Sporting the same blue-with-orange-flames paint scheme that earned his Jungle Jim tribute car lots of attention in September at Indianapolis, Gilbertson's overhauled 1987 Cadillac Brougham limousine made its grand splash at the IHRA season finale as the Terminator Motorsports tow vehicle.

Bob Gilbertson might not have had the baddest hot rod on the Rockingham Dragway quarter-mile Friday night, for he is unqualified so far for the Nitro Funny Car field. But he was riding in arguably the coolest set of wheels on the property on the way back to his pit.

Sporting the same blue-with-orange-flames paint scheme that earned his Jungle Jim tribute car lots of attention in September at Indianapolis, Gilbertson's overhauled 1987 Cadillac Brougham limousine made its grand splash at the IHRA season finale as the Terminator Motorsports tow vehicle.

Cary Bewley of Indy Speed, Custom & Restoration of Brownsburg, Indiana, did more than duplicate his eye-popping paint job. He said that in just three and a half weeks, he and his crafters did "a lot of engineering" on the given-up-for-dead heap that Gilbertson found in a Michigan farm field on his way to the race at Milan Dragway.

"Every piece of trim, everything we touched, just fell apart," Bewley said, recalling that the car had no rocker panels when he got hold of it. After making the limo structurally sound, the Indy Speed, Custom & Restoration team installed a vertical door, an airlift suspension, neon lights, television, and a sound system that cleverly uses aluminum Trick Tanks (that Gilbertson's Charlotte, North Carolina, factory manufactures) as stereo speakers.

"Pretty cool" is how Gilberston described his resurrected ride -- "This was that piece-of-crap limo," he reminded. "We've got neon. We've got DVDs. We're rollin'!"

Gilbertson said his favorite feature of the limousine is its airlift system that makes the car go up and down. "People -- it  kind of blows their minds when you're at a stoplight. You start jackin' the thing around and they think they've got a flat tire. They're lookin' around. It's pretty cool," he said.

Dubbed "The Gilbymobile," the car, he said, was a wacky publicity stunt. "The stupider we look, " Gilbertson said, "the more publicity we get. Why I do stuff . . . I guess I'm crazy."

Bewley said this one-of-a-kind vehicle "shows what we can do at our shop. This is just a small bit of what we do. We focus on trying to deal with the customers and given them what they want to turn their dreams into reality."   

Gilbertson wouldn't call his limo a "psychobilly Cadillac" like the one in Johnny Cash's comedic ballad "One Piece At A Time," but he definitely was ridin' around in style, driving everybody wild, 'cause he has the only one there is around.

SUBMIT FEEDBACK