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KUSTOMRAMA NEWSLETTER NO. 217

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This month, I want to talk about something that came up on social media in April. We posted a photo of Teddy Zgrzemski and Bill Hines, and wrote about how Bill took Teddy under his wing when he was 12 years old. Bought him lunch and breakfast as payment. Taught him the trade.

That post reached almost 47,000 people on Facebook. Over a thousand reactions. But what caught my attention was the comments.

RC Skeeter wrote that he had chopped a top on a '29 sedan in Teddy's shop. Jon Brockman said his father and grandfather taught him, and he was welding before he could drive. Steven Smith came home that same day and found his own boy working on something in the garage. Jay Remo talked about an older guy from his VW club who used to come over and help him with his '66.

None of these are famous builders. None of them made a magazine cover. But they are the reason this hobby still exists.

What surprised me about April was how strongly people responded to the human side of the story. Not the cars. Not the paint. Not the engine specs. The people. The guy who showed up with a spray gun and didn't charge you. The guy who sold you a grille shell for $20 when it was worth $400. The guy who sent a birthday card to an 81-year-old customizer in a nursing home.

That same theme came through on the other side of the Atlantic. On April 28, we handed out the second Kustomrama Award in Stockholm. Last year, the award went to the Sandberg family for their role in building Swedish hot rod and custom car culture across four generations. This year, we gave it to the inner circle around Sillarna, the group of friends that formed around Hasse Broberg and Kjelle Gustad in southern Stockholm in the early 1960s. The award was presented during a memorial gathering for Hasse, who passed away in January. What made this group special was never one single car or one single achievement. It was the friendship. The Broberg family home on Österbottenvägen became a gathering place for a whole generation of young car guys. They built hot rods, constructed what may have been Sweden's first dragster, sailed a fishing boat across the Atlantic, and left behind a trail of stories that would have disappeared without Lisa Broberg, Hasse's daughter, sharing the family's photos and documents with Kustomrama.

We ran a post about Ray Soff and his 1950 Ford, and asked people what got them into custom cars. Walter Koda commented that he watched the building of Jimmy Karcher's Ford in Stamford, Connecticut, as a kid. That is the same car Ray chased for 16 years before finding it in a million pieces on Long Island. An eyewitness to the beginning of the story, surfacing through a Facebook comment in 2026.

Frank Pisano, an old friend of Ray's, used the comment section to reconnect. "Ray, Frank Pisano here, lost your phone, I live in Florida now." He left his number right there in the comments.

That is what Kustomrama is for. Not just preserving history.
Connecting people to it!

Best regards
Sondre
Kustomrama Editor

The 2026 Kustomrama Award

On April 28, 2026, Mats Wallander and Björn Ramsten of the Kustomrama Sweden Division handed out the second Kustomrama Award. The ceremony took place during a memorial gathering for Hans "Hasse" Broberg, who passed away on January 24 this year.

Last year, the first Kustomrama Award went to the Sandberg family at the Hot Rod Show in Nacka Strand. Four generations of Sandbergs, from Ewert and Astrid all the way down to 18-year-old Jonte, honored for their role in building Swedish hot rod and custom car culture from the ground up.

This year, we wanted to put the focus on something different. Not a family, but a group of friends. The kind of friendships that form around a shared garage, a set of tools, and a complete disregard for what is practical.

In the early 1960s, the Broberg family home on Österbottenvägen became a gathering place for a group of young car guys south of Stockholm. At the center were Hasse Broberg and Kjell "Kjelle" Gustad, two close friends who jokingly called themselves Sillarna, the Herrings. They started building hot rods around 1957, inspired by American magazines and the older builders around them. They cut the roof off a 1937 Ford Tudor because they wanted a convertible. They swapped a diesel engine from a bread delivery van into a 1958 Thunderbird and drove it to Spain. They built what may have been the first rail-style dragster in Sweden. They sold their cars, bought a 30-meter fishing boat, rebuilt it, launched a floating nightclub called Club Batman, and sailed across the Atlantic.

None of it was planned in any formal sense. It was creativity, motor interest, adventure, and a lot of humor. The group around Sillarna was never a formal club. It was a community built on friendship.

The 2026 Kustomrama Award goes to the inner circle around Sillarna. We want to especially thank Lisa Broberg, Hasse's daughter, for sharing photos, documents, and stories that have made it possible to preserve this part of Swedish hot rod history on Kustomrama.

The award was presented by Kustomrama contributors Mats Wallander and Björn, and goes to:

Lisa Broberg, Kjelle Gustad, Benke Wennergren, Lill-Hasse Källberg, Lill-Pelle Stenberg, Arne Lindstrand, Inge Ellburg, and Richard Bergström.

Keeping History Alive.

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Tom Miller's 1930 Ford Model A Coupe

In the late 1980s, Tom Miller was building a 1930 Model A flathead coupe. While gas welding a sheet metal filler panel to close up the opening in the top, he warped it badly. He had no idea how to straighten it, so he asked Teddy Z if he could help.

Ted agreed to take the body to his shop, but he didn't sound too hopeful. Tom had done a pretty good job of messing it up. After they unloaded the body, Ted asked Tom to run to the hardware store and pick up some bolts. Tom was happy to do it. When he came back about 20 minutes later, the top was perfectly straight.

Then Ted asked if Tom wanted him to finish welding the top. Tom agreed, and Ted proceeded to weld the whole car. As Tom remembers it, Ted didn't charge him. He also gave Tom a steering column, a DeVilbiss spray gun, and a hammer and dolly. On top of that, he sold Tom an original 1932 Ford grille shell and insert for $20. They were worth about $400 at the time, and Ted knew it.

"Thanks to Ted's support, I have been able to enjoy this great hobby of ours for over 40 years," Tom wrote to Kustomrama. "I probably would have given up years ago, because I lack the talent of many folks around here, but Ted never criticized my work, and always pointed out things I did that he liked."

After Tom completed the coupe, he took it back to Ted for the flame job. Tom also shared another story that says a lot about who Ted was. When Teddy painted Joe Krummel's 1960 Chevy, Tom brought his 8-year-old son to the shop to see it. There were about 20 people there. The kid started drawing in the dust on the hood with his finger. Anyone else would have screamed at the boy or grabbed him, but Ted came over to Tom and told him softly. "Ted was more concerned about embarrassing my son than he was worried about the car and his hard work," Tom recalls.

That was Teddy Z. A guy who could straighten a warped top in 20 minutes, but cared more about people than paint.

​Click here to see more photos and read the full story of Tom Miller's 1930 Model A Coupe on Kustomrama.​

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Featured Video

Hot Rod Show Stockholm 1972

In 1972, the Hot Rod Show in Stockholm was not as big as in previous years, even though the prize money had been raised. Picko Troberg arranged it together with Bo "Gamen" Sandberg and Start & Speed magazine. The mix of cars on the floor told the story of where the Swedish scene was heading at the time. Dragsters, beach buggies, four-wheel drives, choppers, trikes, and mopeds. Upcoming builders like Karl-Erik Jonasson and Tommy Hedwall showed up alongside the regulars.

Mats Wallander and Björn Ramsten of the Kustomrama Sweden Division have put together a video walkthrough of the show, built from period footage and photos. If you want to see what a Swedish hot rod show looked like in the early 1970s, this is it.

​Click here to watch the video.​

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A Stockholm Hot Rod With Nowhere to Go Found a New Home in South Africa

August 1966. A Hemi-powered hot rod from Stockholm sits outside Saffy's Panelbeaters in Cape Town, South Africa. It is a long way from Vendelsö.

Per-Erik "Palle" Eriksson built one of the wildest hot rods Sweden had ever seen. A 1924 Chevrolet roadster body on a kicked 1938 Ford frame, powered by a 392 Chrysler Hemi. It won first prize at Show-64 and again at the 1965 Hot Rod Show. But Swedish authorities were never going to register a fenderless roadster with 380 horsepower. One of the most spectacular hot rods in the country had nowhere to go.

Then Palle met a South African couple in Monaco who had seen the car back in Sweden. Their suggestion was simple: bring it down. He sold a small cottage to pay for the trip, listed the car as a "Chrysler Special" with a hand-stamped chassis number, and loaded it onto a ship in Gothenburg. In January 1966, he settled near Killarney International Raceway and found work at Saffy's Panel Beaters, a shop rooted in the local racing scene. The local press ran articles in Afrikaans about the Swede with the Hemi-powered T-bucket. He was photographed on Clifton Beach with a surfboard on top and Table Mountain in the background.

A photo of the car in Africa was our most-clicked post on Facebook in April. It reached over 38,000 people with a 13% engagement rate, and over 4,200 of you clicked through to read the full story on Kustomrama.

​Click here to read the full story and see all the photos from Palle's South Africa adventure on Kustomrama.​

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May’s here, the roads are calling, and the Kustomrama playlist is riding shotgun once again. Leading things off is something special from our own houseband The Kustomramas! The B-side to Ala Kart, Fresno Heat is a tribute to the Blackie Hosses of Fresno, and it sets the tone just right: low, warm, and built for the open road.

From there it’s a cross-country ride through sound, Gitkin bringing the groove with ‘Canción del Rey,’ Booker T. keeping it smooth on ‘Sunny,’ and Los Bitchos lighting things up with ‘La Bomba.’ It’s the kind of mix made for long evenings, warm engines, and nowhere in particular to be.

​So click here to check it out, roll the windows down, ease into it, and let May do the rest.​

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A Barris Tribute Surfaces from a Minden Ranch Album

Karen Jackson recently sent us a stack of photos and notes from the build of the Kalifornian, a 1952 Chevrolet convertible her husband Dick Jackson built as a tribute to George and Sam Barris. The car started as a rust-free hardtop that Dick spotted at the Ponderosa Ranch up at Lake Tahoe. He told Karen he had to have it, and within hours it was sitting at their ranch in Minden, Nevada. From there he chopped the top, added a Carson top, molded in a 1957 Buick grill, and got Herb Martinez to lay down what Karen calls "more gold leaf than I have in gold." Karen is sitting on a full photo album from start to finish, so we are saving the deep dive for the June newsletter. Big thanks to Karen for sharing this with us.

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Rare Photos Surface from a Quiet Chapter at Gil Ayala's Shop

Sometimes emails come into our inbox and get lost in the chaos before we can follow up. Every once in a while, one of them surfaces back into the spotlight. That happened this week with a great email from Alex Mendoza, sent in 2021. Alex hung around Gil Ayala's shop in East Los Angeles as a teenager in 1978 and 1979, doing odd jobs without pay just to be there. He sent us a stack of rare photos from a period of the shop that has not been well documented: his own 1970 Chevelle, his dad's El Camino in candy apple red flake, his cousin's 1955 Chevy in blue, and a black Camaro that Gil designed off the IROC platform. Big thanks to Alex for sharing this slice of late-70s East L.A. custom history with us. Click here to check them all out on Kustomrama.​

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Bad58 Gets a New Dress in Italy

Gian Paolo "Gianpy" Tagliatti has given his well-known 1958 Plymouth Savoy a serious makeover. The Rumblers Milano member from Modena, Italy, had been running a Watson-inspired panel paint scheme on the car for over a decade. In late 2023, he pulled it into the shop and started over. The finished car debuted in 2024 wearing deep candy red metallic paint job. Fender skirts and chrome lower moldings were added, giving the profile a longer, smoother look. Inside, the car got two-tone button-tuck upholstery in red and dark maroon, with swivel seats. It is the latest chapter in a build that started when Gianpy first spotted the Plymouth as a teenager in Lugano, Switzerland, and spent 22 years tracking it down. Thanks to Gianoy for sharing this update. Click here to read the full story and see more photos on Kustomrama.​

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A Stop at Starbird's Before It Was Gone

Alan Taylor recently shared some photos he took at Darryl Starbird's National Rod & Custom Car Hall of Fame Museum in Afton, Oklahoma. The visit happened during a cross-country road trip with Andy Brizio. The museum, which Starbird opened in 1995 on eighty acres along Route 66, housed over 50 custom cars in a 40,000-square-foot building. The collection included 25 of Starbird's own creations alongside builds by Barris, Roth, and others. The museum has since closed, and parts of the collection were moved to the Museum of American Speed in Lincoln, Nebraska. Photos like Alan's help preserve the memory of a place that is no longer there. Thanks to Alan for sharing these with us. Click here to read more about the museum on Kustomrama.​

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A Plumber's Blown Deuce That Dominated the Strips

Steve DiLoreto reached out with a magazine scan and some details about his father Joe's 1932 Ford Cabriolet. Known as the "Dominant Deuce" and featured on the cover of Rod Builder & Customizer in February 1958, the SCOT-blown Flathead powered cabriolet was built by Joe in the mid-1950s in Havertown, Pennsylvania. Joe was a plumber by trade who bought the car in rough condition and turned it into a strip-dominating hot rod that ran the quarter mile at 106 mph. He made the nerf bars, roll bars, headers, and blower pulley himself. Steve also has old photos of the car that we hope he will share with us. One cool detail from Steve: the West Chester Pike Timing Association that his dad belonged to was nothing more than a nice two-lane road they raced on in the '50s. Thanks to Steve for sharing his dad's story with us. Click here to read the full story of Joe DiLoreto's 1932 Ford Cabriolet on Kustomrama.​

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A Possible Sighting of the Lost Barris El Camino

We ran Jim Seaton's 1959 Chevrolet El Camino in our Lost & Found section last year after the current caretaker of Seaton's 1955 Chevrolet reached out trying to locate the long-lost Barris custom. Now Brandon Seaman has written in saying he believes he has seen the car, or one very much like it, in the Sacramento area. He could not recall the distinct taillights, so the lead is not confirmed, but it is the first one we have had. The El Camino was restyled by Barris Kustoms with frenched quad Lucas racing lamps, a bullet grille, extended hoodscoops, and white pearl Naugahyde upholstery by Eddie Martinez. If you know anything about this car, or if you have seen a customized '59 El Camino in Northern California, please reach out to us at [email protected]. Click here to read the full story on Kustomrama.​

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How much is our automotive heritage worth to you Reader?

At Kustomrama, we're driven by passion, not paywalls. As a volunteer-run Encyclopedia, we're dedicated to keeping the history and legacy of traditional hot rods and custom cars free and accessible to everyone, everywhere. From server costs to content collection, every aspect of our mission needs fuel. Whether it's $5, $20, $50, or any amount you choose, your donation keeps the engine of history running.

​Click here to tip today and be a part of preserving this unique legacy for future generations.​

I appreciate your support!

Best regards
Sondre / Kustomrama Founder / Keeping History Alive

What is Kustomrama?

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