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That car (Charger) was built in a shared underground tandem parking garage in my apartment building. I had a two-bulb lamp that I pulled out of the garbage and re-wired, that was my work light. I hauled my three-drawer tool chest, that's all I owned, down my two flights of stairs and had my jack chained to the concrete post. I had to have it covered at all times so it didn't look like I was working on it and I actually went to Home Depot, and bought a whole bunch of those $1.20 10x20 plastic throw down tarps and put them over all of my neighbors cars at night while I was working so no dust or no work crud would get on my neighbors cars, so no one would ever complain, and no one would ever know. This was when I was at the Chrysler dealership. I built Skully on the money from selling the El Camino and a completely tenacious attitude.
'I'm going to build a super cool car, and I'm going to do it, and show up on the Power Tour.'
MM: Who helped you with the design of the Charger?
STROPE: My friend Matt, I said, 'Dude you gotta do a drawing of the car for me. All these pros, they have concept artwork done'. So, he did the drawing of Skully -- and a funny story behind
the airbrush of that stretched skull with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. I did a basic sketch and sent it to Matt and he said, 'I'm going to send you a fax and see if you like my version.'
So, he sent me the fax and it was better than I even thought, because it's a pinstripe and it just ends at the skull head, and there's stitching, like sutures, in the pinstripe all the way down. Literally, when we did it, there are probably 1800 stitches per side of the car and we did it by hand. The stripe is that bone color that separates the topaz that I painted the car, and there is a set of wrap around shades on the skull. You see the skull from the side. There's a set of wrap around shades that are red and cut with a thin lines so after the skull, the pinstripe is bone-red-bone. The sutures are holding the sunglasses into the bone. So when you look all way down the car and can't see the skull, it's a really neat pattern. It was a lot of detail.
So, he sent me this drawing and I said, 'This is the most awesome thing, ever. Put it on the illustration'. He did the drawing, and sent it to me and I said, 'Dude, this skull isn't the one in the fax. This is normal looking'. He said, 'What are you talking about? You approved it. That's exactly what was on the fax'. I go, 'Here's the deal. When you come out and you airbrush the real car, I'm going to hand you the fax and that's what you are going to put on the car'. When he flew out to put the graphics on the car, he goes, 'Dude, your fax must have snagged, because it stretched the skull out'. The top of the skull was stretched, the jaw was out. The sunglasses were pulled back. It looked awesome! A total mistake. That's the way it went on.
MM: How did you manage to paint Skully in your basement garage?
STROPE: We didn't. A friend of mine that did all the repairs at the dealership I was working at, the manager of the bodyshop, was also an excellent painter. The car moved from my basement thing, to his house. We did all the bodywork in his driveway. We took it over to the bodyshop and painted it there. Matt came out. We had color on, and one coat of clear. We had to wait for the clear to dry to put the graphic on. Me and Matt did the graphic from sometime like 8pm to like 8 or 9 in the morning. Then the painter guy came back in and re-coated the clear. So we were up for 28 hours, 30 hours.
Anyway, I jumped off. The whole illustration for the car went in Hot Rod magazine, almost a half page. They were like [announcer voice] 'This guy, named Steve, is going to bring this car. This dude is building a car to come on the Power Tour and he thinks he can do it for under ten grand. Let's see if he can make it'! So, I got magazine coverage, and that allowed me to get sponsors. I picked potential sponsors as people who were involved with the Power Tour. So it worked perfectly. That started my relationship with awesome companies like Year One, BF Goodrich, and others. It started my relationships. Since then, every car I've built has been got great media exposure. My relationship has stayed solid.
Click here to read Part 2, the rest of the story.
Pure Vision can be found online at: http://www.purevisiondesign.com
