The Fleetwood

The Fleetwood

my original concept pic

My plans for this car involve turning her into a 50's style leadsled/rat rod custom. I've wanted to build one of these for a while, and think it will be fun to mix the more modern lines of this car with that classic style of customization. The image at the top of the page is a very rough idea of what I want to go for.

Paint: She's gotten a semi-flat black paint job,I will be laying gloss red flames down over that. The flames are going to wrap over the hood and extend at least at least halfway down the sides.

Body: I'm planning to strip a fair amount of the chrome trim, not immediately though as it will require welding skills & equipment I don't have, bit it is in the plans. In addition I have a set of 1957 Cadillac front Dagmars:

These are off this type of Cadillac. I'm planning to remove the stock bumper and replace it with these. I'll have to fabricate custom mounts for them, as well as figure out what to put between them. I'm leaning towards getting the center section (between the dagmars & abover the grille) from another caddy and shortening that to fit. And I found a '57 Pontiac I'm going to try and get the center grille section to use below the center section.

Wheels: In sticking with the classic look, I went for a simple set of bright red steelie rims, with baby-moon hubcaps I also want to get a set of thin trim rings, but need to locate a set. I'd love to have wide whitewalls like in the concept pic, but seeing as how they are two to three times the cost of regular whitewall tires I can't afford them, at least not right now.

Well since I pulled the car off the road, theswe plans never came to fruition, but here are what she looked like jsut before she was retired (click on the pics for a larger version):