George Barris, Ed Roth, and Tom Wolfe's "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby"

Ed Roth at his craft

One of Roth's custom cars

A young George Barris, at the start of what would become a fabulous career

Barris' "Stray Cat"

Barris, a photographer entranced by Marilyn Monroe more than any car!

One of Barris' most famous customs

Hi folks -- the next required outside reading in my HST course "The Automobile and American Life" will be Tom Wolfe's 1963 The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. Why this book? the students will spend sometime looking at the film "American Graffiti," a story that purportedly took place in 1962. I want my students to enter that world of the early 1960s, and using Wolfe's book as a touchstone, to explore what the world was like, and the role of the automobile in that world.

Of course, the lead essay deals with the rise of youth culture and customized cars, with George Barris and Ed "Big Daddy" Roth as the chief characters in the chapter. Personally, as a young kid, I was never into custom cars. For me it was more about performance and handling, and more traditional designs. Customs are about art, color and the ability to do body work, something that I never had the patience for.

Of late I have been looking at some of its origins in Motor Trend issues from 1952 and 1953, and I can say that the Continental Kit craze coupled with the new material of Fiberglass were two important catalysts for the growth of this part of the car hobby. Barris initially was about chopping cars, channeling them, removing excess chrome, and opening doors and trunks with electric switches. With fame came more radical customs that were the centerpiece of automobile shows and Hollywood films.