Custom Car Magazine by Geoff Carter

The world is full of peaks and valleys, some big ones, some little ones, and some recognized only by their residents. Today, however, thanks to musical missionary Moon Unit Zappa, one place is known to the world as “The Valley.” 

It wasn’t the Valley Girl, denizen of the shopping mall, who put southern California’s San Fernando Valley on the map, though. We who wasted our youth and lunch money on pocket-sized hot rod and custom car magazines knew where “the valley” was years ago. It was the home of Valley Customs!

The Valley Custom shop was the famous partnership of Neil Emory and Clayton Jensen. Although in operation only through the years of 1948-1960, its reputation for quality and style was known far and wide.

Custom Car Magazine by Geoff Carter

CC- Didn’t you build Norm Grabowski’s “Kookie” car?

 
Emory- He had decided to build this little T-bucket to look like an early modified. He’d chopped everything up, and had taken the engine out of his dad’s ’51 Cad and set it up in those T rails, it hung out all over the place. It was all set up the way he was going to run it. He had set the steering wheel position up’ and his gear shift. He wanted us to do the finish work, make up grille and fill in the radiator cap hole in the shell.