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KUSTOMRAMA NEWSLETTER NO. 219

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Last weekend of June, my club, the Coupe Devils of Norway, hosted our 16th annual Rod & Kustom Bonanza in the deep woods of Norway. Three days of traditional hot rods, customs, music, pinstripers, food, and friends. Then the field emptied, and the year reset.

I wrote a lot about the Bonanza in June. The editorial in last month's newsletter. Three Friday Brand Anchor posts working up to it. A Saturday afternoon in the Kustomrama Dream Truck with my son. Sunday nights putting hand-painted sweaters together with Jan Ove at Jarlsberg Yrkesklær. A merch table's worth of stickers and sweatshirts featuring a Tom Kelly design of Björn Ramsten's iconic 1957 Chevy custom. By the time we rolled into Blaker on the Thursday afternoon, most of what I had been quietly working on since last summer was either on a truck or already on the field.

That is the strange thing about a car show. It only exists for one weekend. For the rest of the year, it is an idea you and your friends hold in your heads.

This year, a few of you traveled a long way to get there. Our good friend Petri from the Pistons CC drove all the way from Finland. No ferry. Over two thousand kilometers each way.

Kustomrama subscriber Tony Peake and his wife came all the way from Australia.

There were Coupe Devils members debuting cars at the show that had been in the works since the late 1990s.

There were younger builders showing up with cars I had only seen photos of.

There were kids climbing onto running boards and dads explaining what a louver does, exactly the way I wrote about in a Monday Culture post two weeks earlier without quite realizing I was writing about the show.

That is what a Bonanza is for. What gets carried forward. Not just the cars. The people who came the furthest to be there.

The pinstripers laying lines on toolboxes and guitars.

The friends we meet once a year and hug as if we saw them yesterday.

I promised in last month's editorial that if you made it to Blaker, we would love to have you. A lot of you did. Thank you.

Ohh. Did I tell you that we have booked the same weekend next year? Well, we have, so hope to see you all in Norway next year for the 17th annual Coupe Devils Bonanza!

The June newsletter was written before the show. This one is written after. In between, a Facebook post about Mike Ness kicking off the European Social Distortion tour in Oslo went further than anything we have ever put out. Something like 270,000 people saw it across Facebook and Instagram. Punk and hot rods have been overlapping quietly for forty years, but you never quite know when the overlap is going to hit that hard. When it does, it reminds you that the audience for what we do is broader than we sometimes assume.

We shot a lot in Blaker this weekend. More from the Bonanza is coming in the days ahead, so be sure to follow our Facebook and Instagram pages for more updates!

In a few hours, I'm off to Sopot and Gdansk in Poland with the wife and kids for some lazy days in the sun... if anyone has any leads on hot-rod or custom-related activities, attractions, or people in the area, please let me know.

Keep the stories coming.

Best regards
Sondre
Kustomrama Editor

Remembering the Legends

Dale Fisher

Early in June, we're saddened to learn that Dale Fisher had passed away at the age of 92.

Dale grew up in Gundagai, New South Wales, dreaming of designing cars. In 1950, at sixteen, he moved to Sydney and took up panel beating, landing a five-year apprenticeship with the NRMA. It was there, helping a mate named Rolly Huyshe turn a wrecked FX Holden into a convertible, that Dale found what he was meant to do.

That first drop-top turned heads all over Sydney, and the work never stopped coming. Over the next three decades, Dale chopped tops, molded in Continental kits, and reshaped one grille after another. He built more convertible conversions from two- and four-door cars than anyone else in the country, and people started calling him Australia's George Barris.

Dale did it all in steel, the old-fashioned way, and he had no time for flimsy bolt-ons. Later he taught panel beating at TAFE, passing the craft on to a new generation of Australian customizers.

Over the past years, we've had the honor of working closely with Dale and his two sons, documenting his one-of-a-kind story for Kustomrama.

We'd love to hear your memories of Dale and his cars. Share your stories and photos with us, and help us keep his legacy alive.

​Click here to read the full story on Kustomrama.​

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Stockholm 1960, Blaker 2026: How a Swedish Chevy Ended Up on a Tom Kelly Weirdo Sweatshirt

Every year, the Kustomrama stand at the Bonanza carries something new. Some years it is a run of prints. Some years a book. This year it was two stickers and a sweater, and the story behind them ties together three generations of the same scene.

The Sillarna Sticker

The first sticker is a tribute to Sillarna, the group of hot rod builders and friends who ran the streets of Stockholm in the 1960s. Named after the Swedish word for "the herrings," they were part of an early Scandinavian scene that most of the world outside Sweden has never heard of. They read the American magazines. They cut and welded and painted their own cars. They built a culture out of nothing more than friendship, tools, and creativity, in a country that nobody outside Scandinavia thinks of as a hot rod heartland.

The Sillarna sticker is a small acknowledgment that the Stockholm scene of the 1960s deserves to be remembered on the same wall as the California one.

The Kelly Sweater

The second piece is a hand-painted sweater. Twenty-five were made this year, each one sprayed by hand at Jan Ove's shop at Jarlsberg Yrkesklær, so no two are exactly alike.

The design is Tom Kelly's. Kelly, born in 1940 in Temple City, California, is the last surviving member of a striping trio that also included Ed "Big Daddy" Roth and Kelly's grandfather DZ Crozier, better known as the Baron. Kelly started striping in the Baron's shop at thirteen. Roth opened a shop in Southgate a few years later, and Kelly and the Baron went over to see it. Instant chemistry between the three of them turned into the Crazy Painters, the outfit that painted between eight and ten cars a day at the peak of the modern pinstriping era. The Crazy Painters ran until 1959, when Roth left to open his own studio in Maywood.

Kelly is still working. He drew us a wild monster behind the wheel of a custom car, in the same spirit as the early Rat Fink era. He calls the character an enPSYCHOLOpedia monster. The car under the monster is not a random custom. It is Björn Ramsten's 1957 Chevrolet.

Before the Bonanza, we put away a few Kelly Sweatshirts that we will offer to our dedicated Newsletter Subscribers. We will return with more info on this later on, so stay tuned!

Björn Ramsten's 1957 Chevrolet

Björn Ramsten grew up in Fredhäll at Kungsholmen in Stockholm. He got his driver's license in 1963. His first car was a 1955 Mercury. His first Chevy came shortly after, a red and white 1957 two-door hardtop 210 with a tired inline-six that he swapped for a 283 as soon as he could get his hands on one.

By 1965, inspired by American magazines like Hot Rod, Car Craft, and Rod & Custom, Björn started customizing the car. He was in the army from 1965 to 1966, but he kept working through the details. He made a grille from gold-painted sequins he cut, bent, soldered, and painted himself. After his service, he taught himself gas welding on scrap metal in a garage his father had helped him build at the family summer place. Once the welds started coming out clean, he shaved the bumpers, the emblems, the moldings, and the door handles.

The biggest influence on the build was Bill Cushenbery's Limelighter, a 1958 Chevy that Björn had studied in the magazines. The Chevy got a rolled pan up front. A new grille opening in armored tubing. 1958 Chevrolet headlights. An asymmetrical hood scoop that Björn made his own version of after seeing the Alexander Brothers' asymmetrical work out of Michigan. A perforated mesh grille insert cut from hardware-store material and sent out for chrome. Nerf bars bent by hand from galvanized traffic-blocking iron, heated in a vice to get the shape.

In the back, the fenders were extended to house 1960 Plymouth taillights. The gas filler moved into the trunk. A rolled pan carried a rear grille opening and chromed mesh, another Limelighter treatment. The license plate went into the deck lid, milk-white plastic with a light inside and black letters glued on.

Inside, the front bench got swapped for chairs from a wrecked Porsche. A walnut-covered plywood center console. A 1958 Oldsmobile steering wheel, later replaced with a 1959 Impala wheel. Diamond-pleated black and white vinyl upholstery by Allen Brun. The inner roof upholstered in white vinyl with chromed bows from a 1955 Pontiac.

Under the hood, the swap started with a 283 and a Carter four-barrel, then moved to a 327 short block from Bosse Kasby at BoMac Racing with Corvette heads, an Offenhauser high-rise, a Holley 800 CFM, and Hooker headers. The transmission started as a 3-speed with a Hurst Mystery floor shifter, then upgraded to a 4-speed Muncie.

Björn finished the paint at Älta Billack in the summer of 1967. Hunter Green Metallic, a 1956 Chrysler color he had chosen after a long look at the paint chip book. Open-wheel spinners from Cal Custom on the original rims.

Once completed, the Chevy became the most radical custom in Björn's club, The Flintstones of Hollygroff, and a friend introduced him to Bosse "Gamen" Sandberg, the big Kustom King of Stockholm at the time. Gamen took one look and said, "I see you have been inspired by Cushenbery." He liked Björn's own takes on the design, and Björn signed an exhibitor contract for the September 1967 Hot Rod Show at Marmorhallarna in Stockholm.

The Chevy went to Anderstorp in 1968 for First Go, the first official drag race in Sweden. Björn believed he ran Janne Carlsson's 1961 Ford Thunderbird in his first pass. In 1971, the car was featured in Start & Speed magazine under the headline "50-talare med sting."

Björn ran the Chevy on the street and the strip until 1976, when he bought a 1951 Chevrolet convertible.

Von Sven at Blaker

Sixty years after Björn started work on that Chevy, Von Sven arrived in Blaker with a brush and a full kit and set up his tent alongside Richie BC. Von Sven works out of Stockholm. He is one of the strongest pinstripers in Scandinavia today, and part of the same tradition Björn and the Sillarna guys were feeding off of when they were teenagers reading American magazines. Sweden ships back to California. California ships back to Sweden. The lineage has never stopped.

We watched Von Sven pinstripe over the weekend in Blaker. A brush, a steady hand, and the kind of patience that turns an everyday object into something with a name on it. The Kelly sweater sold well. The Sillarna stickers went out. Björn's Chevy, as far as we know, is still sitting somewhere in Sweden with a shaved deck lid as the last remaining bit of custom work from the 1967 build.

Somewhere in there is a story about what a scene is, and how it moves.

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Featured Video

Hot Rod Parade Stockholm 1978

On a cloudy day in September 1978, the Swedish auto magazine Teknikens Värld ran a Street Rod parade through central Stockholm. Together with SSRA, they pulled about thirty cars through the streets and closed the day with a free public exhibition on Skeppsholmen island. It was the first arranged outdoor hot rod show in Sweden.

The Marmorhallarna shows earlier in the 1970s had put rods in front of an indoor Swedish audience. A parade through the streets and a public show on an island in the middle of Stockholm was new territory. The scene stepped out into the open air.

Thomas Dahlgren filmed the parade. Björn Ramsten added the sound effects. Lennart Blomdahl and Olle Bergström took the photos. Mats Wallander went through their archives and edited the material into a film for Kustomrama.

​Click here to watch the 1978 Hot Rod Parade Stockholm video.​

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From the Feed

This month the community showed up in a way we did not see coming.

Mike Ness and Social Distortion in Oslo — On Wednesday, June 3, we shared a video from Mike Ness kicking off the European Social Distortion tour in Oslo. The post went further than anything Kustomrama has put out lately. Roughly 148,000 people saw it on Facebook. Another 122,000 on Instagram. Nearly 400 shares on Facebook, 663 on Instagram, and over 300 comments across the two platforms filling up with the songs people put on when they pick up a wrench. Ness is a founding member of the Lonely Kings Car Club, and the imagery on his album covers and merch has been part of the traditional kustom aesthetic for decades. When a post about him lands the way this one did, it is a reminder that the punk and hot rod worlds have been overlapping for a long time. Click here to check it out.​

Starbird's Museum, Before It Was Gone — On Thursday, June 18, we ran a Thursday Archive piece on Darryl Starbird's National Rod and Custom Car Hall of Fame Museum in Afton, Oklahoma. Opened in 1995, closed around 2022, collection split between the Museum of American Speed in Lincoln, Nebraska and private collectors. It was the strongest Archive post of the month by every metric. Over 22,000 people saw it on Facebook. 40 shares. 22 comments filled with people who made the trip out to Route 66 before the museum closed, and people who did not and wish they had. Photos courtesy of Alan Taylor, from a cross-country trip he made with legendary hot rod builder Andy Brizio. Click here to check it out.​

Three Generations of Norwegian Customs in One Day — On Tuesday, June 9, we posted a reel from a day in the field with Atle Fonn's old 1946 Ford, the Kolgrov Mercury in restoration progress, and Levi Lundring's 1949 Mercury sitting in the background. Instagram took to it in a way Facebook did not. 1,189 engagements on Instagram, 9,845 reach, 42 saves. A reel that puts three eras of the Norwegian custom scene in the same frame, ordered chronologically, apparently answered a question a lot of people had about what a Norwegian custom scene even looks like. Click here to check it out.​

That is the feed we want to keep seeing.

Jimmy Lemus' Low and Loaded

In 1970, one of Jimmy Lemus' club brothers, a guy everybody knew as Honey Boy, installed a set of hydraulic lifts on Jimmy's 1967 Buick Riviera.

Jimmy ran with the New Movement SFV car club out of San Fernando, California, and his Riviera was known as "Low and Loaded." The custom paint came from Bill Carter of Carter Pro Paint. The lifts came from Honey Boy. The car came together the way most neighborhood customs did back then, one piece at a time, with the help of the people around you.

Junji Nakamura shot this photo at an indoor car show at the Long Beach Sports Arena in 1971. Two years later, in 1973, Jimmy sold the car to buy his first home.

Did you know "Low and Loaded" or the New Movement SFV car club? Tell us in the comments.

​Click here for more photos from The Junji Nakamura Photo Collection on Kustomrama.​

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July is made for long drives, late sunsets, and stopping only when the tank says so. This month's Kustomrama playlist kicks off with Hola Ghost's cinematic 'Django,' before drifting into Tommy Guerrero's laid-back 'Future Deserts' and the dreamy grooves of Jacuzzi Boys' 'Planet of the Dreamers.'

Along the way you'll find deep blues from T-Bone Walker, soul from The "5" Royales, a little rock 'n' roll attitude from The Mainliners, and a touch of desert cool from Gitkin. It's a soundtrack for warm asphalt, open garage doors, and conversations that last long after the engines have cooled. Turn it up, take the scenic route, and enjoy the best month of the year. Click here to check it out.​

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A Detective Story from Before the Internet: The '34 Ford Kustom Pickup That Ran in Custom Rodder

Way back in 1995, before the internet, David Harrison came across the May 1961 issue of Custom Rodder magazine and got fixated on a Kustom 1934 Ford pickup that ran across the pages. Thirty-four years had passed since the article. Most people would have moved on. David did the detective work, tracked down an address for the owner, and mailed him a letter asking about the truck. The owner wrote back with a stack of photos. The two brothers who built the truck have since passed, but David is now trying to reach a third brother who may still remember the story.

Thanks to David for holding onto this material for thirty years and reaching back out to us when our Handoff post reminded him what the whole thing was about. Photos and the letter will run in a future issue as more material comes in.

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Low Flyers: The Original Dozen from the UK Garage Scene

Gary Janes reached out from the UK after our Robert Rojas post ran in mid-June. He is one of the original dozen who founded the Low Flyers Hot Rod Club in the late 1980s. Back then, the UK traditional scene ran quiet. No internet. The club relied on magazines and the odd show to find each other. The mainstream looked down on them, Gary told us. That has changed. Traditional is the mainstream now.

Gary built his own custom in his home garage during the same years and has photos to share. He points readers to the club's site at lowflyers.co.uk. Thanks to Gary for reaching out. Full story on the Low Flyers and Gary's build coming in a future issue as more material comes through.

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One of Westergard's Most Famous Customs Returns to Private Hands

One of the great Harry Westergard customs just changed hands. Mel Falconer's 1939 Ford, built by Westergard in Sacramento in early 1945 and long regarded as one of the most famous cars to come out of his shop, is back in private hands for the first time in about 45 years. The car has been out of circulation since it went into museum display in the 1980s, most recently at the National Automobile Museum in Reno.

Mike Thompson, the new owner, reached out in the comments after our June post on Brown's Body Shop and told us he is not yet sure what direction he wants to take the car in. If you have photos, magazine clippings, or memories of this Ford from any point in its life, we would love to hear from you.

​Click here to read the full Falconer Ford story on Kustomrama.​

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Another White Bear Lake Survivor Comes Out of a Barn

Jeff Bloedron at East Side Speed Shop dropped us a note. He has another White Bear Lake, Minnesota survivor. This one used to cruise around with Louie, Gordy, and Bruce back in the day. Jeff pulled the car out of a barn a while back and got it back on the road.

For anyone who has not followed the White Bear Lake thread, the town in the mid 1950s had about 3,500 people, no formal hot rod club, and roughly three hot rods running around, all Fords. Bruce Rosengren's 1936 Cabriolet. Gordy Kordowsky's chopped 1932 5-window. Dick Hanson's 1934 3-window. That crowd. This survivor sits inside that story.

Big thanks to Jeff. Full story coming soon.

​Click here to read up on the White Bear Lake scene on Kustomrama.​

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​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

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