Gene Winfield, a sizzling rodder and distinguished automotive customizer who constructed fanciful autos for “Star Trek,” “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and different tv sequence and for movies like “Blade Runner” and “Sleeper,” died on March 4 in Atascadero, Calif. He was 97.
His son, Steve, mentioned he died in an assisted residing facility from metastatic melanoma. He had additionally been recognized with kidney failure.
Mr. Winfield started to draw nationwide consideration within the late Fifties with a two-door 1956 Mercury laborious high known as the Jade Idol.
In line with the {custom} automotive web site Kustorama, he remodeled the Mercury for a buyer by including options like handmade fenders rolled in aluminum within the entrance finish; headlight rings produced from 1959 Chrysler Imperial Crown hubcaps; a tv set built-in into a brand new dashboard; and a steering column taken from an Edsel.
Car journal described the Jade Idol as having “a sharklike presence that represented a brand new path in customs.”
The automotive received its title from Mr. Winfield’s ingenious paint scheme: a number of shades of inexperienced and pearl white, with one shade artfully mixing into the opposite, utilizing a way that he developed. It grew to become generally known as the Winfield Fade.
In a 2014 interview with the racing information web site On All Cylinders, Mr. Winfield mentioned that he started his paint experiments with bikes, adopted by a white Chevy,
“I put purple across the chrome strips,” he mentioned. “Once I received finished, it was a bit bit gaudy to me; it was totally different, although, and all people beloved it. In order I began to do the subsequent one or two, I made it softer and began mixing.”
One other well-known {custom} job was a roadster, the King T, which he constructed within the early Nineteen Sixties with Don Tognotti. They painted a Mannequin T Ford lavender and added modifications like a Chevrolet V-8 engine paired with a four-speed computerized transmission; four-wheel disc brakes; and 15-inch chrome wheels with wooden inlays. It received an award for “most stunning roadster” on the 1964 Oakland Roadster Present in California.
Mr. Winfield chopped off the tops of many automobiles that he custom-made — together with hundred of Mercurys — and put them again a couple of inches decrease to present the automobiles sleeker appears to be like.
“He would go to a World of Wheels present and, together with his crew, minimize off the highest of a automobile with a blowtorch and put it again 4 inches decrease; it was fairly a spectacle,” mentioned John Buck, producer of the Grand Nationwide Roadster Present and the Sacramento Autorama, to which Mr. Winfield introduced his automobiles, charming the crowds.
Mr. Winfield’s {custom} automobiles, if not his title, grew to become broadly recognized within the Nineteen Sixties after they have been seen on tv and within the films.
He towed the Reactor — a futuristic, low-slung, aluminum two-seater with a gold and inexperienced shade scheme, front-wheel drive and a hinged roof panel — on a trailer to the twentieth Century Fox studio in Hollywood in 1966, hoping to get it a display function.
“I went as much as the gate and conned them into letting me in to indicate my automotive to their transportation division,” he advised Motorious, an internet site for automotive collectors and restorers, in 2017. “From there, the transportation coordinator gave me the names and addresses of all these different studios, and for 2 days I took the automotive round and handed out my enterprise card. Two weeks later, ‘Bewitched’ known as me and mentioned that they needed the Reactor on their set.” It was the centerpiece of an episode known as “Tremendous Automobile.”
The Reactor was then used on three extra sequence: “Star Trek,” “Mission: Unimaginable” and “Batman,” on which Catwoman (Eartha Kitt) used it because the Catmobile.
He did a few of his TV work as a division supervisor for the model-car firm AMT, for which he constructed the Galileo Shuttle for “Star Trek.” Based mostly on a design by Thomas Kellogg, it appeared in a couple of episodes. He constructed it in two models.
“One can be a whole exterior, full measurement,” he advised the official Star Trek web site in 2011. “Then we constructed the entire inside. This inside had what we known as ‘wild’ partitions. What you do is you make the partitions in four-foot sections on wheels, so you may put up one wall they usually might movie the actors sitting on the seats and whatnot.”
Robert Eugene Winfield was born on June 16, 1927, in Springfield, Mo., and grew up with 5 brothers and sisters, primarily in Modesto, Calif. His father, Frank, was a butcher who ran a wagon from which he and his mom, Virginia (Akins) Winfield, offered hamburgers and sizzling canine for a nickel. After his dad and mom divorced, his mom opened her personal hamburger restaurant, the place Gene began working at 10.
He was 14 when he opened his first store, to which he introduced his first automotive, a 1929 Ford Mannequin A coupe. To it, he added oxtails, two antennas and a blue paint job. However his hope of hot-rodding it within the streets was quickly dashed when it was wrecked in a crash with a taxicab. He shortly purchased two extra roadsters.
He served stints within the Navy, from 1944 to 1945, and within the Military, from 1949 to 1951. Whereas stationed in Japan, he realized welding expertise from an professional Japanese welder. Again dwelling, his {custom} work received higher, and he started to draw prospects. He additionally started racing within the streets and on dry lakes within the late Forties; in 1951 he took his custom-built Ford Mannequin T coupe — which he known as the Factor — and drove it 135 miles per hour on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.
However what established his fame have been the automobiles that he custom-made — just like the Maybellene, a modified 1961 Cadillac named for the Chuck Berry hit music and painted in cream and butterscotch tones — and those that he made for Hollywood.
For “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” the cheeky spy sequence starring Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, Mr. Winfield constructed a gull-wing automotive, with mock flame throwers within the entrance finish and a Corvair engine. For “Get Good,” the spy-spoof sitcom starring Don Adams as a clumsy undercover agent, he designed a sports activities automotive with devices like a retractable cannon.
For “Sleeper,” Woody Allen’s 1973 science fiction comedy, he created a automotive with a bubble high over a Volkswagen chassis.
He additionally constructed 25 autos for the dystopian science-fiction movie “Blade Runner” (1982), primarily based on designs by Syd Mead, a couple of of which have been known as Spinners. One in all them was flown by the police officer performed by Edward James Olmos.
One of many automobiles he constructed for “Blade Runner turned up in “Again to the Future Half II”
Mr. Winfield’s son mentioned that he most popular customizing automobiles to creating them for tv and movies.
“The film automobiles have been dictated to him, however his {custom} automotive buyer would say, ‘Gene, right here’s my automotive, do no matter your inspiration says,’” he mentioned. “That’s how he turned out the Jade Idol.”
Along with his son, from his marriage to Dolores Johnston, which resulted in divorce, Mr. Winfield is survived by a daughter, Jana Troutt, from the identical marriage; a daughter, Nancy Winfield, from one other marriage, to Kathy Horrigan, which additionally resulted in divorce; a son, Jerry Carrico, from one other relationship; 5 grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.
Mr. Winfield mentioned that he met with Ridley Scott, the director of “Blade Runner,” each two or three weeks as he and his crew constructed the automobiles for the movie.
“The one factor that I used to be sad about in the long run outcomes was that Ridley Scott had us do a number of issues that needed to be completely close to excellent so far as floor and shapes and colours,” he mentioned in an interview with Blade Zone, a fan web site. “We went by means of hours, and hours, and hours of colours and all of this kind of factor, after which it was all filmed at evening within the rain.”
With amusing, he added, “You don’t see even half of what we did.”
