Gene Winfield, a hot Rodder and the protruding car adapter who built fantastic vehicles for “Star Trek”, “The Man from the Divine” and other television series for films such as “Blade Runner” and “Sleeper”, died on March 4 at Atascadero.
His son, Steve, said he died in an assisted living in metastatic melanoma. It was also diagnosed with kidney failure.
Mr. Winfield began to attract national attention in the late 1950s with two 1956 Mercury Hard Top doors called Jade Idol.
According to the website of the custom car Kustorama, it transformed mercury for a customer by adding features such as handmade wings that ran into an aluminum at the front. Projector rings from 1959 Chrysler Imperial Crown Hubcaps; A television set embedded in a new dashboard. and a steering column taken from an edsel.
Automobile magazine described Jade Idol as “a presence of sharks that represented a new direction in customs”.
The car was named after Mr. Winfield’s inventive paint plan: multiple shades of green and pearl White, with a color that perfectly combines the other, using a technique he developed. Became known as Winfield Fade.
In an interview of 2014 with the Racing News website in all rollers, Mr. Winfield said he started his motorcycle dye experiments, followed by a white chevy,
“I put purple around Chrome’s strips,” he said. “When I was finished, it was a little shiny for me. It was different, but everyone loved it. So, as I started doing the next one or two, I made it softer and started combining.”
Another famous custom work was Roadster, King T, who built in the early 1960s with Don Tognotti. They wrote a T Ford Lavender model and added modifications such as a Chevrolet V-8 engine in combination with four-speed automatic transmission. four -wheel drive discs. and 15 -inch chrome wheels with wooden inserts. He won a prize for “Most Beautiful Roadster” at the 1964 Oakland Roadster Show in California.
Mr Winfield cut off the peaks of many cars that were adapted – including one hundred Mercuys – and put them back a few centimeters lower to give the cars more elegant.
“He would go to a World of Wheels Show and, with his crew, cut the top of a vehicle with a Blowtorch and put it back four inches lower. It was quite a spectacle,” said John Buck, a producer of Grand National Roadster Show and Sacramento Autorama, to whom his car. The crowds are charming.
Mr Winfield’s custom cars, if not his name, became widely known in the 1960s, when they watched on television and in films.
He placed the reactor-a futuristic, low, aluminum claim with gold and green color design, front wheel and a hinged roof frame-in a 20th-century Fox studio in Hollywood in 1966, hoping to play a role on the screen.
“I went to the gate and made them let me show my car to their transport section,” a car collectors and revolutionaries website told Motorious, “from there, the Transport Coordinator gave me the names and addresses of all these other studios and all of my other studios. “Bewitched” He called me and said that they wanted the reactor to their set. “It was the central part of an episode called” Super Car “.
The reactor was then used in three more rows: “Star Trek”, “Mission: Impossible” and “Batman”, in which Catwoman (Eartha Kitt) used it as Catmobile.
He did some of his television works as a division manager for the AMT car model company, for which he created the Galileo bus for “Star Trek”. Based on Thomas Kellogg’s design, he appeared in some episodes. He created it in two units.
“Someone would be a complete exterior, complete size,” he told the official Star Trek website in 2011. “Then we built the full interior. This interior had what we called” wild “walls. What you do is make the walls on four -footed sections so that you can moun
Robert Eugene Winfield was born on June 16, 1927 in Springfield, Ma, and grew up with five brothers and sisters, mainly in Modesto, California. His father, Frank, was a butcher shop that ran a wagon from which he and his mother, Virginia, Winfield, sold hamburgers and hot dogs for a nickel. After his parents divorced, his mother opened her own Hamburger restaurant, where Genea began working at 10.
He was 14 years old when he opened his first store, in which he brought his first car in 1929 Ford Model A Coupe. In this, he added Oxtails, two antennas and a blue job. But his hope for hot streets on the streets soon dissolved when he was destroyed in a taxi crash. He quickly bought two more roadsters.
He served the stops in the Navy, from 1944 to 1945, and in the army, from 1949 to 1951. While stationed in Japan, he learned welding skills from a special Japanese welder. Back at home, his custom work improved and began to attract customers. He also began to fight on the streets and in the dry lakes in the late 1940s. In 1951 he took the custom-made Ford Model T Coupe-which he called the thing-and drove it 135 miles to Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.
But what established his reputation was the cars he adapted – such as Maybellelele, a modified 1961 Cadillac Cadillac called for Chuck Berry’s song and painted with tons of cream and butter – and those he did for Hollywood.
For “The Man from Uncle”, the Sethy Spy series starring Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, Mr. Winfield created a car with flaps, with fake front flames and a Corvair engine. For “Get Smart”, Spy-Spoof Sitcom starring Don Adams as an inappropriate secret agent, designed a sports car with gadgets like a foldable cannon.
For “Sleeper”, Woody Allen’s science fiction comedy, he created a car with a bubble over a Volkswagen chassis.
He also created 25 vehicles for the dystopian science fiction film “Blade Runner” (1982), based on Syd Mead’s designs, some of which were called rotating. One of them was thrown by the policeman played by Edward James Olmos.
One of the cars he built for “Blade Runner appeared in” Back to the Future Part II “
Mr Winfield’s son said he preferred to adjust cars to create them for television and movies.
“His movie cars were dictated, but the customer of the custom car would say,” Gene, here is my car, do what your inspiration says, “he said.” That’s how Jade Idol proved. “
In addition to his son, from his marriage to Dolores Johnston, who finished with a divorce, Mr. Winfield survives a Jana Troutt daughter of the same marriage. One daughter, Nancy Winfield, from another marriage, to Kathy Horrigan, who also ended in divorce. One son, Jerry Carrico, from another relationship. Five grandchildren. and 10 large-gongs.
Mr Winfield said he met with Ridley Scott, director of “Blade Runner”, every two or three weeks, as he and his crew built cars for the film.
“The only thing I was unhappy in the final results was that Ridley Scott had done many things that had to be absolutely perfect in terms of surface and shapes and colors,” he said in an interview with Blade Zone, a fan website. “We went hours, hours, and hours of colors and all these things, and then everything was shot in the rain at night.”
With a laugh, he added, “You don’t even see half of what we did.”
