I am sad to report the passing of my big brother, Richard Park, for those who are old enough to remember, Richard along with Geoff Jago was one of the early pioneers of customising and hot rodding in the UK. Richard started his car accessory business, Custom City, in the late 1960s and joined Geoff Jago to form the Rodding Scene in Chichester, West Sussex. Geoff of course designed and built Model 'T's, then the Jago Jeep (Geep) and various other kit cars.
Richard developed into an excellent custom car and chopper bike painter in those days when Metalflake and Candy Apple were king and his work was often featured in Custom Car magazine. For a short time in the 1970's Richard produced the Baja beach buggy (I seem to remember an awesome one with a Corvair engine?) and Geoff was manufacturing chassis for Panther cars. My own little contribution was buying the Trobike minibike business, the remains of which still litter Richard's garage! With their expertise in fibreglass moulding and painting, the Rodding Scene also branched out into building bodywork for racing cars inc. Brabham F.1. All-in-all the Rodding Scene was a little corner of the British motoring industry in the 1970's. During his lifetime, Richard owned many classic American cars but his particular favourites were Studebakers.
I was fortunate enough to hang round the Rodding Scene in the early 1970's and I have very fond memories of Geoff, Bootlace, Kris 'Pop' Brown, Pete Sturman, Michael 'Fred' Rutherford, No 10, Peter 'Beard' Benson and all the other great hot rod characters there. And yes I was also fortunate enough to be a Jago guinea pig with the infamous 'T' with a Reliant 850 engine (surely worthy of the Guiness Book of Records as the least powerful rod ever built!) and the first Jago Jeep which I ran for many years.
After The Rodding Scene, Richard returned to our country of birth, Sri Lanka, bringing back many classic British motorcycles, pedal cars, tin toy cars etc. Latterly Richard was to be found in a small antique emporium in Chichester where he specialised in motoring memorabilia and he was often seen touting his wares at the Goodwood festival of Speed & Revival etc. He worked in his shop until the very end.
Richard leaves his wife, Lyn, and son Sam.
The funeral is scheduled for the 8th June in Chichester - if anyone is interested in coming along I can let you have details later. Also if anyone has any old photos of Richard/Richard's work or any old magazine articles, I would be very grateful for copies.
Richard Park 02/03/1944 - 16/05/2016