Gene Olsen's '51 Mercury is in a class of its own. It all started back in '97 and took until '99 to finish. It won the Most Outstanding Custom on its first outing at the Grand National Roadster Show.

Aside from the enormous amount of thought, modification, skill and engineering that went into the building of this wonderful piece of rolling art, "it's one heck of an automobile to drive, and better than brand new", said Gene.

Each person connected to the building of this car knew every aspect had to be well thought out and all details double-checked. As some of you already know, once you start to 'chop the top', the design complexity multiplies. To ensure everything fits perfectly, dozens of sketches are created, hundreds of hours of discussions take place, millions of adjustments are made and even a few friendly disagreements happen. Is it worth it? "You bet it is" said Gene, who is just one man that had a driving passion to build the car of his dreams and now gets to literally drive that passion each time he sits behind the wheel of his very cool, blue, '51 Merc.

When Mooneyes invited one of Rolling Art's resident experts, Pete Chapouris, to bring the sleek blue '51 Mercury convertible he and his So-Cal crew built, along with owner Gene Olsen, over to Yokohama, Japan for the Mooneyes 10th Annual Custom and Hot Rod Show, we knew we had to go along.

Aside from the excitement of preparing to go to Japan and shoot a segment for the show, there was that slightly nervous moment when it came time to place the '51 Merc into its shipping container for its fourteen day cruise from Los Angeles to Yokohama. For the gang at Mooneyes, this was a piece of cake. This is something they are trained for and considering this is the tenth year they have been shipping cars across the vast Pacific Ocean, we really had nothing to worry about. But, I can say that after we landed in Tokyo and drove an hour and a half by bus to Yokohama, Pete and Gene did give rather large sighs of relief when informed that the ship had landed and the Merc was in perr-fect condition.

Since this was the first time any of us ever visited Japan, there was much to do and to think about. The weather was good for the day of the event, but then it began to rain Sunday afternoon and stayed that way until we left on Tuesday. The good news was that the event was held in the brand new spacious Yokohama Pacifico Center. And because our wonderful hosts from Mooneyes, Owner Shige (pronounced She –Gay) Suganuma and Mooneyes president Chico Kodama had put up all of us at the beautiful Intercontinental Hotel right next door, we had... no worries!

I think one of the first things that impressed us about our hosts is that all this enormous amount of effort was done for just a single daylong event. This year marked the 10th anniversary since Mooneyes began successfully orchestrating this well-attended affair. The day before the event, I observed a small army of Mooneyes workers staging over 180 vehicles, setting up the band stand, coordinating security and making sure their own impressive exhibit sites were ready to go. I witnessed dozens of vendors scurrying around and all the participants grooming their areas to perfection before the mass of attendees swooped in. All of these activities were done methodically and with extreme precision and grace. I filmed in amazement while everyone put all the pieces together just beautifully.

We were blown away when we heard that these cars had come from all over Japan and some, like the '51 Merc, made the trek from the U.S. Even a casual observer quickly noticed that most of the visitors and participants who attended this event dressed up from the 1950's. It was like going back in time--Japanese style. There were guys with big Elvis hair and most had rolled up jeans as well. Everybody was checking out the 'competition'. I mean it was, "real cool
daddy-o".

There were really cool live Rock N' Roll bands to entertain the masses and a huge tribute to Big Daddy 'Ed' Roth, as his wife, Ilene, was one of the invited guests. Of course the pin stripers were there striping just about anything they could. Even had pin striping races along with major Hot Wheels buying and swapping frenzies. There was such a crowd over at the Hot Wheels exhibit we couldn't even get close to it for most of the day.




There were all kinds of chopped, decked and lowered rolling art. Our eyes feasted on a variety of customized vets, four-wheel monster trucks, and Japanese-size mini vans (I know it sounds redundant but it's not). My favorite was the Japanese-size VW van. It looked like an enlarged VW Tonka Toy with a short surfboard stuck in the window! There was a real family feel to the event. Everyone from the tiniest toddler to the most mature grown-up did a little rock 'n rollin' that day.