BACK TO BRUNSWICK 2016 – JOHN D’AGOSTINO INTERVIEW
By now, the annual Back to Brunswick run in July is well cemented into the annual calendars of hot rodders. Just a short drive north of Byron Bay, the riverside town of Brunswick Heads has played host to the big weekender for eight years now. The 2016 itinerary included a meet and greet at the Brunswick Surf Life Saving Club, lunch cruise to Billinudgel, movie afternoon at the historic theatre, Saturday night party at the Hotel Brunswick and a huge show on Sunday beside the Brunswick River. Coordinated by Rod Brewer and Peter Paynter, it’s a low-cost affair that only comes together with the help of local good guys, End of the Road Car Club.
Rod and Peter have successfully attracted some of the USA’s best-known hot rod and custom car builders to the venue, both young and old. To date, the guest list includes Jimmy Shine and Pete Chapouris (So-Cal Speed Shop), Troy Ladd (Hollywood Hot Rods), Mike Davidson (H&H Flatheads), plus actor Paul Le Mat (American Graffiti), among others.
You can now add to that Mr John D’Agostino, the ever-popular US customiser who has created some of the most stunning and highly awarded custom cars over the last three decades. John was a very willing and much-appreciated guest at BTB2016 and was very complimentary of the entire weekend. The charismatic 63-year-old enjoyed interacting with fans and followers during his stay and is hopeful to return in the future.
We managed to catch up with John on the morning he was leaving for California to learn a little more about Celebrity Kustoms and the man behind it.
How many weekends a year would you attend hot rod and custom car events?
I’ll bet you out of 52 weeks, 40 of those weeks will be car shows – East Coast, West Coast, Canada, South America, Europe; so I stay pretty busy!
At these events, are you a guest, doing judging, or do you have a car there?
All three, actually. A lot of times I’ll take a car; if I don’t take a car, I’ll do a guest appearance, meet and greet or an autograph session. Sometimes, maybe a custom car seminar. I’ve done that at shows in Finland and Sweden, actually did one years ago with Jimmy Shine in Finland, he was Mr Hot Rod, and I was Mr Kustom! We did a 60-minute interview there; it was fun to do. We had about 150 people in the crowd, and we could have gone on for hours.
Have you had any other careers beyond the custom cars?
Oh yeah, first off at a young age, about 11 or 12, I started working in my Uncle’s liquor store. It was a liquor store / delicatessen, my grandmother ran the deli and her name was Rose, so it was called Village Liquor and Rose’s Delicatessan. I would stock shelves for him, at about 16 I started working the cash register and selling liquor and making sandwiches. I did that for a couple of years while I was in high school, then right after high school I ended up going to a trade school over in Phoenix Arizona called the DeVry Instutute of Technology.
I went to college and stayed a couple of years and graduated with top honours. Then I went into electronics, I was an electronics technician. I worked for about a year inside of this building, I just didn’t like it, so I got out of electronics and went to work for a big steel company in my area. That was the late 70s. I did 33 years there, started off on the production line then went into management, then in 2010 ended up retiring from the steel industry and I started doing cars full time.
Really I was doing cars full time even before then, because I would put in time at work, then 4-6 hours building cars, so I built a lot of cars before 2010. I probably did 75 cars. From then on I’ve done another 15-20 cars.
One of your most recent builds is the ‘Pantheon’ ’68 Buick Riviera, how did that come about?
That car came from Brentwood California, I happened to see it parked on the side of the street, it was black on black and the only thing done was it had airbags. Other than that it was completely stock, Riviera wheels and all. It turned me on so much that I stopped to find out who owned the car. At first he didn’t want to sell it, so I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. I went to the bank, got the cash one hour later and I drove the car home.
I cruised in it for about a month as it was, then I took it to one of my builders, Oz Kustoms in Oroville CA. He’s done at least a dozen cars for me since 2010. I told Oz, lets chop this car, lets change the grille, lets go and do some trick paint on it and it turned out one of my really nice cars. It turned out so nice it won top honours its Grand National debut in 2014, the Worlds Most Beautiful Custom at Sacramento Autorama, plus Goodguys Car of the Year. It went onto shows in Europe, Mooneyes in Japan in 2015, then went straight back to The Petersen Automotive Museum. I really want to get the car home, it hasn’t been home since I built it!
So you will design the car and then work with a talented builder to bring it to fruition?
I will find the car I want and design it in my head and three quarters of the time I have a guy like Steve Stanford do some drawings. Then I’ll bring it to a place like Oz Kustoms in Oroville. Up until now I’ve done stuff with Gene Winfield, Gene has painted probably a dozen of my cars, I’ve worked with Rod Powell back in the 70s with my chopped Merc, guys like Art Himsl, Lucky 7 out of Antioch, Darryl Hollenbeck, John Aiello. I’ve worked with legends plus young guys that weren’t known 20 years ago but are now hall of famers.
So are these cars you’ve built for customers or are they your own cars?
Both. I’ve had three or four really good customers that I’ve worked with, these guys would really keep me busy. Sometimes they would give me three cars at a time and say when you finish these three, we’ll give you another three! One of those guys was developer Dave Walters out of Hawaii, he owned about 200 cars, he was one of my main guys. I built about five cars for him before he passed on in 2009, including Elvis II. We started with a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz that cost a quarter million dollars! It was almost done before he passed. It went all over the world, also won the Rodeo Drive Concourse D’Elegance in Beverly Hills. Right after that the new owners bought the car, it’s now on permanent display at La La Land at 7001 Hollywood Blvd.
Are there any particular rules or guidelines that you follow when it comes to restyling, or a D’Agostino style?
Since 1989 I’ve been doing a lot of luxury cars like Cadillacs and Lincolns and Packards and Imperials. Before then I would do chopped Mercurys. I like Oldsmobiles. I’ve done 5 or 6 different styles of Oldsmobile. I try to find a good design and I restyle it. I don’t like to change a car if its already restyled correctly. I just modify it to what I like. I like to give them the glamour look. Something that’s got a good silhouette, a nice top treatment, its got to be lowered correctly. I love the real pretty pearls and kandy paints. It’s not what you do to a car, it’s how well you do it. For example, I like to keep the headlights very tasteful, you don’t put square headlights on a round fender. You don’t have to do 200 modifications to make a car a showstopper. The main thing to me is the silhouette. When it’s chopped its got to be done correctly. When it’s lowered they got to be lowered correctly. They’ve got to be low.
So does your design evolve much throughout the build?
Oh yeah, without a doubt. Sometimes we’ll have Steve’s (Stanford) drawings and we start building the car and for some reason, it doesn’t look right, so we’ll change as we go. Probably since 2000 I’ve been working with Oz Kustoms in Oroville and we work very well together. He’s got the eye like I have. I’ll tell him what I want, we work together and go back and forth. I’m still the lead designer, I’m going to tell him what I want, but he’s also a co-designer so he works with me. When it comes to custom body and paint work he’s got a great eye also. I’m always looking up to Oz for that too, he’s done some great work for me in the past.
So do you keep any of your kustoms?
I would love to keep them all, but a lot of the time I get offers I can’t refuse. When I sell a car, it’s not like it’s my last car, I always have a couple of cars in the works. I have one being built and one in the background of that. I’ve just finished this beautiful ‘58 Packard two seater sportster, debuted it at the concourse on Rodeo, all done in lavender pearl with suicide doors. I built it as a tribute to Rita Hayworth the movie actress.
I bought the car seven or eight years ago. I started the car, then stopped it, I put a lot of cars in front of this. Then I told Oz, we can’t let this car sit for much longer, we’ve got to concentrate solely on the 58 Packard and he said he wouldn’t touch anything else until it was done. We tried to get it to the Grand National in January (2016) but we kept modifying the car more and more. All of a sudden we missed that show, the Sacramento show and also the Cruising Nationals over at Santa Maria where I really wanted to debut it at the end of May.
We got it finished just a few days before the Father’s Day show on Rodeo. I trucked it over to the Petersen Museum and called in a detailing crew called the Detail Mafia. Six of these guys came over to detail it, and two days later, the car was on Rodeo Drive and just blew people away. Her next show will be the SEMA show on the Sonax Car Care display, then I’ll start the big tour with it. All of 2017 will be nothing but the ‘Rita’ Packard,
I’m building a 1941 Cadillac for 2018. After that, a late 50s car again, maybe a ‘59 Buick or Oldsmobile, not chopped but with nice grille, headlights, airbags, maybe a Larry Watson scallop.
So Back to Brunswick was a fun weekend for you?
I had a great time at Back to Brunswick! This show really impressed me, it had a lot of variety of cars. I loved the whole show. Rod, Di and Peter did a great job. I love the name, it’s in a great setting, to me it’s one of the must-do shows. It’s a party, that Hotel Brunswick, a great place to actually hang out. It went by so fast, I wish it went for another day.
