Seen this car? The owner is keeping rockabilly alive

Perhaps you’ve seen the car on the streets of Kelowna - a brown 1950 Ford Custom, or Shoebox as they’re affectionately known.

Its owner is every inch a man who embraces the rockabilly lifestyle of that era; so much so that he leaves his mark, literally, all over the region.

He’s called Q-ball - he prefers not to give his real name – a moniker coined after his chrome dome that sparkles as much as the bumpers and hubcaps on the classic vehicles he paints as a pinstriper.

The lifestyle

“It’s rooted in the rockabilly culture,” he explains to Kelowna10 on his Rutland driveway, “... the beautiful guitar music. It’s just awesome when you’re behind the wheel like Grandpa driving down the street listening to Patsy Cline or something from Wanda Jackson, and you’ve got your ride and your woman. You’re going to go grab a burger. There’s nothing better that that, eh.”

The car

While Q-ball has thrown lots of cash at the engine and interior of his two-door, six-cylinder classic machine, he has no interest in restoring the body work, in deference to an earlier owner.

“I’m happy with the 1960s custom paint job that some fella did, that’s not going anywhere,” he explains. He’s added some pinstriping along the hood and trunk, to go with the designs on the dashboard and is content to drive a ‘rat rod’, the term used for hot rods that are in a shabby or unfinished state.

The car gets plenty of attention in and around Kelowna. He says it can be pretty chaotic on the street when admirers check things out as he drives by.

“I think people shouldn’t be taking pictures when they’re driving, but they do,” he says with a laugh.

“Obviously we drive these cars because we love them, not because they’re convenient or reliable.”

The pinstriping

Q-ball pays the bills through his art, offering a pinstriping service at car shows or taking his mobile painting kit- featuring 100 year old brushes- to people's homes.

“Pinstriping is the purest form of hot rod art that there ever was. There are still a few people doing it,” he says, crediting other artists like Kelly Norwood and Peter Davenport for helping him hone his craft.

“You also have to be a masochist,” he explains, given the totally manual, paint-by-feel nature of the profession.

“It’s like standing on a beach ball on a mirror, while you’re spinning a plate on a stick, trying to do something on a car with a brush while everybody’s watching you. And you better get it right, man!”

When Q-ball isn’t applying beautiful lines to someone’s vehicle, he’s either at home producing fine art in the Flemish Art School tradition, or hanging out for a couple of days a week doing specialist metal work at Konquer Custom Rods.

Keeping an era alive

For him, it’s an existence that’s all connected to embracing and keeping alive a special era. Thankfully, he says there’s enough interest for that in Kelowna and skilled people who can help.

“I think people want glamour and there’s nothing more glamourous than vehicle designs from the 1950s. They were designed to make you feel like a million bucks. I think if modern automobile manufacturers got that flow back in their design, instead of making everything like a pair of sneakers, then they’d be able to sell modern vehicles - that still had batteries - and people would feel awesome driving them.”

You can check out Q-ball’s work on Instagram