Why did I create these Kolorized Photos?

Well, though I was born in 1967 and am too young to have seen these cars drive on the streets, I fell in love with customs when I was about 15 years old. Growing up and living in  the Netherlands made it a bit harder for me to discover the fantastic history of custom cars—little custom car magazines from the early ’50s are almost impossible to find here, and even today’s custom car magazines are not to be found on the bookshelves. But eventually I amassed a fantastic collection of old custom car magazines and books, and the more I found out about these custom cars and their creators the more fascinated I became.

Most of the photos of early custom cars are in black and white. That was the standard for those days, and the magazines had little budget for full-color pages. Color photos of custom cars were usually only used by magazines for covers, and that practice didn’t begin until 1951. Even then, the early film and printing techniques did not allow the color to be very accurate when compared to the car’s actual colors. However, I always looked at the black and white photos with some color in my mind. I wondered how amazing it must have been to see all the deep colors with the fantastic descriptions in the car’s feature articles. Colors like Bertolucci Maroon, Scintillating Green Gold, and deep lacquer paint jobs with gold powder for extra sparkle. Colors that were rich and miles deep, created—according to the enthusiasts among us that were actually on the scene back then—with twenty to thirty coats of hand-rubbed lacquer. Somehow I could see these colors hiding amongst the gray scales of the black and white photos.

One day I decided I had to really see these colors. I started with the profile shot of the Matranga Mercury. Why the Matranga? Well, simply, because I knew it was gone. Gone forever. And as far as I knew there were no color photos of it. So I scanned the photo into the computer and started adding color to it using my trusty Adobe Photoshop program.

The car was colored first, since that was the most important part of the photo.

The Merc’s paint has been described as “deep maroon with gold powder for extra luster,” and it took me a lot of time to figure out the best and most accurate way of creating this finish. Eventually I feel I got it right and it looked really nice, but with the rest of the photo still in grayscale it looked, well, artificial. So I went ahead and added the chrome effects and started to colorize the background. In front of my eyes a color photo of the Matranga Mercury grew. It was amazing to see this photo turn from gray scales to all color, and when I took the time to sit back and look at the picture it had a powerful impact on me. I emailed the still-in-progress work to a good friend and die-hard early custom car enthusiast, and he replied that he stared at it for a long time. He said he felt like he had made a trip back in time and was looking over the shoulder of the photographer who took the original black and white photo. It was this remark, and my love for these early custom cars, that made me decide to do a series of colorized custom cars.

I wanted to colorize some of the most significant custom cars. Call them the milestones, or the cars that influenced all the customs that were created after them. Most of the cars I have colorized have never been seen in any color photos. The notable exceptions are the Bettancourt Merc in Ruby Maroon and the Vince Ulloa Chevy four-door. Though the Tommy ThornburghStudebaker had been seen on the cover of Motor Trend magazine, I still felt it needed to be in this series for variety.

Written documentation and old told stories where used to recreate the colors as close to the original car colors as possible. Where possible the kolorized photo’s where shown to people who where at the scene back then for there approval.

Hopefully I can create more colorized kustoms to be added to this series in the near future.

Rik Hoving