George Barris – why is he the King of Customizers? (173 photos)

I bet that a lot of people who have heard about George Barris and got acquainted with his creations were surprised by the fact that Barris is called the King of Customizers. And the thing is that Comrade Barris’ most famous – and most controversial – cars, which he built for various stars, television series and films, were created after George received his title of King. And he got it, of course, not at all for the Batmobile and the gold-studded Cargoyle, or even for the Cadillac built for Elvis Presley.

No, the nickname of the King of Customizers was given to Comrade Barris by the customizers themselves, for much earlier projects. They didn’t appear on TV screens and Elvis wasn’t driving them, which is why Barris’ old projects are much less well-known among the people as a whole, but they brought George fame on the custom scene, and they are still really revered and praised among customizers.

George Barris and Elvis

The Story of George Barris: How it All Began

George Barris first appeared on the custom car scene around 1940. Comrade Barris, who was about fifteen years old at the time, hung around various car repair shops, watching the work of professionals. In one of these workshops, called Brown’s Body Shop, George was lucky enough to meet none other than Harry Westergaard himself. To be honest, and to my regret, it seems to me that this name is unlikely to mean anything to anyone today, but in a nutshell, if George Barris became the trendsetter of automotive fashion in the 50s, then Comrade Westergaard became the trendsetter of the 40s, and indeed the pioneer of the custom car scene in as a whole. To give you an idea of how significant Harry Westergaard’s contribution to the American culture of the 1940s was, I’ll give you one example. Surely many of the readers have played – or at least heard of the game L.A. Noire. So, in this game there are five cars with the word Custom in the name. Apart from the DeSoto Custom, which was simply given that name at the DeSoto factory, the remaining four cars are real custom cars of that era. So: of the remaining four, three cars were built with the direct participation of Harry Westergaard.

It was under the guidance of such a significant figure that George Barris was lucky to study. However, in addition to Westergaard, there was another person to whom George, apparently, owes a considerable part of his fame. We are talking about his undeservedly forgotten brother, Sam Barris. Despite the fact that, for the most part, Sam’s teacher was his younger brother George, it was the older brother who discovered his passion for working with car bodies, while Barris, Dr., preferred to generate and promote ideas.

After becoming the winner of the 1948 Hot Rod Exposition, George did not miss the opportunity to enter into a partnership with one of the organizers, Robert Peterson, the owner of the Peterson Publishing Company. George enjoyed not only photographing, but also writing about his projects, and Comrade Peterson began to spread information about the work of the Barris brothers throughout America. Sam and George’s cars were more beautiful than each other, the magazines were selling well, and the partnership was growing. Over time, the name Barris somehow regularly appeared in magazines such as Car Craft, Rod & Custom, Custom Cars and, of course, Hot Rod Magazine – and this is not a complete list.

Legendary Barris customizations

The fame of the Barris brothers grew steadily throughout the 1950s… And suddenly, in 1956, Sam Barris leaves the workshop. It is not known what caused this decision. Customrama claims that Sam Barris was, on the whole, unhappy. While the workshop was open from eight in the morning to six or seven in the evening, Sam went home at five, and generally wished for a more peaceful life. It is also worth considering that in 1955, George Barris’s car was first seen in the cinema: the aforementioned Hirohata Merc, whose popularity was also growing in the 50s, was cast in the film Running Wild (along with another Barris car, Fred Rowe’s Mercury). It was at this moment that George Barris, in fact, entered the film industry, not missing such a great opportunity – which, apparently, did not fit in at all with the desires of his older brother…

By and large, after Sam Barris retired, George rolled down the Hollywood path. In addition to building cars for movies, TV series, and life-size stars, Barris took on literally everything that made money-from film production to the production of radio-controlled toy cars. In a sense, the story of Barris after 1960 is a story of slow but sure decline, culminating in an order from the New York Times in the mid-2000s to modify the Toyota Prius, one of the conditions of which was not to chop the body of the car and not to make any changes to the hybrid mechanism of the car…and George Barris accepted all these conditions for some reason, which, of course, caused nervous laughter from the entire custom scene.

George Barris makes a cameo appearance in Henry Blythe Halicki’s Junk Dealer in 1982.

What is the main merit of George Barris?

Nevertheless, even for the Hollywood projects of George Barris, they still respect him on the custom stage, even though they make a face at the sight of many of his “star” cars. And the fact is that no matter how ambiguous Comrade Barris’s late cars are, on the English Wikipedia, only Hirohata Merc is mentioned in the first three paragraphs of non-movie cars, and the other three are Munster Koach and DRAG-U-LA from The Munsters TV series, as well as the Batmobile. And what does this fact tell us? Yes, the fact that with his irrepressible activity and his attempt to push his cars literally everywhere, George Barris did not push the custom culture so much to the masses. It was thanks to George and his crazy cars in TV series, as well as large-scale models, radio-controlled cars, articles in magazines and everything else, that the custom scene attracted a considerable number of people. And a considerable number of future car builders started with the same Ala Kart models in 1/25 scale. And Rob Zombie called his 1998 song Dragula, and it was George Barris’ Munster Koach in the video.

George Barris lived to be 89 years old and left us peacefully, in his sleep, in 2015. Without George, his irrepressible energy and willingness to take on even the most controversial projects without the slightest shame, Barris Kustoms did not live long, and in February 2024, the closure of the famous workshop was announced. The era ended quietly, like the rustle of an overturned page. And yet – again, thanks to George’s desire to break into all possible niches – the Barris brothers’ cars will live on for a long time: if not even in their original form, then in books, magazines, on monitors and TV screens. And, most importantly, they will continue to inspire future generations of car fans, continue to attract people to the custom scene – and therefore Barris’ contribution to automotive culture, if it is possible to evaluate it in any unambiguous way, then it is still very, very early.