1950 Chevrolet - Grapevine - Larry Watson

1950 Chevrolet owned by Larry Watson of Watson's House of Style in Bellflower, California. The Chevy is also known as the Rose Mist and the Grapevine and was Larry's first car. After working for a long hot summer Larry's father agreed to help him buy his first car. On the way to the dealership Larry spotted a white 1950 Chevrolet two-door sedan sitting in a used car lot. Larry convinced his father about this being the right car and Larry became the proud owner of that 50 Chevy.

In 1955 at the age of 16 when Larry began to pinstripe, his Chevy was the car he used to practice on. Larry began inside, painting a dragon on the dashboard that showed flames blowing from its snout. He had also painted some roses with vines around the instrument panel.

After watching both Von Dutch and Dean Jeffries performing their trade, Larry went to an art store and bought some brushes. He also went to Jackson Paint Store and bought some copper paint. He spent two days striping his car before taking it to the Bellflower Clock Drive-In.

The Rose Mist version of the car
At the drive-in everyone wondered about how he could afford having Von Dutch pinstripe his car. He told them that he had striped it himself, but nobody believed him.

After being hit by a drunk driver, Larry had the Rose Mist transformed into the Grapevine.
Larry had the car customized as he used it. The first photo of the car shows it fairly stock, sporting whitewall tires. After a while the car was lowered, equipped with fender skirts, nosed, pinstriped and fit with Oldsmobile Fiesta hubcaps that had the spinners extended 2 inches.


The car was lowered by reworking the A-frames and C'ing the frame both in front and rear. The springs were also dearched.[4] Photos of the car exists showing the deck lid unshaved, and with pinstriping above the deck handle. The deck was later shaved, and much more extensive pinstriping was added.

The Rose Mist Version
After using the car as a striping canvas for a while, Larry had Ed Schelhaas of Bellflower do some minimal bodywork on the car. Ed fit the car with a 1953 Chevrolet grille surround, 13 1953 Chevrolet grille teeth, 1956 Buick side trim, a one-piece Oldsmobile windshield and dual side pipes.[3] While Ed was doing some lead work on the quarter panels of the car, Larry installed a set of 1950 Buick taillights.[5] Looking at the pictures it also looks like the front bumper was flipped upside down. The rear bumper was also replaced on this version of the car. Larry hadn't started painting complete cars yet, so he had Ed's painter George Newton paint the Chevy. George painted the car in an ivory lacquer at the bottom, and a new Oldsmobile metallic color named Rose Mist on the top. Larry called the first version of the car "Rose Mist" after the name of the color. A drunk driver ran into the car in November 1956.


The Grapevine Version
After being hit by the drunk driver, Larry had Jay Johnston of Jay's Custom Shop in Compton rebuild the car. The grille surround was reshaped and molded to the body. The stock headlight rings were replaced by 1955 Oldsmobile rings and the rear fenders were extended to accept inverted 1954 Mercury taillight lenses. This version of the car had the door handles and bumper guards removed. All body seams were molded in. By grinding the grille teeth, Larry managed to fit 4 more of them in the grille opening. For the second version of the Chevy, Larry had his friend Damon Richey apply the paint. A Metallic Grape was used above the Buick side trim. The same color but with a lot more metallic powder mixed into it was used below the side trim. This version of the car is known as the "Grapevine". In the book Barris Kustom Techniques of the 50's Volume 4 there is a photo showing the interior of the Grapevine version. The upholstery featured heart-shaped pleated inserts in the seats and carpets. The car was upholstered by Pacific Custom Shop. Renegades Car Club member and good friend Gary Niemi made a set of color-matching hand shaped dash knobs for the car.


Larry sold the Grapevine to Jim Becker of Albany, Oregon in 1958. He wanted to start a new trend in painting, and wanted to use a brand new car. What he really wanted was a Cadillac. He couldn't afford a Cadillac at the moment, and ended up buying a 1958 Ford Thunderbird. Right before he sold the car, he repainted it. He went back to Jay and asked if he could do it, but Jay was too busy, so after getting a few pointers from Jay, Larry laid down his first-ever full paint job. This time Larry painted the car in Rose Mist with silver scallops which he striped in black. The paint job was a concept he had been dreaming about and experimenting with for a while. This version of the car was completed without fender skirts. Larry also added dual spotlights on the Chevy. Larry got the spotlights from Jack Arnold, after horse-trading them for a scallop paint job on Jack's 1956 Mercury. Larry sold the car for $1,500.



Jim Becker used the car has his daily driver until 1959. In 1959 Jim was getting married and decided that it wouldn't be feasible to keep the Grapevine, so he traded it off for a 1955 Buick on an Albany car lot. Phil Swaggart of Eugene, Oregon saw the car on a used car lot in Albany on a trip home from Lebanon. He stopped by and ended up buying the car for $1,1000. Phil owned and drove the Chevy for about 2 years. It was a common sight on the streets of Eugene and at Les Richfield's station at 6th and Lincoln (owned by Phil's brother Les). The Grapevine became known as "Heartless" because of the pleated heart shapes on the seats, door panels, and floorboards. Phil had Merle Beebe, a local pinstriper put the name "Heartless" on the rear fender panels. After a couple of years Phil traded the Chevy off to Ron McCully also from Eugene, Oregon for a 1953 Chevrolet and $600.

The car then moved a block south to Jewell's union station at 7th and Lincoln. Ron changed the column shift to a tall floor shift with a piston for the knob. One of his vivid memories of the car was a prom night date when the battery cable disconnected and he had to crawl out through the window because the doors were electrically operated inside and outside.


All in all, the car was a very dependable driver and never let him down. Ron later had it repainted to solid rose color. The last owner of the car was a high school student named Jim King of Eugene. Jim bought the car from 500 Motors around 1962. After owning it for almost 2 years, the car was involved in an accident. Jim brought it to a body shop in Glenwood called H&M Fiberglass. It sat outside the shop for a while and became a fair game for souvenir collectors robbing it for parts. Jim eventually felt that it had been deteriorated to the point that it was beyond repair, so he had it towed to Day Island Land Fill where it still is today, buried under the pillars of the I-5 bridge about 30 feet from the Willamette river.

article original: http://www.kustomrama.com/index.php?title=Larry_Watson's_1950_Chevrolet

Many of us know Larry Watson as one of the finest custom painters of all time. We know this from the countless candy, 'flake, lace, cobweb, paneled, scalloped, and flamed paint jobs that kept Watson working into the wee hours seven days a week, 360 days a year for decades.

Anybody who has built a car can relate to this type of dedication on some level, but it was, and still is, Watson's commitment to perfection through attention to the smallest detail on both the show car and the street-driven car that moved through the paint shop with assembly line efficiency. Speaking of which, Watson's drive for perfection was wholly matched by his handpicked crew of bodymen who made sure each car was flawlessly prepped before rolling into the spray booth.


All of this contributed to his success, but there is another side to the Larry Watson story that oftentimes gets lost behind the shine of all those candy paint jobs. Simply put, Watson was a custom car nut from the get-go. Not only did his paint style influence show cars for customers, but many of the styles Watson became so famous for creating came from experimenting on his personal cars. This brings us to the Grapevine, possibly the most famous of Watson's cars. More than worthy of Hall of Fame status, more than a daily driver, the Grapevine was his first car.

While still in high school, Watson's drive to create a piece of rolling art pushed him into his very first taste of turning effort into a paycheck. After working through a long hot summer at what would soon be known as "The Happiest Place On Earth," Larry's father agreed to help him buy his first car. On the way to the dealership, Larry spotted a cute little white 1950 Chevy two-door sedan sitting in a local used-car lot. After some convincing, Larry's first car was in hand, and just screaming for some individuality. In no time Watson was doodling on the Chevy dash, laying out a bitchin' dragon and rose. When he and the Chevy showed up in the school parking lot, a group of naysayers argued that the beautifully detailed dash had to have been done by the likes of Von Dutch. No one believed him except his best friend, who convinced Watson to prove himself by starting a pinstriping business in his parents' driveway, and eventually to take his talents and turn them into a career. Not only did Watson become legendary at his high school, but soon the Chevy would be changed drastically.

Not one to leave a car in its virgin state, Watson began with a few minor changes to the Grapevine. A grille and surround from a 1953 Chevy-including 10 extra grille teeth-replaced the original grille while the taillights would be changed to those from a 1950 Buick; and, for a crazy individual touch, the stock front bumper was simply flipped upside down. He replaced the original split front windshield with a solid one-piece windshield from the same-year Oldsmobile. The Chevy was lowered ridiculously close to the ground-mind you with no airbags, shocks, or any other type of hydraulic setup to lift the car up for easier driving. A set of lakes pipes filled what little gap was left between the body and asphalt. Then came the Chevy's first purplish paint scheme that included a white panel separated from the purple via Buick side trim.

By the time Watson's newly finished '50 Chevy custom hit the streets of Bellflower, Compton, Long Beach, and everywhere else where countless groups of Southern Californian teenagers were cruising and showing off their cars, he and the Chevy were legendary. Watson was hard at it pinstriping and flaming everything in sight, which afforded him to make yet another series of drastic changes in the Chevy's appearance. This time around, Watson took the car much further by having the '53 Chevy grille surround permanently molded to the car (a few more teeth were squeezed into the already packed grille opening), a set of '56 Oldsmobile headlight rings were fit to the fenders, and a pair of '54 Mercury taillight lenses was flipped upside down, then frenched into the rear fenders in the perfect position. Watson also blew some minds by seriously altering the look of the early '50s Olds hubcaps by pushing the center of the caps out from concave to convex, and then adding more spinners with a bullet center to top them off perfectly. He also went to town on a whole new paint scheme, still in shades of custom-mixed purple and lavender tones, but this time the car turned out so amazing, it became a springboard for Watson's career and further popularity.

As for interior, the Chevy not only included every single points-winning accessory (like a trunk full of tools, fluid cans, emergency flares, and of course the spare tire), but also a unique heart-themed tuck 'n' roll upholstery that flowed throughout the interior. Renegades Car Club member and good friend Gary Nemi worked his magic by way of the color-matched, hand-shaped dash knobs that adorned only the finest custom rides of the time. Cover shots and features in every enthusiast magazine set the Watson name in stone as one of the painters of his time. The Chevy would soon be known as the Grapevine-as well as go through one more facelift.


This time Watson wanted to try something new that he had been dreaming about and experimenting with. We know this style of paint job today as Watson-style scallops. In fact the entire car was covered with a series of flowing, alternately colored scallops that did as much to stand out as they did to accentuate the natural lines and curves of the Chevy. This was exactly what Watson was trying to accomplish with these abstract yet extremely purposeful shapes, and the '50 Chevy's bulbous body was a perfect test bed.

The abovementioned scallop styling, as well as all of the other styles Watson created and perfected in his paint jobs, have since been replicated and copied to no end on everything you can imagine, but it was Watson's Grapevine that started it all, which is why it will always be a Hall of Fame ride.Before Watson's 1950 Chevy was dubbed the Grapevine, it was mildly customized with just the right amount of lowering, as well as a frosty rose-colored paint scheme that must have turned some heads sliding down Bellflower Boulevard in 1956. What more could a teenager want?

It didn't take long for Watson to give his Chevy a completely new look. This time around, he kept the '53 Chevy grille and surround, but molded that surround to the body, and even more teeth were added to the grille. A set of '54 Merc taillights was used, and a whole new paint job was performed as well. Ed Schelhass in Bellflower, CA, did the bodywork at this stage of the game.

Building a show car back in the '50s meant adhering to a points system given to various accessories and necessities alike. You could actually lose points for not having a front license plate mounted to the car or by not having the proper roadside hazard implements, like tools, flares, and a first aid kit, just to name a few. Watson's attention to detail and ability to win car shows is evident in this photo of the Grapevine's full service trunk.

Here's a look at the beautifully stitched heart-themed interior that was yet another unique detail that set this car apart from the rest. Ed Martinez went to town stitching hearts in the carpet, seat, door panels, and headliner.


In her last version, Watson's Grapevine was treated to a totally new and, for the time, quite outrageous paint scheme known as Watson-style scallops. Watson used these scallop shapes to trick the eye into seeing a wildly customized car, without being wildly customized.

Article de référence: http://www.streetrodderweb.com/features/0610sr_1950_chevy_two_door_sedan_grapevine/viewall.html

Clone d'une autre version de grapevine présentée au gnrs 2015