Jim Boyd's 1963 Ford

A photo of Jim's Galaxie from the 1965 Tridents Rod Custom Autorama. Photo by Bud Lang, from the The Petersen Archive.

Photo from the Larry Watson collection, provided by Rik Hoving Custom Car Photo Archive.

A photo that Mike Smith took of Jim's Ford. Mike owned and operated a custom wheels and accessories shop called Mr. M's in Gardena, California in the mid to late 1960s. Photo from The Howard Gribble Photo Collection.

An interior shot that Mike Smith took of Jim's Ford. Photo from The Howard Gribble Photo Collection.

1963 Ford Galaxie owned by Jim Boyd of Torrance, California. Dennis Mckee remembers Jim buying the Ford brand new "I remember Jim having a new 1963 Ford with a 406 4 speed, it was a factory red new car when he got it. Jim's dad owned a beer distributorship and his mom was a doctor, so money was not a problem. Jim drove a beer truck also. The 63 Ford was very fast with a engine built by Jack Pelquen of Pelican High Performance. Jim would street race it on the weekends, and people came from far away to street race him. They would meet at the El Camino Car Wash across the street form A&W at Redondo Beach Blvd. and Crenshaw Blvd. late at nights. Jim came by my house and picked me up one evening to go see our girlfriends, who lived next door to each other. I was impressed that he could drink a bottle of soda and drive a 4 speed at the same time with no cup holders in those days. Anyway that was how his Watson painted custom started out, as a jacked up street race car. Later, after it was a custom car he would drive it to Hollywood, to the Whisky a Go Go, and park it at a gas station across the street. He paid the gas station to keep watch over the car while he was in the night club. He had a RCA record player in the Ford that was pinstripped with the name "Squak Box"." In 2016 Joe Hurst told Kustomrama that he always seemed to have a competition with Jim, but he could never match his dollars.

Lifts by Bear 

In 1964 Jim decided to install hydraulic lifts on his 1960 Ford Starliner. The work was performed by a fellow from Downey called "Bear." Bear was in his early twenties at the time, and he was working out of his parents house. In 2011 Mike told Kustomrama that Jim's Ford was the first lifted car he ever saw. Sometime in the first half of 1964 Mike was driving with a friend to the local A&W. About a block before A&W they passed a friends house. The friend, Jim Boyd, had just finished a full customization of the Ford, and the car was parked at the curb lying on the ground. [Mike had never heard of lifts, or seen anything like it, so he asked his friend if he knew what had happened to the car. He wondered why it was broke. The friend told Mike that the car had lifts. When Mike learned about lifts, and how you could raise and lower a car from the inside with a switch, he flipped out. They found out that Larry Watson knew the person who did the installation, so they took the Starliner to Watson. Watson sent them to Bear.

Howard Gribble

Howard Gribble, who cruised the streets of Torrance, California has fond memories of Jim's Ford as well. " The car belonged to Jim Boyd, who was two years ahead of me in high school (though I never knew or heard of him then, that I can remember). It was the first car I ever saw that was lifted, though at the time (1965) it was front only and still painted factory red. Later the tail light were deeply tunneled and 1953 Studebaker gravel pans added under the bumpers, along with extended rocker panels to make it look even lower. Then he had Larry Watson of Watson's House of Style paint it, and he had the interior done in sculpted rolls and pleats. It also had Buick wire wheels and hydraulics added to the rear. It made a very brief appearance in some documentary film about the youth culture of the day. And I saw it once more at the 1965 Long Beach show in fall of that year. "