Senin, 17 Februari 2014

Float off in a Chevrolet Custom Cloud

Ebay seller junkman356This Custom Cloud lacks the ripoff Rolls-Royce Flying Lady hood ornament, but the overall superluxe impact is scarcely diminished. This one's for sale on eBay.


Quick: What's the most elegant American car of the Malaise Era? A fifth-gen Lincoln Continental? The Stutz Blackhawk? The Excalibur? The Corvette Caballista?


All worthy contenders. But there's only one all-American luxobarge so graceful that it's easy to imagine it wearing the classically proportioned Rolls-Royce grille and the hallowed Flying Lady hood ornament. Probably because it did wear the Rolls-Royce grille and the Flying Lady -- or at least knockoffs of each.


It was called the Custom Cloud, and its double-'C' logo even looked like that famous British luxury car-maker's unmistakable badge.


We spotted one nearly pristine example for sale on eBay, tucked between the improbably bountiful crop of DeTomaso Panteras and McLaren 12Cs that litter the Other Makes category. Its style haunted us. We'd seen it before, somewhere -- and not just on the Silver Cloud, the better-known Roller from which it seems to have cribbed some of its lines (and part of its name).


But our memory was, perhaps understandably, cloudy. We dug deeper.


Turns out that there's a lot of mystery surrounding the Custom Cloud. Did the guys involved really think they could fly under Rolls-Royce's radar? Were these things actually popular? How many were built? And, for that matter, how many survived? Poking around yielded no consistent answers; things were apparently pretty hazy during the 1970s.


Ebay seller junkman356The Custom Cloud package was originally going to be reworking of the front end, but its designer decided to massage the back as well.


Fortunately, we found what must be the definitive online resource for Custom Cloud information: an essay written by Custom Cloud owner Charlie Wolters.


As Wolters tells it, the Custom Cloud was the brainchild of Miami-based (of course) car enthusiast and customizer Jon Tedesco. Says Wolters:


'Jon did some work for the South Florida Chevrolet Dealer Association that expressed an interest in creating more traffic through their showrooms. He told them he would try and come up with something more creative than having clowns and free hot dogs to attract customers. He went back to his drawing board and came up with the basic idea that if they customized one of their newer model cars, and promoted it properly, a large number of potential customers might come in to check it out.'


The result--the Custom Cloud--was definitely more intriguing than hot dogs or those wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube men. Based on the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, the Custom Cloud started off as a heavily modified, Rolls Royce-inspired front-clip kit, but it evolved into a 360-degree massaging of the Chevy's lines.


Ebay seller junkman356Inside, you're treated to a more or less stock Monte Carlo. Elegance!


Sold through Custom Cloud Motors, Inc., the kit cost $2,395 plus the cost of a donor Monte Carlo and installation at the dealer. It included Rolls-Royce-style grilles made in the Miami area, Flying Lady hood ornaments from a company that built them for VW kit cars and genuine Rolls-Royce taillights sourced from Lucas. But you would need to pay extra to get a 1973 Buick LeSabre front bumper, which was said to enhance the look.


The design was reportedly a hit, which speaks volumes about the era in which it was conceived. Covered by popular car magazines of the day and promoted in a series of bitchin' advertisements, orders for Custom Cloud kits outpaced the small company's modest production capabilities.


But the dream couldn't last; a 1976 lawsuit spelled doom for the enterprise. Though Rolls-Royce had never bothered to patent its trademark grille in the United States (!), our fun-hating legal system decided that the Custom Cloud represented a blatant infringement on the British automaker's intellectual property.


Grille aside, it the use of knockoff Flying Ladies probably didn't help the Custom Cloud Motor's case. Neither did the company's logo. Or the car's name, which was uncomfortably close to that of a certain pontoon-fendered saloon.


A few design-element alterations meant that production continued in some capacity, but it seems that much of the energy that pushed the original Custom Cloud project forward had dissipated. The company was bought and sold several times, and it faded into obscurity by the late 1970s.


As for production numbers? Turns out no one really knows how many were built. Wolters estimates that, given the slow cure time of the era's fiberglass, it would have been tough to build more than 700 kits before Rolls-Royce put the kibosh on the project--and that figure assumes, rather optimistically, 24/7 production for 26 weeks. The Custom Cloud kit's creators can't agree on a number, but one pegs production at around 100.


Remember, we're talking about Miami in the 1970s; we're sure no one was really paying attention to the details. Without knowing how many kits were produced, let alone how many of those kits actually made it onto a donor Monte Carlo, it's impossible to say how many have survived to the present.


So it's safe to call the silver eBay specimen a rare bird. Though its logos and lack of the Flying Lady reflect the last-ditch effort to diffuse the lawsuit, it does have the 'correct' 1973 Buick LeSabre bumper, which totally makes the car. And it's supposedly offered as-new, never-titled, 'very low miles,' in excellent shape, save for a slight flaw on the roof's vinyl wrapper.


There's still time to get in on the bidding for this specimen. But if you miss out, at least you'll know what you're looking at when one wafts down the road, its 8-track player blaring ' Midnight Cruiser.'


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