Chip Foose is my hero.
I’ll say it right now, Chip Foose is a hero of mine. I’ve heard, and read on-line lately, lots of disparaging remarks about his latest creation, the above Impala which took the Ridler award at AutoRama, but I’m not one of those distractors. This car is a masterpiece, and was in my head all day yesterday while I was in the shop working on my own two customs, Kim’s ’63 Riviera and my long-term ’59 T’bird project.
I don’t have the talent, vision, or admittedly the budget for a car like this, but I take inspiration for my own cars from Chip’s work, and this one spoke to me at a very visceral level. It’s absolutely stunning. The proportions are perfect, the car is radically modified but still looks like a Chevy Impala. Integrated, unified, classic yet modern/ Everything flows, beautifully detailed to a level that boggles my mind. It’s everything that I like about custom cars, and everything I’d like to be able to do.
I overheard some comments while looking at the car, and read afterwards, comments along the line of “The Ridler is bought, not earned”, “All Foose’s cars look the same.”, “F-ugly.”, and so on. My thoughts on looking at this (and LOTS of other cars at the show) were more along the “I could do that.”
In that light, while the images of the car are still fresh in my head, I’m going to get out to the shop and try to get the bodywork on my T’bird, and get busy with the Air-Ride system under the Riviera. Maybe someday a crowd of guys will stand around my car and mutter “It’s all about money”, “He just wrote the checks”, “I hate painted bumpers”, and occasionally, “I could do that.”
Let’s get busy.
Cool McCool's Garage 