Innehållsförteckning för June 2025 från Custom Car

The National Hot Rod, Custom & American Car Show returns to the Lincolnshire Showground for the weekend of 27-29 June 2025. Both indoor and outdoor show spaces are available for pre-1980 and all-year American vehicles, together with club display areas. The pre-1980 show field is outside the marquee and is open to all hot rods, classics and retro vehicles, along with any age of American vehicle. Vehicles can be exhibited between 7.30am and 5.00pm on either Saturday or Sunday, or for the entire weekend, with the show field exhibitor gates opening at 10.00am on Friday. The prestigious Best in Britain display will form part of the indoor car show, and entries are now being accepted. To be considered for the BiB lineup, simply email details to admin@hotrodandcustomshow.co.uk attaching a few…

Last year, Santa Pod barely managed to hold one major event without the British weather coming along to throw a spanner in the works. So maybe it’s a sign of good things to come that the 2025 Springspeed Nationals were held in glorious sunshine. It was bright but not hot, with chilly air in the mornings making for excellent racing conditions as a full range of national championships got underway. Vic Parsons and Jack McClure had the honour of lining up for the first run of the year as the event kicked off with a round of Pro ET qualifying, but no sooner had the air started to fill with the scent of hot rubber than the emergency crews were on their way to assist Frankie Taylor after the much-loved…

All those of you who know Brian ‘Crusty’ Perks will be aware he is a traditional sort of guy. You will also know him as Crusty, so that’s what we will call him in this article. Together with his wife Tracy, Cannibals Car Club UK member Crusty lives on a narrowboat. I guess life doesn’t get more traditional than that. It’s no surprise, then, that when Crusty embarked on a new project, it was to be a traditional style hot rod. What’s more, it was to be built the old school way by mainly using what was kicking around and making stuff wherever possible. This was never going to be a catalogue car. “I bought a roadster body when lockdown hit,” Crusty recalled, “and I already had a basic chassis…

Jail birds The organisers of the Kickback Show are hosting a further one-day custom show on Sunday 6 July. Appropriately named Cars’n’Bars, the show takes place in the grounds and exercise yards of HM Prison Gloucester, which closed as a detention centre in 2013. The show runs from 10.00am until 4.30pm and, due to capacity regulations, visitor tickets must be purchased in advance. Anyone interested in displaying their hot rod or custom should apply via email to Lorne@rwrw.co.uk attaching pics of the vehicle. www.kickbackshow.com Pleasure beach 19-21 September are the dates for this year’s Normandy Beach Race. Staged at Sword Beach in Ouistreham, France, the event revives the atmosphere of the mechanical rendezvous of the ‘40s and ‘50s. The ⅛ mile drag style racing mixes pre-1947 vintage cars and motorcycles…

It’s funny how the direction of your life can turn on a seemingly insignificant moment. A split decision, an impulsive action… Sliding Doors, we tend to call it, thanks to the 1998 movie about, well, those Sliding Doors moments. By the time that movie came out, it was already close to 10 years since Shane Taylor had his own Sliding Doors moment. He could be driving a Transit now, or tooling around the place in a hot hatch or something. But scroll back to around 1990 and he was on his way from somewhere to somewhere else when he noticed a Ford 100e minding its own business up a driveway. Not only did he notice it, he wanted it. Not all of us would be brave enough to knock on…

We’re accustomed to men of a certain age referencing one film in particular when it comes to their inspiration for building a hot rod. But if you were born at the tail end of the 1980s, your frame of reference is likely quite different. I’ll admit I had to look up the TV series Supernatural when Kurtus McEvoy mentioned it had been the reason he went looking for a ’67 Impala. Hang on, a ’67? Doesn’t look much like one to me… “I was driving a Vauxhall Corsa at the time and had my heart set on a ’67 Impala,’ says Kurtus. ‘But then my dad called me one day to say he was in the Wirral and had seen a car I might be interested in. He’d knocked on…

We’re going to let Chris Ellis relate the story of his first encounter with this ’47 Chevy 3100 5-window Thriftmaster in his own words. “I bought the truck 10 years ago from a guy in Newquay who had imported it from the States. What an experience that was. “Thinking I might need an extra pair of hands, I took my dad with me. A good move as it turned out, as the seller’s house and yard were at the top of a steep drive. Having taken a good look around the truck and done the deal, it was time to load it. “The guy suggested I park at the bottom of the drive with the trailer attached and let the truck roll on to it. In a way that made…

On our travels, while we’re out on a mission to search out the most incredible custom cars, every now and again we come across something extremely rare and special. A vehicle that defies possibilities and pushes the boundaries of creativity. And that is the holy grail. The machines which, among all the others, make our job truly worthwhile. These are our unicorns. This 1974 Citroën HY Van, built by Ushio Automobile in Japan, is one of those unicorns. It just simply blows your mind as soon as you see it. That epic body drop and the coolness of its original patina paint is simply impossible to miss. We first spotted it parked next to us at the Mooneyes Hot Rod Show in the Japanese city of Yokohama – and the…