Larry and Mike Alexander set the tone for midwest custom car builds by winning the Don Ridler Memorial Award three times. Based in Detroit, the Alexander Brothers made the West coast press take notice with their original designs. Photo from www.kustomrama.com

We’ve all been in that conversation with a group of people and a famous name gets dropped that everyone knows, but you realize that you don’t really know anything about the person. You don’t know what made them famous or noteworthy. We’ve decided to share a little info on some of the most respected and famous names in Hot Rodding, in a series of articles broken down alphabetically, to help shed some light on these legendary names from the past. From the alpha to the omega, we begin our list with the legendary car builders whose last name begins with the letter “A.”

Larry and Mike Alexander

Founding partners of the Alexander Brothers Custom Shop. Larry and Mike Alexander both learned the trade by attending Wolverine Trade School on the G.I. Bill after successful tours in the Army. Starting out in their father’s one-car garage, the brothers eventually found themselves with enough work to support their business full-time in 1957.

The very next year the brothers 1931 Ford Model A pickup won a trophy for best paint at the prestigious Detroit Autorama. Mike and Larry worked on Clarence Catallo’s 1932 Ford Coupe that eventually wound up on the Beach Boys “Little Deuce Coupe” album cover. The brothers then produced a 1964 Ford Galaxie fastback they called Alexa, which got a lot of rave reviews. Next up was a 1956 Chevrolet for Bobby Massaron that was called the Venturian that promptly won the distinguished Don Ridler Memorial Award in 1965.

The team opened a shop in Detroit with the promise that the city would not encroach on their land. In 1969 the city reneged and tore down the building to widen a highway. Photo from www.kustomrama.com

If winning one Ridler award wasn’t enough, the brothers dominated the 1967 Detroit Autorama by winning every major award, including their second Don Ridler Memorial award with a stripped down 1964 Dodge A100 pickup they named the Dodge Deora.

The city of Detroit notified the brothers that their property was going to be turned into a freeway expansion project, giving the Alexanders a limited amount of time to move. With time winding down, the brothers built their final car, a yellow 1923 Model T called the Top Banana. Astonishingly, as the brothers were splitting up and closing the shop, Top Banana won the duo their third Don Ridler Memorial Award in 1969.

The Alexander Brothers 1964 Dodge A100 pickup they named the Dodge Deora, which captured the 1967 Don Ridler Memorial award. This was the team’s second Ridler award. Photo from www.kustomrama.com

From 1957 to 1969, around 60 fully customized cars rolled out of the Alexander brothers custom shop before the city tore down the facility. Larry Alexander passed away on August 25, 2010 at 79 years old. Mike Alexander passed away on July 18, 2014, at 80 years old.

Art Arfons (February 3, 1926 – December 3, 2007). Photo from Hemmings Daily

Art Arfons 

When it came to customizers, the early Bonneville land speed record racers were among the best at fabricating equipment to meet their unique needs. There were no off-the-shelf parts for racers like Art Arfons. They had to build what they needed. Building by necessity came easy for Arfons. Having joined the Navy at 16 years of age, he learned diesel maintenance and was assigned to maintain landing craft in the Pacific Theater of operations. That is where Arfons honed his talents. The war didn’t stop for lack of a panel or bolt-you fabricated what you needed to get the job done.

Art became interested in drag racing when his half-brother Walt became a racing fan. Together they built their first Green Monster racer, beginning their racing partnership. The team continued to build a series of Green Monster cars, taking all challengers but eventually competing against themselves in the end. Bonneville was a natural next step for Arfons. Building a land speed racer modeled after John Cobb’s “Railton Special” and powering the car with an Allison V-1710 aircraft engine, he reached a top speed of 313.78 mph before burning out the clutch in 1961.

Chasing more speed, Arfons started experimenting with jet-powered cars, starting with an 8,000 horsepower racer he named “Cyclops,” which remains the fastest open cockpit vehicle, recorded at 330.113 miles per hour in the measured mile in 1962. Without an enclosed cockpit, and no way to fabricate an enclosure, the speed-limited car required another Arfons innovation to go faster. This resulted in the first land speed record car with a wing to generate downforce, preventing the car from going airborne.

Art Arfons and the legendary “Green Monster.” Photo from Hemmings Daily

Arfons kept returning to Bonneville, first in 1964, with his Green Monster cars. Holding the world land speed record three times between 1964 and 1965, Arfons scaled back after a bad crash in 1966. He won jet turbine tractor pulling competitions, including the NTPA championship in 1979, when he decided to return to land speed record competition.

On October 16, 1971, while making an exhibition run at the Dallas International Motor Speedway in Lewisville, Texas, Arfons lost control of his radical jet-powered vehicle named the “Super Cyclps,” resulting in the death of three people. The Dallas event was to be his last race. Arfons died on December 3, 2007, in Springfield Township, Ohio, at the age of 81.

Gil Ayala

Gil Ayala (March 6, 1925-March 19, 1991). Photo from www.kustomrama.com

Gilbert “Gil” Ayala was another great car builder and painter out of California. Along with brother Al, the Ayala brothers were an up and coming car building team before WWII. Early on Gil was known as a racer, driving for Evans Speed Equipment at the tender age of 16 years old. Opening up a custom body shop at 4074 E. Olympic Boulevard in East Los Angeles, Gil’s Auto Body Works began a movement in the local area.

Both Gil and brother Al were members of several car clubs, most notably the East Los Angeles Auto Butchers Car Club and the Vultures Car Club of City Terrace. Gil was married and trying to start a family which took his focus away from racing and onto the business. Gil ran the business and followed his passion, which was painting, while Al did the fabricating. Gil was credited with being one of the first to start the art of customizing cars on the West coast. Ayala’s custom chopped Mercs led the way for generations of builders.

One of Ayala’s early chopped Mercs. Photo from www.kustomrama.com

The Ayala brothers are both members of the Hot Rod Hall of Fame, with many of their builds featured on the covers of top automotive magazines of the time. Gil also won the Grand National Roadster Show in 1951. Gil died of lymphoma, most likely from exposure to chemicals in the paint, at age 66 in 1991.