RM SOTHEBY’S & THE PETERSEN: KUSTOM KULTURE & PRECIOUS METAL!

Posted on December 13, 2018December 16, 2018 by MartynL

A trip to one of the most eclectic auctions this year – RM Sotheby’s at the Petersen Museum – and coming face-to-face with the iconic ‘Rat Fink’, relieves Jim Palam’s decades-old car guy guilt. Here’s his photo-report. It was weighing me down, this Car Guy guilt I’ve been lugging around since I moved to California in 1976. How was it that in all these years I had never visited the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles? I really didn’t have an excuse, so when I received an invitation from RM...

‘50 CHEVY: RONNIE STAPLES’ SPLITLINER!

Posted on March 20, 2018 by MartynL

Prior to joining Ronnie Staples’s fleet of pro-built hot rods and Resto-Mods, the Splitliner was a mild custom powered by a 350 crate motor. That was then; this is now. Within a week of purchasing this custom Chevy Fleetline coupe from Scott Graham, Generations Body Shop, Franklin, IN in 2002 Staples started to turn it into the Splitliner showcased here. It already had been chopped one-inch, nosed and decked, and had its hood and fenders reshaped. It had Mercedes taillights, tan interior and da...