Custom grill for 1969 Buick Skylark

posted in: In the press, The Cutting Lab | 0

Our esteemed client Chris Clark from CTC Group was referred to us by Lee at Wired Electrical to find a way to repair the aging grill on his 1969 Buick Skylark.

We thought it was a great opportunity to create a new look and we presented Chris with a couple of designs. After uploading an image of a Skylark out of the USA courtesy of Duffys Classics in Cedar Rapids we made up some digital images of some concepts.

We needed to make sure the design looked in keeping with what Chris had already done to the car and ensure we did not impede airflow plus a few other factors we won’t bore you with.

The original design was prone to damage as you can see on Duffy’s mint baby blue example.

Check out the original grill…spot the damage in top right center. Chris’s was like this but worse.
The top pic shows Chris’s grill damage. Many of the fins with stone damage.

Concept shots showing the evolving design. We felt that by just darkening the grill it was not enough. It needed some other detail to lift it. The dome concept was influenced from the latest European car grill designs where they use hexagonal shapes within the grill in different ways.

You can see that by changing the brightness of the “domes” it gives it a completely different look. Size and frequency of them also created a different look.

Once the design was completed we had to work out how and what to build it out of. We used our Maxiem water jet to cut out the aluminium face and then used 12 mm nylon for the backing in order to give it some depth.

Before and after- reverse side

The hexagonal detail was added as two rows of three per side with the hex shape adding strength to the fins.

Gun metal stretched Hex detail.
Photo shopped version of the final concept. We elected to tone down the reflective colour of the hex domes to a gun metal grey. We used a stretched Hex shape that fitted into the hex pattern we cut into the grill.

We were happy and the client was happy with the final result. Better pics of it up in due course.

The Workshop 1924 is well equipped to design and fabricate custom parts.

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