Last Saturday I headed to the inner depths of Melbourne’s suburbia, specifically, the well-established suburb of Coburg. A place of many diversities and subdivisions developed from many decades of social growth creating a cultural community of both residential as well as industrial occupancy.
Nestled in amongst the sprawling industrial precinct of this Northern Melbourne suburb is the newly established but highly experienced automotive work shop, Classic and Custom Garage owned by rockabilly eccentric, Andy (Pudzy) Pritchard.
After a recent trip to America, one of our stops was to the well known custom car and rod shop of Troy Lad’s, Hollywood Hot rods located in Burbank, California. Surrounded by palm trees and flanked on one side by one of LA’s major freeways, this moderately sized custom shop takes you back to a time when small auto businesses like Dean Jeffries and Ed Roth’s custom shops could be found spread among the back streets and industrial zones of Southern California. California had built itself a strong reputation as the ultimate place where cool custom cars and radical rods were breeding in numbers. The long dry summers drew them (American rodders) to the West Coast while the milk shake diners and rod shows kept them here. Customizers drew inspiration off one another as the custom mods and crazy paint schemes was only limited to one’s imagination! 
While cruising around LA last year, I guess we had a destination mind, one of the guys spotted a cool looking yellow 32 three window up on a hoist in a garage. Jumping on the brakes in our hire car and turning around, we stopped off to check it out. It turned out to be Braun’s muscle car & Hot Rod restorations workshop and just one of a number of customer’s cars receiving maintenance.
Dave Mills is one of your old school drag racers, keeping the tradition alive of racing old school motors in period correct drag cars. But don’t underestimate these guys, they’ll leave you in a cloud of smoke sitting at the Christmas tree with their high horsepower, naturally aspirated 409s pushing out in excess of 800hp! These lost middle childs of the Chev engines have a loyal following in a niche market of old school horsepower production! 
Caprice Photography Automotive Art 