Custom Car

A custom car is a modified according to the wishes of the owner of the vehicle or even a series composed of different vehicle series production vehicles.

Customizing for vehicles improves the performance, see vehicle tuning, but also all other requirements of owners, from the installation of huge sound systems on the implementation of style ideas on how the optical design of a van in the knight or pirate style using airbrush and accessories, through to conversions for hunters, such as the installation of mounts for hunting rifles and a tub for killed wild game.

The term is generally used only when not only minor changes have been made, but the vehicle is significantly different from a production vehicle.

There is a whole range of styles and scenes have developed.

So there are fans that handle certain vehicles like VW Beetle, VW Golf, VW Bus, Vans Chrysler, Corvette, Ford Mustang, Opel Manta, Opel Kadett, BMW 3 series, etc..

In addition, there are special scenes of SUVs friends or convertible fans.

While U.S. vehicles in Germany have set a generally very small distribution, they are extremely popular with fans of custom cars.

Of special clubs and Auto and Technik Museum meetings are held regularly, which are usually are prizes for particularly successful designs.

A subspecies of custom cars are Art Cars that are deliberately designed as works of art.

• 4.1 Germany
• 4.2 England / USA

• 7.1 Iceland

Iceland

Extraordinarily widespread are custom cars in Iceland. Even in summer, a good 10 percent of the country mostly covered with glaciers. In winter, parts of the roads are not cleared of snow, which holds much of the country for months in the handle. Some are cleared by calendar, so for example every 14 days. Snow in the days after broaching the road is heavily just snowed. Only the National Road No. 1 is held fairly consistently free. In Iceland, studded tires are allowed and required months in the cities. In rural areas, were early attempts made ​​with high landing gear, extreme wide tires ( 38-44 inch) and low air pressure. Special companies such as Arctic Truck or Fjallasport build Japanese, British and American SUV to the special needs of Iceland. Both companies have subsidiaries in Norway, which exist in parts of the country similar needs.

History

The Deuce and the music

As the oldest larger group, the customizing has operated as a passion that U.S. fans, the Ford B 1932, usually referred to as Deuce ( English name for the two on dice and playing cards ) transformed in the forties apply.

Mike Love, lead singer of the U.S. band The Beach Boys, had a Deuce and made him the song and the LP Little Deuce Coupe.

As a prototype of the Hot Rod Deuce keeps popping up even without being like Mike Love main theme in song texts by American musicians, such as in the line: "cut loose like a deuce, another runner in the night" in the Bruce Springsteen song "Blinded by the night", the later by Manfred Mann with a modified chorus " revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night" became a number 1 hit in the U.S.. The 1976 also appeared on the LP The Roaring Silence title placed as a remix in February 2007 in the Austrian charts.

The Custom Car magazine chrome & flames reported in a 2007 report for the 75th anniversary of the car that had to get in the American aftermarket still without exception, all items of the Deuce.

The rock group ZZ Top used the revised 1933 version of the Ford Model B for a custom car that was used under the name Eliminator in several videos, such as in legs. Painted we find the Deuce on the cover of the LP Eliminator and real in the intro of the official website of the band (2007).

Film

Custom Cars are always seen in movies, such as the Yellow Deuce in American Graffiti or the vehicles in the German comedy Manta Manta. In Harold and Maude the morbid Harold builds a Jaguar Type E to a hearse.

Magazines

In all countries with a strong custom car scene, such as USA, England, Sweden and Germany, this has with her hunger for images and technical reports as well as their purchasing power, a number of journals.

Germany

In addition to reports on U.S. vehicles in general is devoted to the monthly magazine chrome & flames of Krom Verlag GmbH always the custom cars from U.S. vehicles.

Two publishers have even brought out a whole bunch of magazines that target primarily at the tuning scene, but mostly imagined and stylistically or aesthetically oriented tags.

This is the one of the Delius Klasing Verlag with the magazines VW - Speed ​​, Tuning, Car Tuning, VW Tuning, Audi Tuning, Opel Tuning and secondly the TV Trend Verlag GmbH in Herten with magazines such as VW Scene International, DRIVE Ford Scene International, Ford Scene Live, BMW Scene Live, Porsche Scene Live.

More German magazines are, for example, Flash Opel Scene, Street Magazine, etc.

England / USA

In England, the magazine Custom car there, in the USA, for example, Hot Rod, the journal of the National Hot Rod Association ( NHRA ).