Automotive styling, and its practitioners, have had a fistto-glove relationship with Southern California for nearly as long as cars have existed in the United States. A good starting point for tracing the reality existed 100 years ago, when a young Harley Earl was doing custom bodies for Don Lee Cadillac before General Motors, with much bigger ideas, hired him away. The Hollywood glitz aspect that has always been part of L.A.’s vibe has provided inspiration and opportunity to coach-builders as varied as Bohman & Schwartz prior to World War II, and then to Barris Kustoms and other metalsmiths thereafter. From the slow-cruise world of lowriders to the canyon conquerors of Mulholland Drive, wildly tricked out cars with deep personalization have always been part of the way Los Angeles rolls.
People who do this kind of stuff to cars are iconoclasts almost by definition, all looking to make their own strong statement expressed through steel, glass, and
