1955 Ford Beatnik Bubbletop Custom [Photo credit: Simon Davison]
Making its way down to Florida for RM Auction’s annual Amelia Island event on March 2, is this 1955 Ford Beatnink Bubbletop Custom concept inspired by futuristic design studies from the 1950s. The car was built by Gary ‘Chopit’ Fioto, who says he admits that as a kid growing up on Long Island he was fascinated with bubbletops. He chopped up a 1950 Mercury and named it the Beatnik after his car club.
The car is actually a lavender 1955 Ford-based custom rides on a modified ‘88 Lincoln Town Car chassis and gets its power from a Chevrolet 350-cubic inch small-block V8 engine. For the Beatnik, Fioto used a mix of Cadillac, Chrysler and Lincoln components, including the canted quad headlights. The front and rear fenders, the door skins and the rear section of the car are hand-formed.
The one-of-a-kind model also features a bespoke interior complete with an aircraft control yoke-inspired steering wheel and a rounded dash pod as a tribute to the late 1950s and early 1960s concept cars from Detroit. The car, which looks like something out of the Jetsons episode, has won numerous awards over at events like the Grand National Roadster Show, the Detroit Autorama, the Fresno Autorama, the Sacramento Autorama, Darryl Starbird’s Tulsa show, Carl Casper’s Louisville show and Paso Robles.
1955 Ford Beatnink Bubbletop Custom, which took four year to build, is expected to fetch somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000 when it goes under the auctioneer’s block.
