Inventive modifications may be some of the most fun you can have with your custom. Hours can be spent just looking at the lines and form of the car and figuring out what changes will improve the look without detracting from the flow of the body. I’d been kicking around some ideas for a taillight treatment on the ’60 Olds that I’ve been beating on for the past several years. The car is my daily so progress has been slow, but I can feel the momentum gaining after spending an entire summer looking at other people’s cars for inspiration.
Since the factory taillight housings are pot metal—and unweldable—frenching them wouldn’t work. And besides, frenching the stockers and calling it custom is a bit too vanilla for me. After realizing that something from another car wouldn’t cut it, I decided to go the homegrown route and make steel housings from scratch. All I wanted was something that vaguely resembled the stock housing but maintained an emphasis on the feature that defines the shape of the taillight: the terminus of the fin. The styling of the ’60 Olds is all curves and edges, and I figured a slight exaggeration of the tips would add to the spaceship quality of the car’s rear without detracting from the overall styling.
I enlisted the help of my friend Scott Guildner to make the metal happen. He’s one of those guys with an eye for shape and a natural talent for metalwork. He kind of makes it up as he goes and it seems to turn out right every time. Dig it.
