VALE Gene Winfield
The custom car and hot rod community has lost one of its longest serving and best-known members in Gene Winfield. A craftsman in metal and a magician with paint, Winfield passed away on 4 March, aged 97.
Born in Missouri, but raised in southern California, Winfield bought his first car when he was a teenager and immediately modified it; starting a pattern he would continue for the next seven decades. He opened his first custom shop, Windys, in 1946, then the more familiar Winfield’s Rod & Custom in 1951. Like many of his contemporaries, Winfield also got into racing, campaigning self-built cars on the street, strip and the Bonneville Salt Flats.
As a custom car builder, Winfield’s work, particularly his ‘fade’ paint jobs, brought him wider attention in the late 1950s, leading to collaborations with model kit producer AMT, the Ford Motor Company and Hollywood.
Some of Winfield’s best-known custom creations from this period include the ‘Jade Idol’ 1957 Mercury and ‘Solar Scene’ 1950 Mercury. For Ford’s ‘Custom Car Caravan’ travelling show, he built the Mercury Comet-based ‘Cyclone Sportster’ and the ‘Pacifica’ 1962 Econoline pickup. The latter featured an asymmetrical front-end treatment that Winfield would also apply to the ‘Strip Star’ that had a custom aluminium body and 427 V8. Built in 1963, the Strip Star would appear in Back to the Future II 26 years later.
Arguably Winfield’s most ambitious creation was ‘The Reactor’ from 1965. This combined a Chevrolet Corvair turbocharged flat six with the transmission and suspension from a Citroën DS in a bespoke aluminium body. Built for the show circuit, the mid-engined, front-wheel drive Reactor would also appear in several US TV shows.
A regular visitor to Australia, Winfield conducted many workshops on roof chopping and painting here, while also working on customer cars; most notably applying his signature fadeaway paint to Mario Colalillo’s ‘Wild Cad’ 1959 Cadillac. Winfield also painted Colalillo’s FB Holden panel van and Joe Valore’s ‘Jade Dragon’ 1951 Chev coupe.
Still working into his 90s, Winfield was also attending shows and meeting fans just weeks before his death. JUST CARS extends its sympathies to Winfield’s family and friends.
