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Marketing : The Origins of the American 60's "Custom Car Craze"

By Terry S Vostor

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 07Jan2010 Word count: 439 Viewed: 274 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Who and what started the 60 does American "Custom Car" craze? Was it California hot rodders or simply US "Car Guys" across the land? Or was it born out of the psychedelic era of the 1960's?

Interestingly enough in terms of marketing and development the Custom Car craze grew out of the work of one eccentric painter / mechanic named Kenny Howard., now better known as Von Dutch.

Born in 1929, Kenny was the person who transformed simple pin striping into an "art form" on everything from motorcycles to car bodies. Kenny grew up hanging around his father's sign shop. At that point in time there was no such thing as eclectic neon signs, nor decals or spray painting. Everything was hand painted with fine brushes, down to every letter and detail. After finishing high school in the early 1940's he began working in a motorcycle shop and that pinstripes were just great when it came to motorcycle body work and paint jobs. It seemed that pinstripes on a bike could "hide just about anything and everything ", concealing both scratches and imperfections.

If anything at that time, pin stripings belong to old 1930's gangster style suits. Yet this young eccentric brought it to the forefront of the American if not worldwide cultural scene. Soon Kenny (nicknamed Dutch for his trait of stubbornness), was painting everything and anything with his unique touch including motorcycles and even T-shirts. It could be said that each and every creation was a unique art form for each and every customer who brought the artist work. It could be said that not only was each design entirely unique and original. On top of that they seemed to be both a mold of and a reflection of the then current owner's personality as well as psyche. On top of that the designs were downright "wild". The genre became more than popular.

Kenny furthered on pin striping nothing but motorcycles. By the 1950's he had painted virtually thousands of motorcycles. From then on he went onto pin-striping cars themselves. Customers would come to auto shops asking that their vehicles be "Dutched". In most cases the work came down to his much time customers who wanted a Dutch creation could afford. The designs were entirely left to Mr. Howard.

Lastly if there were two badges left by this eccentric artist it was his trademark 1954 era bus that was equipped as a full machine shop from which he made money by restoring motorcycles, and by building a car for the 1969 Steve McQueen movie "The Reivers". So goes the legend of Kenny Howard / Von Dutch.

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