or sectioned. The basic profile had to be changed.

I agree with R Pope. I won a trophy for my '34 Ford roadster for best custom once and I really couldn't understand that, it's a streetrod in my mind. I'm sure there were guys there that owned customs that would have agreed with me. I just felt a bit uncomfortable about accepting it but what do you do, tell them you don't want it? Is there a gracious way out of a situation like that?

Yeah, that Caddy is a custom, but a MILD custom as R Pope said. There are varying degrees of customs, from MILD to RADICAL (or full). In the "day" a nose and deck job, some skirts, different hubcaps, and simple changes like that turned a car into a custom.

I think what is confusing you is that you felt there were not enough modifications to the Caddy to fit that description, and you are right as far as a Radical Custom goes.

Don

Yeah thats it, but i have noticed this at alot of shows lately, so it made me wonder if i was missing something, i was at that show in daytona, and a mild merc won, when imo there was way more custom cars there than that one, including the aztec chevy, so it just got me wondering what a custom was.

Plus ive noticed alot of politics involved in what car wins.

yep today the do some fancy interior work it gets a kustom insignia. My years growing up a car being called a custom had sheet metal and interior work done to it. Its a little harder now days that there is not this much work put into the cars.

I think over the last decade they have expanded the definition to muse the spectators . HRD i too look at the cars in the old websters of my mind and class them there . Trick interior is just that . In 20 years a 85 crown vic will be the car shows with same from all auto makers.

Then all imports

Yup, all of mine are mild customs

Dave mustang and rancharoo is more then Mild LOL. But that will be one sweet car in shiny when you are done . All kustoms have a name and wondering what you will call it .

Oh, okay. Well then, this one must be mild

Sure is shiny and one cool looking kustom . Glad you still here and building what alot of us grew up with .