California customizer Gene Winfield, who chopped the tops of something like 800 1949 to 1951 Mercury coupes
and made them all look way cooler, has passed away at the age of 98.
Winfield was a true artist, who could see a new shape under the skin of a large rolling piece of Detroit iron and bring it out for all to enjoy.
“I started hanging out in his shop when I was three years old,” said Chip Foose, whose dad, Sam Foose, was Winfield’s shop foreman and painter.
When Winfield moved to Phoenix to establish the AMT model shop, the Fooses came along.
“My earliest memories are watching the guys build stuff, and then, six months later, there’d be a plastic model kit that I got to build – the same cars that they were building (in the AMT model shop), and Hot Wheels was building Hot Wheels of them. I always had Hot Wheels in my pocket and plastic model kits of what Gene and the guys were building.”
It was the perfect upbringing for the young car designer.
“He was a ball of energy and 100% passion,” Foose said. “He didn’t know how to say no to doing anything, because he just wanted to do it.”
“Gene Winfield was the definition of a hot rod legend,” said John Buck, owner of Rod Shows, which puts on the Grand National Roadster Show. “We were delighted to host him at the 75th Grand National Roadster Show in January and he seemed to truly enjoy interacting with so many friends and fellow car lovers. We are so proud to have inducted Gene into the Grand National Roadster Show Hall of Fame (1961) and into the Legends of the Autorama (2007) to honor his incredible legacy and impact on the custom car world. He will be truly missed.”
“He was a mechanical genius,” said friend Barry Meguiar. “He was like an industrial complex all his own. He had barns and barns of machines and a lot of them he’d built himself. He kept teaching himself. If he didn’t have a machine he made it. I loved his passion and his passion for training young people. His legacy goes down to how many people he’s trained—it’s got to be in the thousands.”
(Words from Autoweek)