Ray Goulart's 1950 Oldsmobile

A photo from The Art Himsl Collection showing Ray Goulart's 1950 Oldsmobile parked outside Himsl & Haas Custom Paint Studio in Concord, California. Gene Winfield originally painted the Olds, taking it through Candy Copper, a gold-to-red Flake fade, and finally Candy Red. The Candy Red was resprayed a couple of times over the years, and this may well be one of those occasions. Photo from The Art Himsl Collection.

Ray Goulart's 1950 Oldsmobile was a mild-to-radical custom built by Ray in his home garage in Modesto, California, beginning in 1959. Originally a convertible, Ray converted it to a hardtop by grafting a roof off a 1951 Chevrolet onto the body, and went on to handle nearly all of the design and fabrication himself. Gene Winfield handled the paintwork, taking the car through three color changes. First Candy Copper, then a gold-to-red Flake fade, and finally Candy Red. The Olds was overshadowed in its day by brother LeRoy Goulart's lime green 1950 Ford, which Winfield had customized twice, and many observers wrongly credited Winfield with the Oldsmobile build as well. According to Pat Ganahl, it was "one of the best-designed, best-executed customs of the early '60s."

The Build

Ray began work on the Olds in 1959. The bodywork included an oval tube grille, canted 1959 Chevrolet headlights, handformed bumpers, and radiused and flared wheelwells. The rockers were filled and rolled, and small scoops were added to the front fenders. 1958 Oldsmobile taillights were Frenched into 1953 DeSoto rear fenders. Because hardtops had become more fashionable than convertibles by 1959, Ray sliced the top off a 1951 Chevrolet and grafted it onto the Olds, adding a smaller sedan window at the rear.

Gene Winfield painted the car three times. The first version was Candy Copper, followed by a gold-to-red Flake fade, and finally Candy Red. "No, no," Winfield told Pat Ganahl when asked about his role in the build. "All I did was paint it. Everything else Ray did himself, in his home garage."

Interior

Ray split the original front and rear bench seats into buckets and fabricated a center console. A new Oldsmobile gauge pod was grafted onto the dash and fitted with Stewart-Warner gauges, and the car was topped off with an Oldsmobile "spaceship" steering wheel. The seats were upholstered in black diamond tuft with silver buttons, in the early-1960s style.

Drivetrain

The car had originally come with a Hydramatic transmission, as most Oldsmobiles did. Ray swapped in a stick shift behind the original 303 cubic inch Olds V8, adding a clutch pedal and a console-mounted floor shifter. He later replaced the Olds engine with a 401 cubic inch dual-quad Buick Nailhead, reportedly because he loved the vertical valve covers.

Later Owners

The Oldsmobile passed through a succession of largely undocumented owners over the following 60 years, but none of them altered Ray's build. The Candy Red paint was resprayed a couple of times, but everything else stayed the way Ray had built it. The car eventually joined the collection of stunt pilot, race car driver, and car collector Gary Cerveny, who kept it at his home compound on Mullholland Highway in Malibu, California, on the crest of the Santa Monica mountains.

The Woolsey Fire

In November 2018, the Woolsey Fire swept through Malibu and destroyed Gary Cerveny's home compound. The Cerveny house and adjoining guest house were both built atop large semi-basement garages, and as the fire raged, the structures collapsed onto the cars trapped inside. Fueled by full gas tanks and a 50-gallon drum of nitro stored for the race cars, the fire reached temperatures of more than 2,000 degrees — hot enough, Cerveny said, to evaporate aluminum. A total of 76 vehicles were lost, Ray Goulart's 1950 Oldsmobile among them. FEMA carted the remains off as scrap metal to be recycled. Dave Cunningham's 1940 Ford, The Norman Timbs Special, and Lee Talbot and Sam Chakries' 1953 Studebaker Pickup were three other famous customs lost to the Malibu wildfires as Gary Cerveny's collection burned down to the ground. A tragic day in custom car history.

In 2012, Pat Ganahl had written in Lost Hot Rods II: "Given the number of vehicles he currently has to tend, drive, or race, there's no telling when you might see either of these famous candy red customs. But at least now you know where they are, saved and safe."