theWhiskey Runner
What a privilege it has been to become friends with and work with Billy Gibbons of ZZ top. I have been lucky to pin stripe several of Billys guitars, put together ideas for several projects including ZZtop tour stuff and even be involved in filming various media bits. As for the SoCal speedshop built Whiskey Runner, I became involved with it through Shine speedshop sometime before I became a regular employee there. Billy had some interesting ideas about how to finish it and so we began talking, began putting together a plan. What started out as weeks and months of discussion turned into years. Hundreds of hours of ideas put on paper, only some of which is shown here.
Basically I used the Christman bros coupe and its second version, the Doby Gillis coupe as a starting point. At one point I even tried a mexican Bandito treatment, but the look eluded what Billy had in his mind... finally we got somewhere with the lofty smoke flame shapes, Chartreuse and Cadzilla Purple colors mixed over a pearl white..
... under the paint would be illuminated graphics, or logos. a trick that modern paint can achieve. But, Billy is a busy man and we never could quite lock him down to start painting it and fixing all the small stuff left unfinished. If it ever does get finished its going to be stunning and hopefully a fitting bridge between the hot rod that is the Eliminator coupe, and the Kustom that is Cadzilla.
Below are the many variations I worked on for Billy, some before but many while I was working for Jimmy Shine, Shine speedshop. Also below is a neato paper fold up I did of the car, which creates a "hard to believe its paper" Whiskey Runner model available on that website. more about original creation of the car can be found on Socal or Shine links on this page.
