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Gene Winfield: Kustom Car Icon
The Reactor, the Spinner, Jade Idol, Solar Scene, King T, Strip Star, Maybellene. This list represents just some of the all-time greats created by Gene Winfield. Like a legendary megastar, Winfield has rocked the custom car world with these and other hits. His work on Blade Runner and the original Star Trek series gave the masses the opportunity to view his work via television and the cinema. But through his life’s work in the custom car world, Winfield has indubitably carved his niche as an innovator/inventor, artist/artisan and visionary genius. A self-taught welder, people now come from all over the globe to his Mecca in the Mojave Desert to take classes from the master himself. However, his creative and created artistic form of car painting established his iconoclastic status in custom car circles. Few still have mastered his painstaking blending technique and none rivals his artistic flair. Because of this, one might expect to meet a bit of an eccentric or egotist. Perhaps a mumbling, inarticulate Ozzy Osbourne. Or maybe a moody, angst-riddled Kurt Cobain. Or even a flashy, loud, prima donna of a Gene Simmons. Instead, it takes a bit of searching to find the legend’s booth at any given car show. Tucked away in a row of nondescript booths, Winfield rushes back and forth, manning the counter, ringing up sales, and looking like someone desperately in need of an assistant. The epitome of the custom car world, with plain slacks and nondescript T-shirt draping his slight build, looks and acts ready to go to work on a car rather than hold court with adoring fans. Yet he will take time to talk (not pontificate) with anyone wishing to engage him in conversation, especially if bearing technical customizing questions. To view his greatness however, simply seek out the car he brought to the show. Likely a multi-award winner, the car speaks of his rich, artistic genius. The world welcomed this custom car Icon in 1927. Born in Springfield, Missouri, the Winfields moved to Modesto, California when young Gene was just 18 months old. At age 15, Winfield got his first car, a ’28 Model A coupe, which he gave some cosmetic customizing, then hopped up the engine and installed a straight pipe so he could street race it. Thus began his love affair with rods and a brief stint in auto racing. But first, he enlisted in the Navy. “I went into the Navy when I was 17…16 or 17,” Winfield said. “I was in the Navy at the end of World War II and they had a deal where you could join the Navy before the end of war plus six months. So I was in six months, then the war was over.” Thinking his mandatory service to his country concluded with this enlistment, Winfield converted an old chicken house behind his mother’s home on Figaro Ave. in Modesto to work on cars. This became his first shop, Windy’s Custom Shop, which started in 1946 as a speed shop because, at the time, racing dominated his interest. “I was actually operating more like a speed shop. I was porting and relieving Flathead engines, selling cams and heads and setting up the Flathead motor,” Winfield said. However, he gradually got into custom bodywork because people requested it. “They wanted me to mold off the hood emblem or trunk emblem and so I started doing a little bodywork. I didn’t take any body classes in school, in high school, at all. It’s like all I took was auto mechanics. So I had to learn all this on my own,” Winfield said. “So I’m learning how to weld and filling these holes. Learn how to lead. I was doing everything in lead. Back then, there was no plastic…. I didn’t use Bondo until ’58…. I still lead today, if a customer wants it.” He began taking photographs of any customized car he could find at the time, teaching himself welding and how to work with lead. “There were no hot rod magazines of any kind…but I drove around and went to other cities like Sacramento and Oakland and I saw the other roadsters, recognized roadsters that people were building. I got ideas from them. I shot pictures everywhere I went. I had a little $6 camera and I took pictures of every car that had skirt or a hood, a trunk molded off. Anything that was done whatsoever. I still have a lot of those pictures. So that’s how I learned, on my own. All the metalworking stuff was just on my own way, trial and error. So now I’m teaching it,” Winfield said, laughing. In May 1949, Winfield took his ’27 T to run it at the dry lakes of El Mirage, where he posted 112 mph. Then he joined the Cal-Neva Roadster Association and raced the next month at the Reno Lakes Meet, where he made 114.4 mph. He ran his ’27 T coupe, now dubbed “The Thing” because of its strange low profile, at Bonneville in 1951 in the B Modified Coupe class. He turned 135 mph to the Pierson Brothers 150 mph in the same class. Winfield recreated The Thing a few years, taking it to Bonneville and El Mirage to race. Winfield even tried his hand at oval racing, placing 16th out of 30 cars at a local track in Madera, California, in his first race. After bringing an old Hudson with a Flathead six into Windy’s for some racing modifications, the driver asked Winfield to work his pit crew. When Winfield asked the driver before the race to go faster, the driver responded by getting Winfield behind the wheel. “I was racing jalopy races and roadsters and things like that. Then I also was drag racing. I did drag racing first on the illegal strip before they had the first legal strip, which was in ’48. I did lots of drag racing. I ran roadsters, rail top coupes, all different classes. In fact, I would change the class every other week or whatever. They had the same engine, which was a small-sized Flathead engine. I broke records and I got lots of trophies,” he said with a laugh. “I got almost 50 trophies in drag racing.” Winfield enjoyed trying to grow his business, but Uncle Sam came calling once more. Because his enlistment in the Navy lasted less than a one-year period, the draft caught up with him. This time, Winfield landed in the Army for two years, eventually stationed in postwar Japan in 1952. Being overseas serving his country did nothing to distract him from cars though. He built and raced a ’41 Ford while in Japan. “I built cars in Japan as a hobby. First we did it off the base. Then the base that I was on happened to be a MP battalion. I was with the MPs,” Winfield said. “So I started running a hobby shop there on the base and we built model airplanes, with leather tooling and copper tooling. I was the instructor on all that.” He also taught several other hobby classes, including a photography lab for the on-base GIs. “I built a ’41 Ford. Chopped and sectioned a ’41 Ford. Put ’46 front fenders on it while we were in Japan,” Winfield said. “Then we built a racing sports car — couple of them, actually — to do a little racing. They were racing some cars over there in Japan on a half-mile track. It was a cinder track and it was very, very slippery. So I arranged and drove in the first stock car race ever held in Japan.” After the Army, Winfield returned to Windy’s Custom Shop, which expanded twice before completely outgrowing his mother’s old chicken coop. In 1955, he moved his business to Tully Road in Modesto, across from the Modesto Junior College stadium. He renamed the shop Winfield’s. “I built a lot of cars there and a lot of them are well known cars today,” he said. “Like the Solar Scene, the Jade Idol, the King T. The King T won Oakland [Grand National Roadster Show] America’s Most Beautiful Roadster in ’64.” In 1962, Winfield participated, with other customizers, in the Ford custom car Caravan. Winfield built several cars, including the Pacifica, based on the Ford Econoline Pickup. It featured an asymmetrical design. In 1966, AMT asked Winfield to head the speed and custom division of this model car company in Phoenix, Arizona. “I was already doing styling consultant work with AMT Model Company,” he said. “I did that since, I think ’59 or ’60. So in ’66, they wanted me to come to Phoenix and help manage and help set up a complete factory shop over in Phoenix.” Winfield did a lot of television and movie work in Phoenix. He created the gadget cars Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Get Smart as well as the Galileo shuttlecraft for the original Star Trek television series. “We built the [Star Trek] shuttlecraft, full-size shuttlecraft that was two separate units,” Winfield said. “One would be a complete exterior, full size. Then we built the complete interior. This interior had what we called ‘wild’ walls. What you do is you make the walls in four-foot sections on wheels so you can put up one wall and they could film the actors sitting on the seats and whatnot. That wall is up for background. Then you take that wall away and put the other side up and then they’d film from a different direction. So sometimes, it what they call point of view. When you see two actors talking to each other and the camera will show one guy receiving the message and talking back, then the camera shows the other. Sometimes those are not even on the same day.” Other work included Robocop, Ironside, Bewitched, The Wraith, Magnum Force, Back to the Future (I and II), the Last Starfighter, the Mechanic, among others. Winfield also created six cars for the Woody Allen feature Sleeper. “Did all kinds of stuff. I did a car for the movie “Mechanic,” with Charles Bronson, where they blow up the car at the end of the movie. Well, I rigged the car up so that they didn’t have to blow up a brand new Mustang,” he said. Perhaps the best known, and certainly his largest undertaking, came with the movie Blade Runner. Winfield produced 25 cars, including several specially equipped with hydraulics so the wheels would retract to fly. Although the studio destroyed most of the cars after shooting, Winfield restored one for Paul Allen’s Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, Washington. The work with Hollywood coincided with AMT shutting down its speed and custom model division, so Winfield moved operations to Santa Monica in 1969. “We were so big, we decided to move the whole operation over to Santa Monica so we would be closer to the movie industry,” Winfield said. “So Chevrolet had donated a fleet of cars to use in the movie industry. Ford and Chrysler had already been doing that. Ford was doing it for the longest time. So I had a fleet of 75 Chevys. I went to all the studios and I doled those out for various movies and things like that to be used as ordinary cars. You know, driven cars.” Meantime, Winfield opened a custom car shop in North Hollywood. He moved this around a couple times in North Hollywood before settling in Canoga Park in 1978, where he worked until moving to the Mojave Desert in 2001. By the 1980s, and after performing over two decades of customizing work, Winfield saw the need for repair parts. So he developed a line of steel and fiberglass parts for Fords and Mercs, molding ’49 through ’51 fiberglass bodies. He also did some unusual work for commercials, including splitting an Impala front to rear with both sides drivable for Chevrolet, freezing a car in a block of ice for an oil company ad, and creating three full-size windup cars for Mobil Oil. Other clients included Shell Oil, Monroe Shocks, Prestone, Sunoco and Montgomery Ward. Goodyear had Winfield produce commercials for tires for 18 months. In the studio, Winfield drove tires over axe blades and drill bits for still photography, one of which Life Magazine featured in a two-page spread. Eventually, he built seven units for seven vans to be taken all over the country to Goodyear dealer lots to drive Goodyear tires over fire axe blades. “For 18 months, I did nothing but Goodyear commercials. Goodyear steel belted radials,” he said. “I built what we called weapons. I built a series of drill bits and axe blades and saw blades and all kinds of things, and then drove the tires over those things. I built rigs that they put in seven different states. I built a complete rig that would go into a van where they could take it to a shopping center, unload and bolt this whole thing together, 60 feet long, and drive cars over these axe blades.” However, his artistic sensibility prompted a need to experiment with custom painting, beginning in 1957 with a ’57 Chevy. “I created the blending of paint on a complete car,” Winfield said. “Personally did it a little bit on a motorcycle, then I actually blended one of my first cars….I remember [it] was a brand new ’57 Chevy that I blended…. I started highlighting the chrome. I would go around the chrome, I can remember, a silver car, I would paint it purple and lavender around the chrome…. Then I’d emphasize the paint and the design lines that were there.” The subtle technique for applying a blend or fade takes mastery and a true artistic flair, as anyone attempting it finds out. Patience and practice becomes the mantra, both for preparing the paint and in the blending or fading technique itself. Winfield mixes his own custom colors, from clears and toners. He sprays candy but prefers pearl to get the proper fade from one color extreme to the next. He painstakingly mixes the right shades, including the in-between colors. He used lacquer for many years and had a hard time adjusting to urethane, but now prefers urethane paint over lacquer. It has been said that Winfield can pull dissimilar colors together and make them work. Then he applies many, many thin coats of paint using perfect gun control. He has stated that he likes to make a car look flashy — harsh, even gaudy — yet let it be soft and elegant at the same time. Winfield’s precision and artistic creativity establishes him as the best in this art. “Actually, the first ones like that, as I look back on them, they’re kind of gaudy,” Winfield said. “They were not soft blend. Well, then I kept working with it and working with it, developing it.” This led to the first fully blended paint job that debuted on the Jade Idol, a radically kustomized ’56 Merc. He started work on the Jade Idol in 1959 and completed in it 1960 before taking it on national tour in 1961-62, where it won all kinds of awards. To create the Jade Idol, Winfield sectioned it, and then fitted it with Chrysler rear fenders. The offset headlights are staggered and tunneled, and the rear featured large taillights that blend down off quarter panels to the rear body pan. He hand made the front and rear grilles and bumpers to match. But according to Winfield, the Jade Idol’s clean, smooth styling sets it apart from his other creations. He said it has a look he has always liked. “I had seven or eight or 10 different colors just softly blended together and highlighted with gold pearl and gold powder and stuff like that,” he said. Tragically, the Jade Idol came to an untimely demise when it rolled in a trailer accident on the way to a show. Winfield followed the Jade Idol with the Solar Scene, a ’50 custom Merc with swiveling electrically operated seats. He chopped, channeled and shaved the car. He molded quad headlights into the front fenders and created new wheel well openings, accented with stainless steel. Winfield also formed new front and rear valances, and then added flat chrome bumpers. He cut a roof vent above the rear window and recessed stainless steel trim into the roof and down the trunk lid. The candy orange paint job featured red highlights around the wheel wells. A fully chromed Pontiac engine installed in a white engine compartment completed this beauty. He also created two remote controlled cars, Strip Star and the Reactor, during this time. Both futuristic designs sported handmade aluminum bodies. The Strip Star, a show race car, had an asymmetrically body with a Ford 427 engine, an enclosed driver’s compartment, open-air passenger seating and a full-length belly pan. The Strip Star ran 127 mph at Bonneville. Originally dubbed “Autorama Special,” the chromed, Corvair-powered Reactor had fully independent air/oil suspension. Based on a front-wheel drive Citroen chassis, the Reactor featured electric opening hood, doors and roof. Painted a stunning metallic green, Winfield showed the car around Hollywood, which led to his television and movie work. “I took it around to all these movie studios. I met all the transportation people and all of that. Sold this car off and I took pictures of Bill Cosby with the car. The Smothers Brothers and all kinds of people. Michael Landon sitting on it. Things like that,” he said. “So I showed it off and I got my foot in the door with the movie studios.” Winfield built Maybellene, a ’61 Coupe DeVille two-door with Northstar engine, airbag suspension and the famous Winfield signature paint job, of course, in 1999. It features a ’60 four-door roof with wrap-around back glass and elongated fins. Winfield received many awards for his lifetime work. Some notables include:
Winfield won the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster award in 1955, 1963 and 1964. Winfield still goes strong at 80. He still attends many custom car shows annually. He flies all over the United States and across the globe to paint cars. Last year, he did a car show in New Zealand, then chopped a car in Australia, and went to a car show in Germany four days after Bonneville. He painted cars in New Mexico, Washington, Boston and Tennessee. He teaches a spring and fall metalworking class at his Mojave Desert shop, but also holds metalwork workshops at colleges in Washington, Oregon, Michigan, Texas and Ohio. In his classes and workshops, he teaches gas welding aluminum, hammer welding, hammer forming, using an English wheel, all types of metal fabrication, as well as shows all the tricks he’s learned over the decades. “I’m teaching classes now. Twice a year, I teach workshop classes. All metal working: leading, shrinking, stretching, hammer welding, English wheels. All that stuff,” Winfield said. “I do that in the spring and fall. I have people come from all over…. I had two people came from Canada. They came from West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky. All around. Texas. They just loved it…. I just lay it on them hard. I go from 9:00 in the morning until 7:30 at night on Saturday. Then on Sunday from 9:00 in the morning until about 5:30.” Winfield paints and does bodywork at his shop, having several projects going, including one of his own, a ’32 Roadster, which he plans to race at Bonneville. He does everything at the shop except upholstery. Additionally, he does many “how-to” features in magazines and on television. He shows no signs of slowing down. Winfield’s lifetime love for customizing cars has fulfilled a passion that has driven him to create a forum from which he expresses his artistic abilities. More than just an artisan plying his craft, he does not merely restore. Instead, Winfield turns the automobile into his personal canvas. He sees and thinks and feels and imagines all possibilities. “The street rod industry, for instance. The street rods are mostly ‘32s and ‘34s and they’re all what we call cookie cutters. I mean, they’re almost all the same. They’re different colors and maybe they have a different front axle or whatever. But they basically look the same,” Winfield said. “With the custom cars, you try to create things that are different with every single car…. I’ve been doing that all my life, every since I’ve been doing cars. So that’s the object. Create and think of things that will change that car and mike it look a little different so that you will have something the other guy doesn’t have, even if it’s just the grille or hubcaps or whatever.” The famous ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov once said that “The essence of all art is to have pleasure giving pleasure.” Winfield has spent well over half a century taking pleasure in giving aesthetic pleasure to many others through the custom work and custom painting he does on cars. “I suppose so. I’m somewhat of an artist because I create things and create ideas and do things that are different,” Winfield said. “So there’s a certain amount of artistry involved. Certainly.” 
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