Automotive Brightworks and Hood Ornaments
I came across the book Brightworks - Classic American Car Ornamentation (ISBN 0-8118-2663-5) by Ken Steacy at the local bookstore. I quickly read it over and thought that's interesting. A couple of weeks later, I went back and looked at the book again. This time I was hooked and bought it. It really puts a new twist for me on the beauty of automobile chrome over the years. It has fantastic pictures and information on just the artistic side of hood ornaments, scripting, horn buttons and logos.
Cover of Brightworks by Ken Steacy
I thought that it would make a nice hobby collecting just the chrome scripting for my 5 year old daughter and myself. Hit the wreckers and see what we can find. All that is needed is a steel scraper to remove most of the latest chrome. So on the first warm day when we had nothing to do, out we went. My daughter had a lot of fun finding good looking chrome among the cars.
We pulled off about 50 pieces put them in a bag and was charged only $5 for them! Great deal! Back at home we used a hot glue gun to glue them onto different colored bristol board. I tried white and then black but red, purple and blue worked best. Then we mounted them in our garage so we now have a conversation piece. The funny part is that my daughter started dreaming about collecting script and mounting them on the walls of our house!
Randomly glued in place - looks pretty nice!
Decided to stay mainly with GM products - some Ford script snuck in though..
The Cadillac, Eldorado, Biarritz, Sedan deVille are my favorites
There were some nice scripts that I couldn't get off cause they were bolted on. I'll have to try later. Now that I have started, I can see that it is going to be addictive. I'm already making up a list of desirable scripts to get. After searching the wreckers, you start to look at parked cars and passing vehicles with the idea of "acquiring" their scripts...
Here's a list of scripts that my daughter and I collected after only two visits. I haven't listed the horn buttons, hubcap centers, trunk key latch covers, coat of arms or brand symbols that we've also collected. We are trying to keep the items physically small at this time.
Script Name Wanted 1 2000 36 Grand Lemans 1 Acadian 2 6000 37 Grand Prix Large 2 Astra 3 6000 Safari 38 Grand Prix Small 3 Belair 4 Belair Plastic 39 Impala 4 Corvette 5 Beretta 40 Landau 5 Fleetwood 6 Biarritz 41 LeSabre 6 GTO 7 Bonneville chrome 42 Limited 7 Monte Carlo 8 Bonneville Red 43 Malibu Classic 8 9 Brougham 44 Ninety Eight 9 Vega 10 Buick 45 Nova Custom 10 Ventura 11 Cabriolet 46 Oldsmobile large 12 Cadillac 47 Oldsmobile medium 13 Calais 48 Oldsmobile small 14 Camaro 49 Omega 15 Capri 50 Parisienne 16 Caprice Classic 51 Park Avenue 17 Caprice-Estate 52 Phoenix 18 Catalina 53 Pontiac Chrome 19 Celebrity 54 Pontiac Plastic 20 Century 55 Pontiac Red 21 Chevette 56 Pontiac small 22 Chevrolet 57 Regency 23 Ciera SL 58 Riveria 24 Citation 59 Sedan DeVille 25 Corsica 60 SkyHawk 26 Cougar 61 Skylark 27 Cutlass Supreme 62 Spectrum 28 Delta 88 63 Sunbird 29 Eldorado 64 Sunbird 30 Eurosport 65 Sunburst 31 Firebird 66 Tempest 32 Firefly large 67 Toronado small 33 Firefly small 34 Firenza 35 Grand Am