Hotrods and Kustom
In Conversation with Bryce member and founder of the Fly By Knights C.C.
Pictures @raisehellbill R.C. - Hotrods were the first genre of custom cars to gain widespread popularity, first appearing as racing machines in the Southern California desert in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Later, after the Second World War, while racing was still taking place on the dry and salt lake beds, street racing became more prominent (and dangerous), so much so that the National Hot Rod Association was formed in 1951 to help take drag racing off the streets and onto the safer drag strip. Since then, the hobby of car customisation has evolved into a complex ecosystem of outfits, each specialising in their own area of expertise.
When did your passion for hot rods and kustoms begin? Can you tell me about the name and beginnings of the Fly By Knights Car Club?
Great question! You have touched on just about everything that has led me to this point!
My earliest memories were of going to both car and air shows with my dad and grandad. Probably from the age of 6, maybe even 5, we'd go to these different shows year after year and I remember being absolutely fascinated by vintage cars, bikes and planes. In those early years I never really understood anything more than knowing that I just LOVED them, the way they looked, sounded and smelled! The infatuation that only a child can have, an indescribable love!
As I grew older, my love of cars grew and matured with me, although technically hampered by a lack of mechanical and manufacturing knowledge in my early high school years.
Out of high school I had the chance to apprentice with a guy who ran a hot rod shop across the road from one of my friends parents house, and this was really the turning point where the mere love of aesthetics turned into a tangible obsession... I worked there for a couple of years and built my first hot rod (as I was getting paid in car parts).
Anyway, I was always a hot rodder. When I was younger I looked at Kustoms as a waste of time and money.
"Why would I want to go slow and cruise around when I can have a stripped down hot rod and go FAST as hell?"
I liked the aesthetic of some of the early 50's style Kustoms I'd seen, but I grew up in the hot rodding era where most things were over the top. The most radical chop, the heaviest channel, wild primer colours, the days just before the dreaded term "rat rod" was coined... and the Kustoms I saw back then fit the bill and weren't for me.
I wanted good proportions, balanced weight between body and roof, I just didn't know it then.
Fast forward a few years, and having moved to London from Los Angeles after the recession, my tastes had changed a bit.
I saw Kustom cars in a different light, and let's face it... if you've seen one early Dry Lakes era hot rod, you've pretty much seen them all.
With a Kustom car, the sky was the limit! You could look at just one model and year of car, like a '49 Chevy or a '49 Shoebox for example, and there were ENDLESS iterations and combinations of parts and chops or sectioned bodies or truck conversions like "The Capri".
You could have hundreds and hundreds of variations and a Model A Coupe was still just a Model A Coupe.
I think it was this freedom that Kustoms offered, the creativity as well as the ingenuity (just like hot rodding - but with more style) that really got me going.
Plus, a good chopped Kustom is pretty damn awesome, as long as it's not slow, haha!
Fly By Knights, that's actually the name of my old car club back home that I started with some friends in high school. It never really went anywhere to be honest, it was just something we thought was cool when we were kids.
When I fucked off from LA I took the name with me, but kept it "on the shelf" in case I ever wanted to use it again. I thought it was catchy and I always liked the play on words... So, sure enough, around the summer of 2019, the time came to "dust off" the old name! One of my now closest friends and fellow club member, Ludo, were at a showdown in France. He was running with a well known French car club at the time and after the show I think he was a bit fed up. As well as living in the UK now (he's French by birth), it didn't make sense to be part of a French club while living in England.
We'd been hanging out a bit, he knew my truck from before and what I was doing to it, and I said to him "Fuck it man, why don't we start a club?
"We both have similar tastes and like similar styles of Kustom, we're both fabricators, we could do some cool shit!", it was a bit of a no brainer really! So yeah, dusted off the old name, spent some time re-designing EVERYTHING to better suit the era and style we wanted to "fit into", and the rest is pretty much history!
I mean, we do some stupid shit, like coming up with the idea of putting all our cars in bare metal for a show season.
That was only meant to be temporary and was just a bit of a joke.
We thought it was clever to basically tie in with the name of the club.
"If we're knights, we need armour!"
Our cars became the armour, and it was also part of the "prospect" shit. It's a pain in the ass to bare metal your car, especially if you live in wet-ass England, and it's even more of a pain to maintain it and keep the rust off it! But the underlying excuse is that it shows off what we can do with metal, when you see a finished and painted Kustom you have no idea how much plastic body filler is hiding underneath that stunning paint job.
We use lead filler, just like in the old days. All our chops are planed with a hammer and dolly. We don't have much to hide.
And as for the pun on the club's name?
Well, a fly by night is defined as not being reliable or responsible, especially in business. You give them your money during the day and they fuck off or "fly" at night.
Where we've changed the spelling of night to knight, we're saying that we have honour and courage, that we uphold certain values - like not having shitty cars.
R.C.: I have always been fascinated by subcultures and Hot Rods were seen as the favourite of the greasers, the lower and middle class youth of the 1950-60s, known for their rebellious attitude, disillusioned with American popular culture either through lack of economic opportunity despite the post-war boom or through marginalisation.
Is the hot rod scene today still associated with greasers and rock'n'roll attitudes, or has it opened up to a wider audience?
We all have this "romanticized" idea of greasers and hot rods and switchblades and a girl under the arm, there's probably not a guy out there who didn't think combed hair and a hot rod or kustom was the way to go! Even Robert Williams said "Kustoms are for getting girls, hot rods are for getting rid of them".
This probably comes from all those cheesy American B-movies about hot rod gangs and so on. Hot rodding and kustomising has always been rebellious, look at it in its simplest form...
You take a mass-produced vehicle, a factory car, and say "Fuck it, I don't want the same boring shit as everyone else on my block! You're giving the finger to the mainstream and the people who are happy to fit into whatever potential comfort that conformity has.
Our cars make us who we are because we've built our cars to look and act the way we want them to, it's an extension of each individual, a big fuck you to the world or anyone who doesn't like you or the car. So I would say just in that mentality alone (which is just my way of looking at things, but I'm sure others would agree with me) hot rods and Kustoms are very rebellious and still associated with the "rock'n'roll" attitude.
But like any "scene" or group, it gets watered down and diluted. The car scene has a very broad and vast demographic of followers, and the further you get away from the heart, the more niche and die-hard it becomes.
It's a safe bet to say that people are into hot rods or hot rodding, but if you took that same group of people and asked them why traditional, period correct Kustoms are spelled with the letter "K" and not the letter "C", not many of that group would be able to explain the difference. That's where things are still niche and a bit more true to form, if you like. The "wider audience" hasn't deciphered every code yet, but yes, hot rods and customs alike are all about attitude in one way or another, and the wider audience has always grown around what was always there from the beginning, the attitude.
Typical hot rod modifications were the removal of tops, hoods, bumpers, windscreens and/or fenders; channelling the body; and modifying the engine by tuning and/or replacing it with a more powerful type. Wheels and tyres were changed to improve traction and handling.
R.C What's the best job you've ever done?
What would be the dream car to drive?
I've mentioned before that I've never been interested in going slow, and that was one of my turn-offs in the early years with Kustoms. As I've built my Kustom over the years (1957 Ford F100, "Pink Peruvian"), I've always made updates and modifications to the engine as I've worked on the body, to make sure I don't go slower than I want to on the open road.
All of the modifications you list were done for speed, and some of them can be transferred to the kustom world, even if they seem to have been done just for aesthetics.
Chopped top and channelling for better aerodynamics and less drag = more speed.
Louvers for improved cooling and heat dissipation.
With a more visually appealing, lowered stance comes improved handling if you lower the car properly.
I mean, we're all still running bias-ply tyres that handle like shit and track every bump in the road, oh, and they're only rated up to 80mph if I remember correctly? So being a bit more "period correct" definitely has its drawbacks. But its all for the sake of looking good while you do it, right? Loud pipes look rad, right?
The best work I've done so far will always be the most recent things I've done.
Every car is a learning process, a thought-provoking exercise, an engineering/problem-solving exercise. Every chop is different, every car a unique modification with a specific intention or era to fit into.
I'm constantly learning and improving and refining what I do and how I do it to try and build the best, most professional car that looks like it's been done by the factory.
For example, if someone stands back and scratches their head wondering if a car has been chopped or not - or shortened - or something, because it's subtle, then I've succeeded.
The best work I've done is always what I'm working on now, because it's going to be better than what I've done before.
Dream car I'd like to race...
If I had the money (and time) I'd love to build and race a vintage style FED (Front Engine Dragster). I've got a couple of spare engines floating around at the moment and I dream of building one in particular, an ultra high compression 394cid Olds Rocket.
That would be my dream. I'm slowly collecting parts for this engine in the hope of one day putting it in a chassis I've built to scare the shit out of me. But until I win the lottery, I'll just keep collecting the parts, haha!
R.C. Can you relate to the idea of 'custom', from t-shirts to cars, a unique way of expressing yourself against mass production? Why do you do custom?
I can apply custom to almost anything!
DIY or DIE
I grew up punk, in high school we made our own clothes, painted our own shirts, studs on our jackets, customised our look to what we thought was cool.
It was 100% the way we expressed ourselves as kids against the mass production of regular clothes for regular "sheeple". For me it still holds true, I make almost everything (if it can be welded) for myself. We all do it.
I see something and think how it can be better, and especially with how expensive everything is getting, I think it's more common now to build or make. Not only to fit in with how you see your life and its environment, but also to save a few bucks here and there so you can keep doing the things you enjoy without breaking the bank.
Building a Kustom, or customising anything, is the purest form of creativity and expression.
Love or hate what I or any of my friends have built, cool, that's your opinion and you're totally entitled to it!
But we didn't build it for you, we customised, modified, re-engineered, re-styled every part, every panel, every nut and bolt to suit our vision. To project what we, as individuals, think is rad.
I customise because not only do I have the years of experience and skill to do it, but because I don't want the same shit as everyone else. I don't want store bought. I want something that is as unique and individual as I am. I want the unobtainable, the one-of-a-kind, the shit you can only see in your mind's eye and then sculpt with your hands and your tools.
R.C. What's your dream for the future of Fly By Knights C.C.?
We don't really think or work that way to be honest. Having a dream for a car club seems a bit like we're a business, and we're not.
We're just a group of like-minded individuals who like to build what we think is cool old shit, have a laugh and probably drink way too many beers at the weekends!
We all have ambitions, MAYBE to get invited to Japan to play at Mooneyes one day, shit like that.
Having said that, we've just come back from driving from London to Sweden for a show, and we were able to see the standard and fit and finish that some of the guys out there are building to, and it was amazing!!!
So instead of dream I'll just say hope. I hope that we can continue to do things like go to Sweden in our old rigs.
That's fun, that's the shit I think we all live for as individuals and as a club.
There's nothing better than seeing an old machine in motion and being on the road with friends.
Hopes are achievable, dreams aren't necessarily. So I hope we can keep doing the shit we're doing now.
Pictures @vonleadfoot