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The Marquis De Soto

  Even though my '59 Caddy, FINTASIA, is totally rebuilt and as good as new, it's still 60 years old. When I drove my friend's new Mercury Grand Marquis, I started daydreaming about how great it would be if FINTASIA drove like that.

  And that's when it hit me. Instead of customizing old cars, I want to customize new cars!

  I had a friend find me a great used Marquis in Florida, flew there, drove it around for a week. and shipped it home. Martha and I loved it. Big, roomy, drove like, well, like a new car.

  Mike and I got to work on it right away. It was still spring and we erected a tent in the backyard at Fabulous Furniture. First we stripped the bumpers and lights. It was really scary, taking this new car apart. And scarier still when, in mocking up the fins, we put a huge scratch in our new car. There was no turning back now.

  Over that summer we modified and added rear quarters from a '57 De Soto complete with tail lights, bumper and trunk lid. The front fender is from a '58 Lincoln with headlights. The bumpers are from a '55 Caddy and the grille is from two '57 Corvettes with extra teeth. The top of the hood is a '65 Buick Skylark trunk lid and the roll pan is a '58 Caddy hood turned upside down. The directional signals are '59 Cadillac tail lights and the turning lights are from a '48 Dodge. The side chrome is from a '57 Buick. Also parts from '53 Pontiac roof and front fenders.

  It looked like a Grand Marquis, but through Alice's looking glass. It was also reminiscent of a futuristic '57 de Soto, so we decided to call it THE MARQUIS DE SOTO.

  We worked furiously to get the Marquis de Soto ready by Labor Day weekend so we could debut it at Lead East, the biggest custom car show on the East coast. It was in primer, but still won Top 9 Custom! It was a thrill beyond imagination.

  We couldn't decide whether to paint the Marquis de Soto two-tone or with wild flames, so while we stored it away for the winter, Mike did drawings and we asked everyone which they liked better. In the end, we went with the turquoise and white two-tone, and I think it really pulled the whole design together.

  The next spring we painted the Marquis de Soto and it won every conceivable award at the regional car shows I took it to. In early 2009, the Marquis de Soto won the NY Times Collectible Car of the Year Award. I sold the Marquis de Soto that week to a guy from Sacramento, the great Steve Luth. At the end of that year I asked him if he'd be interested in entering it at both the Grand National Raodster Show in LA and the Sacramento Autorama. He readily agreed, and we were thrilled when it was accepted by both shows, which is an honor in itself as they are notoriously hard to get into. Martha and I flew out ot LA, and it felt like we were going to the Academy Awards. And when The Marquis de Soto won First in Class we felt like we had won the Oscar. It repeated its win a month later in Sacramento. The trophies we got were as big as a very tall toddler! We still miss it, but we know Steve Luth is taking great care of it. He better be.