[They are all vehicles in
movies and television created by Gene Winfield (1927-2025), legendary customizer
of cars for film and TV as well as private clients. He also built cars for himself for fun and
profit, showed them at car shows, and raced them as well. “Windy” Winfield died at 97 on 4 March,
possibly the most celebrated auto customizer in the rodder-sphere.
[On 3 June 2020, I blogged that “The Bond Car Is Back!“ about the modified Aston Martin DB5 that Sean Connery
drove as James Bond in Goldfinger (1964). Gene Winfield had nothing to do with that
custom job, but this post is in the same line as “The Bond Car Is Back!”—iconic,
souped-up movie and TV cars. (Just think
of them as car characters.)]
“GENE WINFIELD,
WHOSE CARS STARRED
IN FILM AND ON TV,
DIES AT 97”
by Richard Sandomir
[Gene Winfield’s obituary ran
in the New York Times on 22 March
2025 in Section B (“Business/Sports”). It
was published online
on 16 March.]
He was know[n] for modifying cars with innovative metal
work and paint jobs, and for building vehicles like the Galileo shuttle for the
original “Star Trek” series.
Gene Winfield, a hot rodder and prominent car customizer who
built fanciful vehicles for “Star Trek” [NBC; 1966-69], “The Man From
U.N.C.L.E.” [NBC; 1964-68] and other television series and for films like “Blade
Runner” [1982] and “Sleeper” [1973], died on March 4 in Atascadero, Calif. He
was 97.
His son, Steve, said he died in an assisted living facility
from metastatic melanoma. He had also been diagnosed with kidney failure.
Mr. Winfield began to attract national attention in the late
1950s with a two-door 1956 Mercury hard top called the Jade Idol.
According to the custom car website Kustorama, he
transformed the Mercury for a customer by adding features like handmade fenders
rolled in aluminum in the front end; headlight rings made from 1959 Chrysler
Imperial Crown hubcaps; a television set integrated into a new dashboard; and a
steering column taken from an Edsel [automobile model produced by the Ford
Motor Company from 1958 to 1960, discontinued due to extreme unpopularity].
Automobile magazine [cited below in Gary Medley’s Fuel
Curve article] described the Jade Idol as having “a shark[-]like
presence that represented a new direction in customs.”
The car got its name from Mr. Winfield’s inventive paint
scheme: multiple shades of green and pearl white, with one color artfully
blending into the other, using a technique that he developed. It became known
as the Winfield Fade.
In a 2014 interview with the racing news website On All
Cylinders [see below], Mr. Winfield said that he began his paint experiments
with motorcycles, followed by a white Chevy.
“I put purple around the chrome strips,” he said. “When I
got done, it was a little bit gaudy to me; it was different, though, and
everybody loved it. So as I started to do the next one or two, I made it softer
and started blending.”
Another famous custom job was a roadster [a two-seat automobile with an open body, a folding, retractable, or removable top, and often a luggage compartment or rumble seat in the rear], the King T, which he built in the early 1960s with Don
Tognotti [ca. 1940-2000]. They painted a Model T Ford lavender and added
modifications like a Chevrolet V-8 engine paired with a four-speed automatic
transmission; four-wheel disc brakes; and 15-inch chrome wheels with wood
inlays. It won an award for “most beautiful roadster” at the 1964 Oakland
Roadster Show in California.
Mr. Winfield chopped off the tops of many cars that he
customized — including hundred[s] of Mercurys — and put them back a few inches
lower to give the cars sleeker looks.
“He would go to a World of Wheels show [series of indoor car
shows held in various locations across the country that brings together a
diverse collection of vehicles] and, with his crew, cut off the top of a
vehicle with a blowtorch and put it back four inches lower; it was quite a
spectacle,” said John Buck, producer of the Grand National Roadster Show [Pomona,
California] and the Sacramento Autorama, to which Mr. Winfield brought his
cars, charming the crowds.
Mr. Winfield’s custom cars, if not his name, became widely
known in the 1960s when they were seen on television and in the movies.
He towed the Reactor — a futuristic, low-slung, aluminum
two-seater with a gold and green color scheme, front-wheel drive and a hinged
roof panel — on a trailer to the 20th Century Fox studio in Hollywood in 1966,
hoping to get it a screen role.
“I went up to the gate and conned them into letting me in to
show my car to their transportation department,” he told Motorious, a website for car collectors and
restorers, in 2017. “From there, the transportation coordinator gave me the
names and addresses of all these other studios, and for two days I took the car
around and handed out my business card. Two weeks later, ‘Bewitched’ [ABC; 1964-72] called
me and said that they wanted the Reactor on their set.” It was the centerpiece
of an episode called “Super Car.”
The Reactor was then used on three more series: “Star Trek,”
“Mission: Impossible” [CBS; 1966-73] and “Batman” [ABC; 1966-68], on
which Catwoman (Eartha Kitt, 1927-2008) used it as the Catmobile.
He did some of his TV work as a division manager for the
model-car company AMT, for which he built the Galileo Shuttle for “Star Trek.” Based on a design
by Thomas Kellogg [1932-2003], it appeared in a few episodes. He constructed it
in two units.
“One would be a complete exterior, full size,” he told the official Star Trek website in 2011. ”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.”
Robert Eugene Winfield was born on June 16, 1927, in
Springfield, Mo., and grew up with five brothers and sisters, mainly in
Modesto, Calif. His father, Frank, was a butcher who ran a wagon from which he
and his mother, Virginia (Akins) Winfield, sold hamburgers and hot dogs for a
nickel. After his parents divorced, his mother opened her own hamburger
restaurant, where Gene started working at 10.
He was 14 when he opened his first shop, to which he brought
his first car, a 1929 Ford Model A coupe. To it, he added oxtails [sic; probably ‘foxtails,’ which was a thing in ’40s and ’50s], two
antennas and a blue paint job. But his hope of hot-rodding it in the streets
was soon dashed when it was wrecked in a crash with a taxicab. He quickly
bought two more roadsters.
He served stints in the Navy, from 1944 to 1945, and in the
Army, from 1949 to 1951. While stationed in Japan, he learned welding skills
from an expert Japanese welder. Back home, his custom work got better, and he
began to attract customers. He also began racing in the streets and on dry
lakes in the late 1940s; in 1951 he took his custom-built Ford Model T coupe —
which he called the Thing — and drove it 135 miles per hour at the Bonneville
Salt Flats in Utah. [In 1951, the land
speed record was 185.49 mph.]
But what established his reputation were the cars that he
customized — like the Maybellene, a modified 1961 Cadillac named for the
Chuck Berry hit song and painted in cream and butterscotch tones — and the ones
that he made for Hollywood.
[Berry (1926-2017) was a
renowned rock ’n’ roll and rhythm and blues guitarist. He released “Maybellene”
in 1955 and it charted at number 1 on Billboard’s Rhythm and Blues chart and
number 5 on the Popular Records chart.]
For “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” the cheeky spy series [NBC; 1964-68]
starring Robert Vaughn [1932-2016] and David McCallum [1933-2023], Mr. Winfield
built a gull-wing car, with mock flame throwers in the front end and a Corvair
engine. For “Get Smart,” the spy-spoof sitcom [NBC/CBS; 1965-70/Fox; 1995]
starring Don Adams [1923-2005] as an inept secret agent, he designed a sports
car with gadgets like a retractable cannon.
For “Sleeper,” Woody Allen’s [b. 1935] 1973 science fiction
comedy, he created a car with a bubble top over a Volkswagen chassis.
He also built 25 vehicles for the dystopian science-fiction
film “Blade Runner” (1982), based on designs by Syd Mead [1933-2019], a few of
which were called Spinners. One of them was flown by the police officer played
by Edward James Olmos [b. 1947].
One of the cars he built for “Blade Runner turned up in “Back
to the Future Part II” [1989][.]
Mr. Winfield’s son said that he preferred customizing cars
to creating them for television and films.
“The movie cars were dictated to him, but his custom car
customer would say, ‘Gene, here’s my car, do whatever your inspiration says,’”
he said. “That’s how he turned out the Jade Idol.”
In addition to his son, from his marriage to Dolores
Johnston, which ended in divorce, Mr. Winfield is survived by a daughter, Jana
Troutt, from the same marriage; a daughter, Nancy Winfield, from another
marriage, to Kathy Horrigan, which also ended in divorce; a son, Jerry Carrico,
from another relationship; five grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.
Mr. Winfield said that he met with Ridley Scott [b. 1937],
the director of “Blade Runner,” every two or three weeks as he and his crew
built the cars for the film.
“The only thing that I was unhappy about in the end results
was that Ridley Scott had us do a lot of things that had to be absolutely near
perfect as far as surface and shapes and colors,” he said in an interview with Blade Zone, a fan website. “We
went through hours, and hours, and hours of colors and all of this sort of
thing, and then it was all filmed at night in the rain.”
With a laugh, he added, “You don’t see even half of what we
did.”
[Richard Sandomir, an
obituaries reporter, has been writing for the New York Times for more than three decades. He joined the Times Obituaries desk in
2016 after 25 years covering sports media and sports business for the paper. He’s worked for Long Island’s Newsday
and other publications, and written several books, including his most recent, The
Pride of the Yankees: Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper and the Making of a Classic (Hachette
Books, 2017).
[Sandomir’s journalism
background of more than 40 years has helped him become a better storyteller,
which is critical to writing obits. He graduated
from Queens College of the State University of New York in 1979 with a B.A. in
communications.]
* *
* *
“GENE WINFIELD –
IDOL GENIUS OF THE SILVER SCREEN”
by Gary Medley
[This interview with Winfield
was published on the website Fuel
Curve on 4 March 2025. (The interview was conducted and the story originally
published in February 2019.)]
In Southern California, rods and customs enjoy a symbiotic
relationship with the film industry. Movie directors are drawn to automobiles
as cinematic and graphic devices. At the same time, a host of SoCal customizers
have thrived crafting unique vehicles for the silver screen. One such
customizer is the legendary Gene Winfield, a metal man without peer. Known as “Windy,”
Winfield built not only some of the most recognized 1950s-era customs – the
Jade Idol . . ., for instance – he also reigns as one of the most prolific
Hollywood car creators.
Gene Winfield, now a vibrant 91, was born in 1927 in
Springfield, Missouri. His parents moved the family to Modesto, California,
when he was a toddler, where his father, Frank, worked as a butcher before
setting up a mobile burger business (who said food carts are new?). Later,
after his parents divorced, his mother, Ginny, opened a luncheon restaurant,
where by age 10 Winfield worked as a carhop.
[A carhop, for those too young
to remember this phenomenon, is a waiter or waitress who brings food to customers
in their cars at drive-in restaurants. Carhops, usually teens, have long been
associated with hot rods and 1950s pop culture, but they started in the 1920s, when
automobiles were beginning to be common. They flourished in the 1940s and ’50s,
but declined during the mid-1960s as drive-ins began offering inside seating
and drive-through service.
[A hot rod is a vehicle modified to run and/or accelerate faster. A hot rod may be any car, truck, or motorcycle, often old or classic, modified for increased speed and/or performance, or the term may be used to describe modified cars from the original (or traditional) “hot rod” era, after World War II and prior to 1960.
[No definition fits all cars dubbed a “hot rod,” and the term is used for a wide range of vehicles, but most often they’re individually designed and constructed using components from many makes of old or new cars.]
Gene demonstrated a creative streak early on, becoming an
expert builder of model airplanes and, more importantly, getting hooked on
photography. The focus of his attention? Cars. Particularly any car that had
been modified. Not only did Gene see interesting cars through the viewfinder,
he saw them in his future, as well.
At 15, Winfield bought his first car, a ’29 Model A coupe.
Before long it sported twin antennas flying foxtails. He tweaked the motor in
anticipation of street racing and he painted it a deep blue, his first “custom”
paint job.
Winfield enlisted in the Navy as World War II was winding
down in 1945. Upon his return to Modesto, the 18-year-old began customizing
cars in a chicken house behind his mother’s home. A small workspace and dirt
floor could not contain Gene’s creativity. He radically transformed his brother’s
’41 Plymouth, slicing three inches off the top and windshield. Word got around
about his skill set and soon he was performing all manner of mods [car-enthusiast
slang for ‘modifications’], including suspension work and custom touches like
shaving emblems.
Racing drew Winfield’s attention as well. He converted a ’27
T roadster into a lakes runner that, with tuning help from Alex Xydias [1922-2024]
of So-Cal Speed Shop, topped 120mph. Later he put together a ’27 T coupe –
dubbed “The Thing” – that ran 135mph at Bonneville. Winfield even held a NASCAR
[National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing] license, piloting jalopies in
circle-track competition.
[The Bonneville Salt Flats are
a 30,000-acre expanse of hard, white salt crust on the western edge of the
Great Salt Lake Basin in Utah. The flats are the site of the Bonneville
Speedway, a facility known as a place for setting land speed records.]
In a curious twist, Winfield had a second stint in the
military, drafted into joining the Army in 1949. A year later he found himself
in Japan as cook. Culinary responsibilities aside, Gene rented [a] small shop
in Tokyo to build cars, including sports cars and the odd pre-war Ford. With
the help of a Japanese gentleman who was a skilled metal man, Winfield greatly
improved his metal working skills, learning hammer welding and shaping. He
returned to Modesto in 1951 and opened Winfield’s Custom Shop.
Winfield’s first real “custom” was a ’50 Mercury, which he
built to show off his handiwork to potential customers. The plan worked, and
his shop hummed along successfully throughout the 1950s.
Along the way, a few milestones took place, most notably the
famed “Winfield Fade,” a paint technique whereby one candy paint color would
fade into another candy paint color. The most significant example is the epic “Jade Idol,” a super-smooth
1956 Mercury custom. Built for a customer with a . . . robust $15,000 budget,
Winfield went wild. Writer Preston Lerner described the Jade Idol for
Automobile magazine this way:
“The Jade Idol put Winfield on the national map. Sectioned
four inches, with canted quad headlights, rear quarter panels grafted from a ‘57
Chrysler New Yorker, and an elegant scratch-built [constructed entirely from
raw materials and components, rather than being built from a kit or modified
from an existing model] grille that was repeated at the rear, the Idol had a
shark-like presence that represented a new direction in customs.”
The significant press coverage garnered by the Jade Idol
made him famous worldwide. In other words, the Gene Winfield legend was born.
In 1962, Winfield’s fame caught the eye of AMT, maker of
plastic model car kits. Initially, AMT hired him as a freelance design
consultant before he joined full time to manage their new Speed and Custom
Division Shop. There he built full-scale promotional vehicles that mirrored
and/or inspired the model kits.
The AMT connection proved fruitful in an unforeseen way: It
became an audition for Hollywood. Soon studio creative types called on Winfield
to build cars for movies and TV. And he was prolific! His film credits include
vehicles for such series as “Get Smart,” “Bewitched (the futuristic Reactor),”
and “Star Trek.” By 1970, he opened a shop in North Hollywood adjacent to the
studios. Eventually his creations graced more than 20 films, including Mission[:]
Impossible, Sleeper, and 25 futuristic rides for the sci-fi classic Blade
Runner.
In recent years, Gene Winfield was honored as the Detroit
Autorama “Builder of the Year” in 2008, and since 2013 has been a regular on
the International Show Car Series circuit, chopping tops and shaping sheet
metal in a special section . . . called “The Summit Racing Equipment Chop Shop.”
Despite closing in on the century mark, Gene Winfield is as
energetic and engaged as ever. Goodguys [presumably, Goodguys Rod & Custom
Association, the largest U.S. association catering to street rods, custom cars,
and show cars] recently spoke with him from his Mohave, California, shop. His
voice was strong and clear, his enthusiasm unchecked. His secret to
success? ”I like people and I like to make them happy,” Winfield
explained. ”I treat my customers the way I would want to be treated,
and I try to build a car as a piece of art. The customer wants to make a
statement, a car that will make an onlooker say, ‘Wow, he made that?’”
His secret to his longevity? ”I don’t drink or smoke
or use coffee, never have.”
[Gary Medley has been a
friend, ally, and contributor to the performance community for decades. His interest in cars and journalism was pretty
much a genetic imperative, as he is the son of Tom Medley, creator of Stroker
McGurk, a cartoon character featured in Hot
Rod magazine from 1948 to 1955, making brief comebacks in 1964 and 1965.
[Medley’s own career path
has traveled from the halls of Petersen Publishing to PR director for an Indy
Car race to pitching tight-fitting Italian-made cycling shorts and countless
other forms of high-speed life. Living
between two volcanoes in Hood River, Oregon, Medley will be a regular Fuel Curve contributor when he’s not working to
sustain his father’s legacy.]
* *
* *
“AMERICAN DREAM
CARS OF THE 1960S AT PEBBLE BEACH”
by Mike Eppinger
[This article appeared in Old Cars Weekly (Boulder, Colorado), now called just
Old Cars, on 5 July 2017.]
The Reactor will appear along with nine other one-off
creations at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance this August
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Stargazers with dreams too big for a
small town often pack their bags and head for one city: Hollywood. Legendary
custom car builder Gene Winfield is a man who had very big dreams, but not for
himself. His aspiration was to create a futuristic, aluminum-bodied custom
automobile.
“I put the car in an open trailer and I towed it straight to
Hollywood,” said Winfield of Modesto, California, about his custom coupe,
called The Reactor. Appearing at the 2017 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in a
special class for one-off American Dream Cars of the 1960s, the Reactor will
uphold its celebrity status as both an iconic dream and significant character
in some of the world’s most-remembered films and television shows.
[The Pebble Beach
Concours d’Elegance is an annual automotive event held on the Pebble
Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, California. It’s widely considered
the most prestigious car show in the world and is the top Concours d’Elegance competition
worldwide. (French [concours d’élégance]: translates as a “competition
of elegance” and refers to an event where prestigious vehicles are displayed
and judged.)]
Winfield initially imagined and built The Reactor for Joe
Kizis’ 1965 annual Autorama car show in Hartford, Connecticut. After its time
spent touring back east, Winfield brought the Reactor back to California, where
he entered it in the Grand National Roadster Show. Against tough competition,
the Reactor won the coveted Tournament of Fame Award. Winfield soon realized
even bigger dreams for his car. So, he packed up the Reactor and took it to
Hollywood, where it captured the attention of leading filmmakers.
“I didn’t know anybody,” Winfield recalled, “but I found
20th Century Fox Studios and I went up to the gate and conned them into letting
me in to show my car to their transportation department. From there, the
transportation coordinator gave me the names and addresses of all these other
studios, and for two days, I took the car around and handed out my business
card. Two weeks later, Bewitched called me and said that they
wanted The Reactor on their set.”
The car was created around a Citroën DS [a front
mid-engined, front-wheel drive executive car manufactured and marketed by the
French company Citroën from 1955 to 1975] chassis and its unique
hydro-pneumatic suspension so that it could move up and down, a feature that
was far ahead of its time. “The inspiration I had for the car was to make
something different, something wild,” Winfield said. He installed a 180-hp
turbocharged engine from a Chevrolet Corvair Corsa, and paired it with the
Citroën DS’s drivetrain. The Reactor was born as a two-seater, mid-engine car,
with its most recognizable feature being its very low profile. Cleverly,
Winfield used the Corvair flat-6 engine as a stylistic tool, because he wanted
the Reactor to be as low and close to the ground as possible.
Automobiles ranging from a DiDia [a DiDia 150, a
custom-designed, one-of-a-kind car conceived by Andrew Di Dia (1917-2014)] once
owned by Bobby Darin [pop singer; 1936-73] to a car powered by gyrodynamics [the
study of the behavior and motion of rotating bodies, particularly gyroscopes,
and the forces and torques involved in their movement] will also be showcased
in the American Dream Cars of the 1960s class.
[Mike Eppinger was Old Cars Weekly’s online editor, but his abilities include building a restored and
modified 1969 Camaro. His energy and
creativity are matched only by his lifelong passion for all things automotive.]
* *
* *
“INTERVIEW: A FEW
MINUTES WITH
HOT RODDING LEGEND
GENE WINFIELD”
by Lori Sams
[The interview was posted on the online
magazine OnAllCylinders on 31 January 2014; it was last updated on 4
March 2025.]
During the interview, Gene took [a] break to chat with a fan that stopped by. He was telling us about how one of the Star Trek vehicles is still around and it is now at NASA. He got to go to NASA and they gave him a 7 hour tour of the facilities. He was in awe.
Gene Winfield has
been customizing vehicles for longer than most of us have been alive. He has
customized vehicles for many TV shows, movies, and commercials. Some of the
shows and movies that have featured Winfield’s vehicles include Blade Runner,
Robocop, Batman, Get Smart, and Star Trek.
While visiting the Cavalcade of Customs in Cincinnati, we
got to hang out with the King of Kustoms. Winfield was showing off his
car-chopping skills at the Genuine Hotrod Chop Shop, which is held at several
of the Summit Racing Show Car Series indoor shows.
He took a break from fabricating to answer a few
questions–questions like: What’s his favorite project of all time? How did his
famous blended paint technique come about? What current rodding trends does he
like?
OnAllCylinders: How many years have you been involved
in hot rodding?
Gene Winfield: My first shop was in late ’46.
OAC: You’ve raced, you’ve built cars, and you
still seem to be going strong.
Winfield: I just painted a 1968 Mustang with a
NASCAR motor that I am going to race at Bonneville. I have a Sprint car [an open-wheel race car designed for running on short tracks] and I drive a midget car [an open-wheel racing cars with a very high power-to-weight ratio that typically uses a four-cylinder engine] that I race in Lima, OH every year.
OAC: So you still have a passion for racing?
Winfield: I love it. I love the Sprint cars and
midgets on the dirt track when you get them all crossed up. I love it.
OAC: What prompted you to start experimenting
with blended paint schemes?
Winfield: I was doing a couple motorcycles and
they had small tanks, and I just started blending and playing. I liked it.
I liked what I saw and I said, “I can do this.” I decided to do a whole car so
in 1957, I did a brand new Chevy with almost zero miles. I blended the car. At
first I only blended around the chrome, and it was not a real custom. We
knocked off the hood and truck emblems, but that was it. And we lowered it a
little bit, too.
It was a white car, and I put purple around the chrome
strips. When I got done, it was a little bit gaudy to me. It was
different, though, and everybody loved it. So as I started to do the
next one or two, I made it softer and started blending. And when I paint a car,
I paint it until I like it. It doesn’t matter if it takes me two hours, three
days, or two weeks–I paint until I like it. I don’t care if the customer likes
it or not, but usually they do.
OAC: Most customers probably like it, though,
right?
Winfield: There have only been two times,
actually, in my life they didn’t like it. One was a lady and it was just
too gaudy and too loud for her. The other was the same deal. This
customer came to me, and I had painted four cars– brand new
cars–in four years. And he brought me the fifth brand new car in
the same year. He lived approximately 60 miles from me, so he would bring me a
car with 74 or 80 miles on it. He would drive it one night up and down his
street and bring it to me the next day. So anyways, he says to me “Gene,
paint it wild. Do anything you want–any color, anything you want.”
So I did, and it was too wild.
It was too wild, so he said to change it. I never even
pulled it out of the booth. I went ahead and softened it up, but I never got a
picture of it. That was a big mistake. Later, for the next 10-15 years, he said
he wished he would have left that paint job. It was shades of green and black.
It was wild.
OAC: The white and the purple–you seem to see
that a lot. Did you start that?
Winfield: Yeah. The most radical one I did
was years ago, though. I painted it in ’59 and premiered it in 1960, and it
was called the Jade Idol. The Jade idol is still around in
Dedham, MA. It’s for sale, and the owner wants 400,000 dollars for
it. It was a very radical paint job with greens and black and different shades.
Then I blended a little bit of soft gold powder just in a few places on the
hood and trunk.
In 2009, I built the Jade Idol II. It’s a similar
car–the headlights were almost identical–so we called it Jade Idol II. It
had some damage and I just repainted it. It was rubbed out yesterday at my
shop in California.
OAC: Of all the cars you have done, which is
your favorite?
Winfield: The favorite of the old custom cars is
the Jade Idol. And then the favorite of the aluminum cars–I built two
aluminum cars in the 1960s, one in 1963 and one in 1965–is the Reactor. It was
pretty futuristic at the time and is still futuristic today. It was on
the Bewitched television show. They wrote an entire
episode about this car on Bewitched. It was really
cool. It was filmed in 1966 or ’67 [Season 3, Episode 19, “Super Car,” aired 19 January 1967].
OAC: You’ve worked on a lot of television
shows and movies. Did you meet any cool celebrities?
Winfield: Yes, lots of them. Loren [sic; Lorne]
Greene [1915-87] of Bonanza [NBC; 1959-73], and of
course all of his co-workers. In fact, I did a car for Michael Landon [1936-91].
I restored a car for him. And I met all the people from Bewitched,
of course. I also met The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’s Stephanie
Powers [b. 1942] and all the different shows.
I didn’t get any of their autographs, and I realized later
in life that I should have. And most of them are dead and gone. Now I try to
get autographs from anybody that I meet. So it is a lot of fun.
OAC: As far as the hot rod scene, what is your
favorite trend?
Winfield: I like the rat rods [a custom car with
a deliberately worn-down, unfinished appearance, typically lacking paint,
showing rust, and made from cheap or cast-off parts]. Some of them are
totally junk and some are well engineered. They are doing some unbelievable
stuff to lower them. They are going lower than we ever did. And of course
they create rust and primer and stuff–which is OK. We ran primer but with
the idea of painting, and we eventually did paint our cars. They make ’em rust
and they are never going to paint them.
I like all phases of hot rodding. I like the real modern,
the far out and wildest hot rod thing you can do, and the mild stuff,
too. I like it all.
I have a hot rod that I started building many years ago.
Someday I hope to finish it. I started building it with the idea of winning the
open roadster show, called the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster–or AMBR cars.
But those AMBR cars are like the Detroit Autorama Ridler. Now, all those cars
have a million-plus, some of them 2-3 million dollars in them. They work on
them for five, six, ten years–or whatever. This roadster–I
started it 25-30 years ago, and I still have it. As I was building it, my ideas
would start changing. Each year I would get new ideas and each year I would
upgrade it and change it. So it’s still not finished, and I haven’t touched it
in a few years.
And of course I keep building a car every couple of years
for myself. I started to build a ’58 Pontiac. A ’58 Pontiac like a Bonneville
is pretty scarce, and a restored Bonneville goes for a lot of money. I
finally found one and bought it. I was getting ready to start it and a guy
brought me an Econoline pickup that he knew I wanted to build again, like I did
for Ford in ’62 or ’63.
OAC: Was that the Pacifica?
Winfield: Yes, the Pacifica. So I built the
Pacifica for Ford, and it was in the Ford Custom Car Caravan. So I knew it
ended up in Detroit. In fact, AMT sold it to Troy Ruttman [1930-97], the
Indianapolis driver, and they used it for a parts truck in Dearborn. I ran
ads in the paper and everything trying to find it. I got a hold of Troy’s
brother, who is now in Florida, and he didn’t know what happened to it.
So this guy brought me this car and gave it to me for my
birthday–no engine or transmission but a nice body. I went ahead and jumped on
it, and in a year and a half, I built the Pacifica. So I have that at home
now, and it’s all finished and runs good and everything.
My Pontiac is still sitting there.
OAC: What do you do in your spare time? You
turned your hobby into work. Do you have any other hobbies?
Winfield: I like to take pictures. I
haven’t gone out and taken still shots of scenery or anything in a while.
I always have a camera. In fact, I have a Hasselblad camera at home. The
Hasselblad camera is a Swiss/German camera. When I bought it in 1972, I
paid 4,000 dollars for it. Now the camera is, I think, worth about
35,000-40,000 dollars. So it’s a good camera. It’s a 2 ¼ x 2 ¼ image, and you do big slides and you have a projector.
OAC: Do you still enjoy teaching and
instructing?
Winfield: I love it. I do metalworking
constantly all over the place.
OAC: Do you have a favorite place you’ve
visited?
Winfield: No, but I like Australia a
lot. And Japan, too–been there seven times. I have been to Canada all the
way from the West Coast to the East Coast of Nova Scotia. I painted five
cars in Canada last year, and I did two workshops in Canada. I also
did two workshops [i]n Australia. I painted a car and a motorcycle and did a
show all in 18 days.
[The vehicles I named in
the headline of this post were seen in TV’s Star Trek (Jupiter 8), the film Robocop (6000 SUX), the television
series Mission: Impossible (The Freeze).
Other Winfield creations—some mentioned in the articles above—include the
shuttle Galileo II (Star Trek), the Catmobile (Batman—driven by
Eartha Kitt as Catwoman), the Super Car (Bewitched), the Spinners (Blade
Runner), the Star Car (The Last Star Fighter).
[There were a slew more, and
many of Winfield’s creations were used more than once—sometimes with different
names.]
