Today's Dave's Car ID Service is a FLAME WAR! Yesterday we looked a some of the Old Masters of car painting, today we focus specifically on the art of the flame paint job. The first documented example of which was seen at the 1934 Indy 500, on Kelly Petillo's handsome Miller. History does not record who painted them, and one might think simulated flames on a race car is tempting fate. But it wasn't so for Kelly Petillo, who returned to win Indy in 1935 with a similar flamed-up Offenhauser. It would be the first of many wins at Indy by Offy. But that proved to be the highlight of Kelly Petillo's racing career. He later flamed out, so to speak. Spectacularly. He was arrested numerous times, including charges of rape and attempted murder; his attempted murder arrest was in Victory Lane at Owosso Speedway after winning a race there. He spent 8 years in the Indiana state pen before he was paroled, promptly violated his parole, and was re-arrested in the crowd at the 1957 Indy 500. So, I dunno, maybe there is something to the idea that flame jobs are bad mojo.

Welcome to the Dave's Car ID Service Museum of Art, where today I shall culturally uplift you benighted philistines with a brief review of the Old Masters. No, not those Italian Ninja Turtles, or those Dutch Masters on your grandpa's cigar boxes. I am talking about the Old Masters whose canvases were car bodies. Starting with Von Dutch, who stylistically was less like Rembrandt than Jackson Pollock. In fact he wasn't Dutch at all. Born Kenneth Howard in Compton, CA, in 1929, he learned to professionally letter and pinstripe by age 10 from his sign painter dad. By the early 1950s his wild pinstripes and paint jobs were so ubiquitous in the burgeoning LA hot rod and custom scene that he had become a verb: to have one's car "Dutched." He was very much a bohemian beatnik iconoclast, hermit, and by all account quite a nasty asshole. But with a spark of genius both artistically and mechanically. He built some weirdly fascinating cars and motorcycles, and was a noted gunsmith and knife maker. He also provide the custom car world one of its icons: the Flying Eyeball (1), later adopted by the San Francisco hippie scene for rock posters and underground comics. He first painted one on the tank of his Crocker-powered Indian Scout chopper at age 17. In (2), he's doing his warmup stretches in 1958 for an elaborate pinstripe job on a 1953 Buick; behind him is is personal motorcycle, a 1950 Moto Guzzi Falcone. In #3, 1954, laying one of those elaborate pinstripes on George Barris's 1950 Ford woody wagon. Sadly after Von Dutch died his heirs sold off his name to a douchebag French designer, to be marketed as a hyper douchebag "streetwear" clothing brand, which I guess is coming back into style among Zoomers as an ironically douchebag fashion statement. Actual hot rod and custom people were indignant at this cultural appropriation, though. Throughout car shows in the mid-late 2000s, one would often see the T-shirt "Kenneth Howard Hates You." Yeah, Dutch was a douchebag, but dammit he was OUR douchebag.