We consider it a compliment to say that somebody is "ahead of his time." In the hot rod and custom hobby, it can be a compliment to say that somebody is "after his time."
Gary "Chopit" Fioto, for example, is about 45 years after his time. His taste, talent, and the cars he builds at Chopit Kustoms all seem to pop right out of Rod & Custom magazines from the late '50s and early '60s, back when builders like Bill Hines, Bill Cushenbery, George Barris, Darryl Starbird, the Alexander brothers, and Ed Roth were taking custom cars far beyond imaginatively modified street cars, and elevating them onto a whole new level of wildly mutated show mobiles. Chopit, who has been turning out attention-getting show cars for several decades, would've fit right in with those guys. Instead, he has become one of the leaders of a new wave of customizers bringing bubbletops, fins, and the tradition of kustoms "with a K" into the 21st century.
If that sounds like an exaggeration, then you haven't been keeping track of the awards his retro-styled kustom '55 Ford, nicknamed Beatnik, has won at the Grand National Roadster Show, the Detroit Autorama, the Fresno Autorama, the Sacramento Autorama, Darryl Starbird's Tulsa show, Carl Casper's Louisville show, Paso Robles, and every other event to which the famous bubbletop has been. "I found the car sitting in some lady's driveway" is how Gary begins the story. "After bringing it back to my shop and cutting out the rust, there was nothing actually left of the car." Over the next four years, the car would move further and further from its former identity as a '55 Ford. The transition began with the chassis and floor panels from a stripped-down '88 Lincoln Town Car and continued in a million different directions.
Since most of the 1955 factory sheetmetal had been reduced to dust, Gary had to hand-form the body panels, using a dozen 4x8 sheets of 18-gauge steel. Gary doesn't work from concept illustrations and he obviously had no photo of a stock '55 Ford handy, so his final result is completely a product of his own imagination.
"Being a person who loves art deco and is inspired by custom cars of the '40s, '50s, and '60s, I decided I would like to build something similar to cars I remembered from my childhood," Gary explains. "There was always that one car that stood out from the crowd. I decided I wanted to build something of that stature. I wanted to be noticed by people while driving down the road."One way to accomplish the desire to be noticed is to eliminate the roof and replace it with a big Lexan dome; Darryl Starbird called the Beatnik's bubbletop the biggest he'd ever seen. The top--100 inches long, 67 inches wide, and 18 inches tall, and weighing approximately 80 lbs--was created by a plastic fabricator in Oklahoma using a mold built by Chopit. A huge sheet of plastic was heated and then literally air-blown to expand into Gary's wood and steel mold. That talk about "driving down the road" is not just an idle comment. The Beatnik has traveled to Florida shows under its own power, and the citizens of New Smyrna Beach have seen it cruising through town during the weekend cruise nights.
That is likely to change soon, however. On August 19, the Beatnik rolled onto the block at the Monterey Sports and Classic Car Auction in Monterey, California, and sold for $360,000 plus commission. We're confident that whoever went home with this amazing bubbletop will continue in the tradition of Starbird, Barris, Roth, the Alexander brothers, and other early customizers, who were not only builders but showmen. We'd love to see the Beatnik stay on the show circuit so we can continue to see Chopit's "after its time" custom for years to come.