One of the true greats of the Kustom car and hot rod scene, as well as the designer and builder of numerous famous movie and television vehicles, Gene Winfield, has died today at the age of 97, leaving behind an incredible legacy of cars, design, engineering, art, innovative techniques, and countless lives enhanced by his works, teachings, and kind demeanor.
Winfield began his career modifying and building cars about as modestly as possible, behind a chicken coop at his mother’s house in Modesto, California. Eventually Winfield grew from a chicken coop-adjacent space to a whole shop called Winfield’s Custom Shop in Mojave, California. When he was young, Gene built a hamburger wagon on an old truck chassis, which eventually turned into the small restaurant his mom would run.
He would take pictures of cars and car modifications everywhere he encountered them, and then study the photos carefully. This led to some of Gene’s earliest cars, a 1929 Ford Model A coupé, and shortly after that a Model A roadster and then a Model T roadster, all of which Gene modified in various ways.
(photos: Kustomrama)
Winfield also was interested in racing, and in 1951 built a racing Model T that hit 135 mph at Bonneville Speedway; you can see the car above (it’s named The Thing).
Gene later came up with a novel way to mix paint colors in full-fade paint jobs, and used his new technique in 1959 to paint a custom known as the Jade Idol, made from a ’56 Mercury and a Chrysler New Yorker, which brought him widespread recognition.
(photos: Kustomrama)
Gene worked with Aluminum Model Toys (AMT) in the early ’60s, as a designer for model kits; after all, the model industry was one of the major ways the custom car scene was able to monetize its work.
In 1964, Winfield built the remarkable Reactor, which was built on a Citroën DS chassis, complete with its hydropneumatic suspension and a beautiful chromed Corvair flat-six engine. The car was so striking that it was used in multiple television shows of the era, with a whole episode of the suburban-witch-themed show Bewitched writing a whole episode around it:
…and an episode of Star Trek used it as a car built in an alien world, known as the Jupiter 8, seen here with Captain Kirk himself:
(photos: Paramount)
Speaking of Star Trek, Winfield also designed the iconic shuttlecraft used in the first series, known as Galileo. Gene redesigned the original, more complex design into something that used more flat panels and straight edges so it could actually be built in the extremely limited time demanded by the studio.
(photos: Paramount)
Here’s a whole video about the building and restoration of the shuttle, with lots of time from Gene himself:
Gene kept building custom cars for movies, including some VW Beetle-based futuro-cars for the 1973 Woody Allen movie Sleeper, when Allen was just funny and not creepy yet:
(photo: United Artists)
In 1987, Winfield designed the satirical 6000 SUX used in the sorta dystopian movie Robocop, a car that got its own commercial in the movie:
As if that’s not enough, Gene also made some of the police Spinners used in another 1980s dystopian movie, Blade Runner:
(photo: Warner Bros)
Gene absolutely left his mark on the whole custom car world and movie/television car world, and perhaps as importantly, he was known to be a genuinely kind person.
Gene will definitely be missed by so many in the automotive world and beyond, and he has brought fascination and joy to so many people who perhaps never even realized who he was.
But we know, and we wish him eternal peace.
I knew he wouldn’t live forever, but Gene was one of those guys who was always there…..
I got to meet him at his booth at the Houston, Texas Autorama custom car shows, over the last 10-12 years, and I’d see him at the Lone Star Roundup show in Austin, Texas as well. My late Dad was a huge custom car fan and I grew up reading car magazines along with my school books!
The Tail Dragger Hot Wheels car is a replica of one of Gene’s early customs, a tastefully modified ’48 Ford coupe. He would buy these toy cars when he was at a swap meet or show and someone had them, and resell them in his booth; he’d sign them for you, too, no additional charge! He bought several from me over the years, and I have a few pieces that he signed to me. Prized indeed are a couple of the small Rod & Custom magazines from the late 1950s, given to me by a cousin, with articles and pictures of some of Gene’s work. I brought them to him to show him, and to get them signed. He had a broad grin upon seeing these, and put the Sharpie marker aside that he would autograph most things people brought him. He got out a ballpoint pen and said,”I’m gonna do this like we did back in the old days, with this pen, since Sharpies weren’t around then.”
He was traveling with the Autorama show for several years, doing an event within the car show where a local hot rod/custom crew would supply a vintage car or truck, and these local guys would chop the top over the show weekend, with supervision and counsel from Gene. Many times I would see him watching the young guys, and then he would ask for the hammer or torch, and do an example of the work to explain how it was done. I’ve seen him take a piece of steel, cut down for a patch panel, and stand on it while bending it”just so” or using the body hammer to massage the metal to the desired curvature.
I’ve also heard a few stories from friends at Roundup who went to the music shows in the evening, and swore that Gene was still going strong, while younger men were saying they’d had enough for the night….. And he usually had a pretty lady or two around most of the time (at his show booth they would be talking to people and selling the merch; he had photos and books for sale besides the Tail Dragger Hot Wheels).
And he was always a very kind man, a true gentleman, always willing to answer questions about his amazing career and body of work. One of my friends in our local model car club had gathered up several photos and a presskit from AMT with the Star Trek and other TV and movie models in it, several years ago; he said Gene was impressed to see it and happily signed it. They had a good conversation about those models too.
He was a friend and a gentleman, and a true icon of the automotive world, and will most definitely be missed! Thanks for your beautiful article.
A lovely tribute.
Truly an icon. So many great cars.
Nicely done, Jason.
So many iconic vehicles, truly a legend that won’t ever be replaced!
97 is good innings, but there’s definitely a Gene Winfield-shaped hole in the world now.
At least he got to experience almost a decade without George Barris trying to take credit for all of his work