Custom cars icon Gene Winfield passes away at 97 — Hot rod community mourns

Gene Winfield, one of the greats of the Kustom car and hot rod scene, the designer and builder of many iconic vehicles from movies and television shows, passed away at the age of 97.

His work, teachings, and gentle nature have improved countless lives and left behind an amazing legacy of cars, design, engineering, art, and inventive techniques.

More about Gene Winfield's life and career

At his mother's home in Modesto, California, Winfield started his business as simply as possible, assembling and modifying vehicles beneath a chicken coop. Winfield eventually expanded from a room next to a chicken coop to an entire store named Winfield's Custom Shop in Mojave, California.

On an old truck chassis, Gene constructed a hamburger wagon when he was a kid, which later became the tiny eatery his mother would operate.

Later, Gene developed a new method for blending paint colors in full-fade paint jobs. He applied this method to paint a custom known as the Jade Idol, which was created from a 1956 Mercury and a Chrysler New Yorker, in 1959, earning him international acclaim.

The amazing Reactor, with its hydropneumatic suspension and gorgeous chromed Corvair flat-six engine, was constructed by Winfield in 1964 on a Citroën DS chassis.

The automobile was so eye-catching that it appeared in several television programs of the day, including a whole episode of the suburban witch-themed series Bewitched and it was utilized in a Star Trek episode as the Jupiter 8, a vehicle constructed on an extraterrestrial world and shown here with Captain Kirk himself.

Concerning Star Trek, Winfield also created the famous shuttlecraft, Galileo, that was utilized in the original series. For the initial, more intricate design to be constructed in the incredibly constrained amount of time the studio required, Gene changed it to include more flat panels and straight edges.

For the 1973 Woody Allen film Sleeper, Gene continued to construct futuristic automobiles based on VW Beetles.

In 1987, Winfield created the satirical 6000 SUX, an automobile that had its own advertising in the rather gloomy film Robocop. As if that weren't enough, Gene also created some of the police spinners that were used in Blade Runner, another dystopian film from the 1980s.

Perhaps more significantly, Gene Winfield was regarded as a very kind person. He undoubtedly made his imprint on the movie/television automobile and custom car industries.

Many individuals in the automobile industry and beyond will undoubtedly miss Gene, who has fascinated and delighted many others who may not have even known who he was.

After a fight with cancer, Gene Winfield, one of the greats of the Kustom car and hot rod industry and the creator of several classic automobiles from television and film, died at the age of 97.