Gene Winfield, a Hot Rodder and an outstanding car customer who built fantasy vehicles for “Star Trek”, “The Man from Uncle” and other television series and for films such as “Blade Runner” and “Sleope”, died on March 4 in Atascadero, California. He was 97 years old.
His son, Steve, said he died in a life center assisted by metastatic melanoma. They had also diagnosed renal failure.
Mr. Winfield began to attract national attention at the end of the 1950s with a two -door Mercury Hard of 1956 called Jade Idol.
According to the Custom Car Kustorama website, it transformed the mercury for a client by adding features such as handmade aluminum fenders in the front; Faros rings made from 1959 Hubcaps of the Chrysler Imperial Crown; an integrated television on a new board; and a direction column taken from an Edsel.
Automobile magazine described that Jade Idol had “a shark presence that represented a new direction in customs.”
The car obtained its name from the creator of Inventive Painting of Mr. Winfield: multiple tones of green and white pearl, with a color that is ingeniously mixed in the other, using a technique he developed. Became known as the Winfield Fade.
In a 2014 interview with the Racing News website in all cylinders, Winfield said he began his motorcycle paint experiments, followed by a white Chevy.
“I purple around chrome strips,” he said. “When I finished, it was a bit striking for me; however, it was different, they all loved it. So when I began to do the next or two, I did it softer and began to mix.”
Another famous personalized work was a Roadster, King T, who built in the early 1960s with Don Tognotti. They painted a T Ford Lavender model and added modifications as a Chevrolet V-8 engine matched with a four-speed automatic transmission; four -wheeled disc brakes; and 15 -inch chrome wheels with wooden inlays. He won a prize for “Roadster more beautiful” at the Oakland Roadster Show of 1964 in California.
Mr. Winfield cut the upper part of many cars that he customized, including hundreds of mercurÃas, and placed them lower inches to give the cars.
“He will go to a World of Wheels show and, with his crew, cut the upper part of a vehicle with a torch and put it four lower inches; it was a great show,” said John Buck, producer of the Grand National Roadster Show and the author of Sacramento, to which Mr. Winfield brought his cars, enchanting the crowds.
The personalized cars of Mr. Winfield, if not their name, became widely known in the 1960s when they were seen on television and in the movies.
He threw the reactor, a futuristic aluminum biseador, bass, with a golden and green color scheme, front traction and a roof panel with hinges, in a 20th -century trailer of the Century Fox Studio in Hollywood in 1966, with the hope of obtaining a wallpaper.
“I went to the door and connected them to let me in to show my car to his transport department,” said Motorious, a website for car collectors and restaurateurs, in 2017. “From there, the transport coordinator gave me the names and addresses of all these other studies, and for two days I took the car and I gave myself my business card. Two weeks later,” Bewitched ” ” ‘ He called me and told me that they wanted the reactor on his set. “It was the centerpiece of an episode called” Super Car “.
The reactor was then used in three more series: “Star Trek”, “Mission: Impossible” and “Batman”, in which Catwoman (Eartha Kitt) used it as the Catmobile.
He made some of his television works as Division Manager for the Amart Model Cars, for which he built the Galileo ferry for “Star Trek”. Based on a Thomas Kellogg design, it appeared in some episodes. He built it in two units.
“One would be a complete exterior, full size,” Star Trek told the official Star Trek website in 2011. “Then we built the complete interior. This interior had what we call ‘wild’ walls. What you do is make the walls in four -foot sections on wheels, so you can put a wall and could film the actors sitting in the seats and what you notice.”
Robert Eugene Winfield was born on June 16, 1927 in Springfield, Missouri, and grew up with five brothers and sisters, mainly in Modesto, California. His father, Frank, was a butcher who directed a car that he and his mother, Virginia (Akins) Winfield, sold hamburgers and hot dogs by a Nickel. After his parents divorced, his mother opened his own hamburger restaurant, where Gene began working at 10.
He was 14 when he opened his first store, to which he brought his first car, a Ford Model to Coupe of 1929. He added boobs, two antennas and a blue paint work. But his hope of being a lot in the streets soon faded when he broke out in an accident with a taxi. He quickly bought two more roadsters.
He served seasons in La Marina, from 1944 to 1945, and in the Army, from 1949 to 1951. While he was parked in Japan, he learned welding skills from an expert Japanese welder. Back home, his personalized work improved and began to attract customers. It also began to compete in the streets and dry lakes at the end of the 1940s; In 1951 he took his personalized Ford Model T Coupe, which called the thing, and led it to 135 miles per hour in the Salinas de Bonneville in Utah.
But what established its reputation were the cars that personalized, such as Maybellene, a modified 1961 cadillac called by the successful song of Chuck Berry and painted in cream and caramel tones, and those made for Hollywood.
For “The man of the uncle”, the blatant series of spies starring Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, Mr. Winfield built a gaviota wing car, with souls of flames simulated in the front and a corvair engine. For “Get Smart”, Spy Spy’s situation comedy, starring Don Adams as an inept secret agent, designed a sports car with devices such as a retractable cannon.
For “Sleeeper”, the 1973 science fiction comedy of Woody Allen created a bubble on a Volkswagen chassis.
He also built 25 vehicles for the science fiction film “Blade Runner” (1982), based on Syd Mead designs, some of which were called spinners. One of them was fly by the police officer played by Edward James Olmos.
One of the cars he built for “Blade Runner appeared in” Back to the future part II “
Mr. Winfield’s son said he preferred to customize cars to create them for television and movies.
“The cars of the film were dictated to him, but his personalized automobile client said: ‘Gene, here is my car, do what your inspiration says,” he said. “This is how Idol Jade.”
In addition to his son, from his marriage to Dolores Johnston, who ended up in divorce, Mr. Winfield is survived by a daughter, Jana Troutt, of the same marriage; A daughter, Nancy Winfield, from another marriage, to Kathy Horrigan, who also ended up in divorce; a son, Jerry Carrico, from another relationship; five grandchildren; and 10 great -grandchildren.
Winfield said he met with Ridley Scott, the director of “Blade Runner”, every two or three weeks while he and his crew built cars for the film.
“The only thing that was not happy in the final results was that Ridley Scott made us do many things that had to be absolutely perfect when it comes to the surface and shapes and colors,” he said in an interview with Blade Zone, a fanatic website. “We spend hours, hours and hours of colors and all this kind of thing, and then everything was filmed at night in the rain.”
With a laugh, he added: “You don’t see even half of what we did.”
