Built by: Boban (Bobby) Arsic in Rikon, near Zürich, Switzerland

When I was a kid, I saw for the first time, a crazy custom car in a magazine. It was really cool.

Later, I bought a book, Jay Ohrberg's Hollywood Cars, with creations of George Barris, Carl Casper, Ed Roth and many others. Back then, I was fascinated with big slicks and monster engines with injector stacks, blowers and other horsepowermakers on these "cars". Naturally, I turned to model-building to make these fantasy cars come closer to me.

But that was hard here in Switzerland--the model stores, are empty of showrods and crazy creations. And when I ask the dealers for them, their said "What the hell is....." or "No, it's too US-Style for us...." Not good for me!

However, I told a friend that when he goes to the US, I'd gave him a big list and he'd buy them there for me. And so he did send me a lot of show rod models--especially a lot of Tom Daniel's models, and wow I was happy! I'm the biggest fan of TD!

Now I've built models over 20 years, and I don't know how many I built--so I don't know when I built this Groovy Grader, but it was many years ago.

It's Box-Stock. I only changed the light on the front, plus the slicks and I put a new injection so the scoop would clear the roof and reversed it so it faces forward. The color is a tricky self-mixture of yellow and orange-- it changes the shine to the light direction.