Legends in Hot Rodding: Gene Winfield, The Passing of a Customizing Icon
This is a special, if sad, Legends of Hot Rodding column, as Gene Winfield, whose customs and film creations dazzled literally hundreds of millions of people over seven decades, passed away on March 4, 2025 at age 97.
Known to manyu as “Windy,” Winfield built not only some of the most recognized 1950s-era customs – the Jade Idol chief among them – he also reigned as a prolific Hollywood car creator.
Winfield was born in 1927 in Springfield, Missouri. The family moved west to Modesto, California when he was a youngster, where his father first toiled as a butcher before opening a mobile hamburger cart. After his parents split, his mother, Ginny, opened a luncheon eatery, where the 10-year-old Winfield pitched in as a car hop.
Gene demonstrated a creative streak early on, becoming an expert builder of model airplanes, and more importantly, getting hooked on photography. The focus of his attention? Cars, particularly any car that had been modified. Not only did Gene see interesting cars through the viewfinder, but he also saw them in his future.
At 15, Winfield bought his first car, a ’29 Model A coupe. Before long, it sported twin antennas flying foxtails – despite not having a radio. He tweaked the engine in anticipation of street racing, and he painted it a deep blue, his first “custom” paint job.
Winfield enlisted in the Navy as WWII was winding down in 1945. Upon his return to Modesto, the 18-year-old began customizing cars in a chicken coup behind his mother’s home. A small workspace and dirt floor could not contain Gene’s creativity. He radically transformed his brother’s ’41 Plymouth, slicing three inches off the top and windshield. Word got around about his skill set and soon he was performing all manner of mods, including suspension work and custom touches like shaving emblems and door handles.
Winfield was interested in go as well as show. He converted a ’27 T roadster into a lakes runner that, with tuning help from Alex Xydias of So-Cal Speed Shop, topped 120mph. Later he put together a ’27 T coupe – dubbed “The Thing” – that ran 135mph at Bonneville. Winfield even held a NASCAR license, piloting jalopies in circle-track competition.
In a curious twist, Winfield had a second stint in the military, drafted into the Army in 1949, and a year later he found himself in Japan as a cook. Culinary responsibilities aside, Gene rented a small shop in Tokyo to build cars, including sports cars and the odd pre-war Ford. A Japanese gentleman who was a master metal man taught him advanced metal-working skills, including hammer welding and shaping. Upon his return to Modesto in 1951 he opened Winfield’s Custom Shop.
His first real “custom” was a ’50 Mercury, which he built to show off his handiwork to potential customers. The gambit worked, and his shop hummed along successfully throughout the 1950s.
Along the way, a few milestones took place. In 1957, Winfield came up with his famous faded, blended candy painting technique. He discovered it by accident when he tried to blend two candy colors together. The “fade” is arguably Winfield’s most enduring legacy.
The most significant example is his breakthrough “Jade Idol,” a super-smooth ’56 Mercury custom. Built for a customer with a with robust $15,000 budget, Winfield went wild. Esteemed journalist Preston Lerner described the Jade Idol for Automobile magazine this way:
“The Jade Idol put Winfield on the national map. Sectioned four inches, with canted quad headlights, rear quarter panels grafted from a ’57 Chrysler New Yorker, and an elegant scratch-built grille that was repeated at the rear, the Idol had a sharklike presence that represented a new direction in customs.”
The significant press coverage garnered by the Jade Idol made “Windy” famous worldwide. In the words of eminent hot rod historian and former NHRA Museum director Greg Sharp, “Gene was a great craftsman. The Jade Idol and its paint fade put him on Broadway.”
In 1962, his fame caught the eye of AMT, maker of plastic model car kits. Initially, AMT hired him as a freelance design consultant before he joined full time to manage their new Speed and Custom Division Shop. There he built full-scale promotional vehicles that mirrored and/or inspired the model kits. Part of that project was the Ford Custom Car Caravan, which featured full-size creations by an all-star cast of customizers – George Barris, Bill Cushenbery, the Alexander brothers, and Winfield.
Winfield’s contribution included the Pacifica Ford Econoline van, the Mercury Comet Cyclone Sportster, and the Strip Star, an aluminum bodied sports car with a robust 427cic. Ford V8. Many of the Ford Caravan customs were duplicated in miniature as 1/24 scale model kits.
The AMT connection proved fruitful in an unforeseen way: It became an audition for, if not Broadway, then Hollywood Boulevard. Soon studio creative types called on Winfield to build cars for movies and TV.
A recent piece in Deadline, a website that covers the entertainment industry, credits Winfield with creating the iconic Galileo shuttlecraft and Jupiter 8 for “Star Trek,” and the “spinners” for “Blade Runner,” which was nominated for the Special Effects Oscar. He also built the Catmobile for TV’s “Batman” and gadget cars for “Get Smart!” and “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” spy series in the ’60s.
Other futuristic vehicles by Winfield can be seen in “Back to the Future II,” the original “RoboCop,” “The Last Starfighter,” Woody Allen’s “Sleeper,” and others. Winfield’s cars also appear in the Dirty Harry sequel “Magnum Force,” and TV shows “Bewitched,” “Ironside,” “Mission: Impossible,” and more.
One particular Tinseltown brainchild was the Reactor, an aluminum-bodied project. It featured a mid-engined front-wheel-drive layout, sporting a sleek, low profile, and powered by a flat-six, air-cooled engine yanked out of a Corvair Corsa. In true Winfield fashion, he grafted the Corvair powerplant to a Citroën DS drivetrain, even utilizing the DS’s hydropneumatic suspension. The car became an essential plot element in an episode of “Bewitched.”
As the years went on Winfield continued to crank out customs, make appearances at car shows and events around the country. Kustomrama noted that one writer tabbed Winfield as the Constantin Brâncuși of the custom car world. Brancusi, if you didn’t know, was a famed early 20th Century Romanian sculptor who believed that one achieves simplicity despite one’s self by entering the real sense of things.
Winfield was honored as the Detroit Autorama “Builder of the Year” in 2008, and since 2013, has been a regular on the International Show Car Association circuit, chopping tops and shaping sheet metal in a special section called “The Summit Racing Equipment Chop Shop.”
When in his mid-80s, Winfield survived a harrowing experience when he broke his hip during a show in Finland. While the hip was successfully repaired, certain medical restrictions ruled out a commercial flight – and the price of a private plane proved prohibitive. Fans created a GoFundMe page and quickly funds were raised to return the master customizer to his desert hideaway in California.
In January of this year, as he closed in on his 98th birthday, Winfield was as energetic and engaged as ever at the Grand National Roadster Show. Hot rod historian and author Tony Thacker was there, too, and witnessed Windy in action “I had just chatted with him and 103-year-old Ed Iskenderian,” observed Thacker. “Gene looked a little frail, but he and Isky connected like two live wires bringing light to a party as they regaled each other with stories and inspired everybody within earshot.”
Designer Larry Erickson (of Cadzzilla fame) was always fan of Winfield’s oeuvre, both his magnetic personality and creativity. “Gene was a perfectionist, and no challenge proved impossible. He was up for any challenge. He once built a cutaway 1967 Chevrolet that showed the inner workings on one half and the complete car on the other. And it was drivable! He was a crazy boy, but one of the most talented customizers of all time.”
In a long-ago chat with Goodguys, Winfield explained his secret to success: “I like people, and I like to make them happy. I treat my customers the way I would want to be treated, and I try to build a car as a piece of art. The customer wants to make a statement, a car that will make an onlooker say, ‘Wow, he made that?’”
“People ask me when I’m going to retire,” he quipped. “And you know what I tell them? When they put me in the ground, that’s when.”
And, heartbrokenly, that time has come. All we can say is, Windy, thanks for the memories.
