Anyone who’s heard me talk about cars knows that I love classic '50s tailfins. I frequently wish that they’d be “in” again and replace spoilers as the car-butt accessory of choice.
But being a fairly practical person, I know that even if I acquired, say, a '58 Plymouth Fury with fins the size of Montana, it would guzzle gas like a fiend and the emissions would probably be atrocious. There’s always the (expensive) proposition of replacing all the guts of the car with newer, cleaner, more powerful parts, but as I was considering this, I thought of a different strategy.
Which brings me to the question: how feasable would it be to take a newish car, say a late-model Corolla, and get someone to add fins to the back? Those awesome-looking domed brake lights strike me as expensive to replace, so I’d leave them out, but the thought of having a modern car with those stylin’ Spikes o’ Death on the back – not to mention the world’s strangest looking Corolla – now has me intrigued.
This is all hypothetical at the moment, as I don’t have a license and am having trouble trying to scrape together money for an old, crappy car, much less paying to have anything done to it, but I’m curious as to how realistic this new automotive dream of mine is. Any ideas?
>>but I’m curious as to how realistic this new automotive dream of mine is. Any ideas?<<
A couple, but mostly they involve drug testing. As regards the car, not a problem. Some sheet metal and Bondo and you are on the road but you aren’t going to be picking up many girls if that is an interest. Or you can use fiberglass but it a little more difficult to attach. The cheapest way to go is to find an old fiberglass powerboat with fins at the old boat home, cut them off with a Dremel tool, and attach them to your car with 4" drywall screws. You be stylin’ dude!
>>but you aren’t going to be picking up many girls …<<
Well, I generally have a hard time picking up girls anyways, since all the ones in my area seem to be straight. siiiigh
Thing is, I’d want the fins to look like they belonged to the car, not like I stuck them on in my back yard (I am not very artistic). Would a professional be able to do something similar and make it look good?
Assuming you have a specific car in mind, you can take a digital photo of the car and get someone who’s good with Photoshop (or some such program) to fiddle around with the image until you get an idea of what you want. You could take the finished photo to some body shops and ask their opinion. Be prepared for intense questioning about your sanity :D.
After seeing such shows as “Monster Garage”, ANYTHING can be done to a car and be made to look professional. You just have to find the right person to do the work.
If you want it to look ‘factory made’ then you’re talking about having a bodyshop do custom work. And you’re talking about a whole lot of money. Probably in the thousands.
