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Tony Mullen didn’t know how it would happen, but he knew his Coupe de Ville was going to be the coolest thing ever. “I wasn’t a car guy,” he admits. “I build motorcycles. Built lots of ’em. But once you’ve built a few bikes, you realize that they really aren’t all that much different from one another.”
Antsy to break out of his mold, Tony jumped at the chance when this low-mileage 1960 crossed his path. “It was totally clean, a cherry car,” he recalls. “Everything worked…all the switches even. They put disc brakes and wheels on it before I got it. It drove great.” In fact, it drove so well that Tony did just that for about a year before he committed to anything.
In that time, he met Doug Jerger at Squeeg’s Kustoms in Chandler, Arizona. “I fell upon Doug through some guys who paint motorcycles in Arizona,” he remembers. “My wife, Julie, and I went to go visit him. We showed him pictures of the car and talked.” Tony’s criteria were simple: fast, custom, and fresh.
They bounced ideas off each other until Tony said he felt they were on the same page. “I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t even know how to wear clothes properly,” he jokes. “So (I told him), you guys roll.”
And how they rolled, in fact the thing they rolled was an Art Morrison Enterprises chassis under the big, beautiful body. And this was no ordinary chassis, (as if you could call a Morrison ordinary); this one had one of Kugel Komponents’ independent rear suspensions grafted to it and 14- and 11-inch Wilwood rotors and 6- and 4-piston calipers. And if you’re familiar with GM’s X-frames of the period, you know a perimeter frame like Morrison’s doesn’t fit. The body required all new floors. They finished the chassis with a 525-horse LS3/4L70E.
The aluminum fender skirts represent the only significant changes to the body. Matt Tomb made the skirts practically invisible by running the seam right up under the trim and extending them all the way back to the bumper. Doug Jerger custom-blended the PPG topcoat and he and Moose Graczyk laid it over a base of Squeeg’s in-house primer.
Ryan Dotzler and Doug Jerger shaped fin trim in wood and body filler, had Eastern Products cast the pieces in bronze, then they file-fitted them to the car. Karas Kustoms, an outfit otherwise known for machining high-quality metal writing pens, whittled the taillights from red acrylic and made the custom grille bullets. “I loved the wheels because the rims were whitewalls,” Tony says, referring to the 18×7 wheels that Curtis Speed’s Mike Curtis whittled. They bear hallmarks of Cadillac sabre wheels and later wheel covers and wear 245/45ZR18 Michelin Pilot Sports. Karas Kustoms cast the acrylic center caps with floating Cadillac badges, “A real tough thing to pull off,” Doug notes.
It gets pretty sweltering in Texas so you know this car has a Vintage Air climate-control system. Squeeg’s crew modified the seats to fit the new floor. Gabe’s Custom Interiors in San Bernardino, California, upholstered most of the interior in a combination of white vinyl and custom-embroidered cloth inserts. Brian Willingham at BW Upholstery in Phoenix wrapped the dash and tended to some of the details. Quality Restorations in San Diego restored the steering wheel and RS Gauge Works in Phoenix came up with the instruments. An American Autowire harness links everything, including a Bluetooth-controlled audio system installed by Unique Car Audio in Gilbert, Arizona.
Tony said he was ecstatic to get the car back after its four-year reconstruction. “I didn’t need to find an excuse to go drive it,” he says. “It went like a rocket!”
Speaking of rockets, y’ever see footage of Launchpad failures where missiles careen off almost elegantly to their demise? Well that’s sort of what travelers on Interstate 10 saw as Tony merged onto the highway. “It spun so fast that it hit the right guardrail with the left-front fender,” he says. “Then it swung around and hit the other side on the guardrail.” Luckily Tony emerged unscathed, but the impacts totaled the car.
“It’s unfortunate that the car got wrecked,” Tony laments, adding that he enjoyed every minute of it until that fateful moment. “Building the car was a learning experience,” he says. “I’ve been involved in some pretty high-end motorcycle builds. And they’re okay. But at the end of the day, a fork’s a fork and a swing-arm’s a swing-arm. This car rode great, handled great, went fast. Super comfortable. It turned heads.
“I think the one that suffered the worst is Todd,” Tony admits. Todd Stevens, fabricator at Squeeg’s, did a great deal of work on the car and in fact drove the car for the coupe’s shoot. “That car was his passion. He told me that he’d helped build a lot of cars but that one was special. There were guys who were really sad that car ended up that way.”
Count us among ’em. Tony Mullen’s 1960 Coupe de Ville, it was about the coolest thing—ever.
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