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The maestro at work. Tommy lays down the beltline on Dean Moon’s bittersweet orange ’34 Ford coupe at the 1955 Oakland Roadster Show. Tommy was a mainstay performer at the Oakland event. In the ’50s and ’60s he painted and ’striped several AMBR-winning cars. He was inducted into the Oakland show’s Hall of Fame in 1964.
Photography by THE AUTHORCourtesy of the Greg Sharp Collection, the Tyler Hoare Collection & the Bob de Bisschop Collection
ometime in the mid ’60s, Tommy Hrones took a call at his Oakland, California, paint shop. By then he was celebrated in motoring circles as “Tommy The Greek” and his palette of subtle and scintillating scallops, slick lines, and teardrop signatures were defining accents on hundreds of show cars, customs, street and strip hot rods.
The caller said he was with GM Design, and they wanted Tommy to come to Detroit and discuss accents and styling.
The prankster kicked in: “Who’s calling?” “What?” “Where are you calling from?” “Hold on.” “Who’s this?”
“GM in Detroit. Detroit, Michigan.‘’
“Detroit. Does it snow there?”
“Yes, it does.”
“I ain’t goin’.”
At times impish and impulsive, he was a deft performer who took his art in stride, living his 88-year life pretty much the way he chose.
“He knew who he was. He didn’t care about the press,” Tyler Hoare, Berkeley, California, artist/sculptor and custom car enthusiast who met Tommy in 1975 and actively brought him the recognition he deserved both during and after his painting career ended in 1993, says. He took Tommy to West Coast Kustoms gatherings in Paso Robles, California, and helped stage an annual luncheon gathering of Tommy’s best friends at the now-closed Pier 29 Restaurant on the Oakland Estuary.
“He’s the guy,” the late Cory Greenwood noted, another leading Bay Area accent artist who studied and admired Tommy’s work. “He’s been overlooked because of Von Dutch and the Southern California scene.”
But according to Hoare, Tommy was not competitive or jealous. “He knew his place amongst other artists like Von Dutch. He was close with Ed Roth.” He and the irascible Von Dutch (Kenneth Howard) once went on a curbside ’striping spree before one Oakland Roadster Show (now known as the Grand National Roadster Show).
By his own estimate and beginning in 1926 when he went to work in his uncle’s autobody shop in Oakland, Tommy had painted and ’striped 10,000 cars. “And in the ’30s and ’40s sometimes just a buck a car,” he added. He did race cars, five white fire engines headed for wartime Britain, airplanes, boats (including Stanley Dollar’s Skip-A-Long hydroplane), kitchens, motorcycles, helmets, commercial trucks, and several Oakland Roadster Show America’s Most Beautiful Roadster (AMBR) winners.
His apprenticeship was in the pit–literally. “We had no lifts, so we’d work all day under the car in the grease pit. It was hot and dirty in summer, cold and dirty in the winter. I started pulling and scraping wooden wheels. We’d varnish them and rub them out with pumice stone. We’d wax and polish car bodies after rubbing them out with gunny sacks.
In those days you had to do everything. My uncle wasn’t good at ’striping. He’d shake that line. I started ’striping then.”
The eldest of eight, Tommy was born in December 1913, in Oakland’s Emeryville district. His father, Theodore, had come from Greece to help rebuild San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire and later became a carpenter at the Santa Fe rail yards in nearby Richmond.
Tommy’s life and work would be inexorably tied to Oakland and the East Bay. Terminus of the Southern Pacific railway by the 1870s, Oakland became a powerhouse center of manufacturing, trade, and shipping. By 1930, the Oakland Chamber of Commerce tagged the city as “Detroit of the West.” Durant began Chevrolet operations in 1916, Ford assembly in Richmond in the 1920s. Dodge cars, Fageol buses, Peterbilt, Atlas Imperial Diesel Engines, White Motor Steam Car, and Hall-Scott motors were all part of a booming regional industry.
There was plenty of work in the motor trades. Oakland’s hot rod and custom car culture flourished as the GIs came home. From the Hubbard Cams shop on Grove Street out to Hayward’s Vic Hubbard Speed and Marine (no relations) there were dozens of speed equipment suppliers. Oakland had been a center of competitive motor racing (open Sprint Cars, Roaring Roadsters, and BCRA hardtops) at circuits like Oakland Speedway and Oakland Stadium. The spotlight ramped up with incandescence in an almost-afterthought showing of contemporary hot rods and customs in the first Oakland Roadster Show, a sidebar display at the January 1950 Imported Car Show at Oakland’s Exhibition Center. Promoters Al and Mary Slonaker knew then that there really was a “There” in Oakland.
Tommy was There. His sleek, black ’36 Ford phaeton was a showstopper—no running boards, no handles, seamless fenders, Duvall windshield. During the war years, Tommy built another landmark car: a ’40 Merc convertible featuring a chopped Carson top, sunken taillights, recessed rear plate, Appleton spots, and moon disc spinners. Painter and custom stylist Joe Bailon, with whom Tommy would have a long and productive relationship, said “I was totally wiped out. That was the greatest car I’d ever seen!”
Tommy became a featured star at Oakland. In 1958, as Romeo Palamides tore down and rebuilt Ken Fuhrman’s A roadster, Tommy did the body ’striping and hood louvres. There was the brush, the car, and the lacquer—all props in the Tommy show.
And it was always quite a show.
Herb “The Line Doctor” Martinez of Livermore, California, remembers the theatrical flourish in Tommy’s studios. “If it wasn’t for Tommy allowing me to hang around his shop (originally at 55th and Foothill in Oakland) I’d never have continued my career. He was the master—and fast. Wham bam! He’d open a can of Veco lacquer with an ice pick, fire the pick into the wall—ping!—set up like a rocket, and ’stripe the car with the straightest lines I’d ever seen, all the while baiting and needling the customer.”
Next issue we’ll look at Tommy’s enduring work on landmark customs, his penchant for golf, big Caddy sedans and fast motorcycles, his theatrical timing, and hot rod and custom car buddies.
Herbie “The Line Doctor” Martinez of Livermore, CA, remembers as a kid watching Tommy at work in his original Oakland shop. With Tommy’s encouragement he picked up the brush himself. This metal template from the Martinez archives bears Tommy’s iconic motifs and symbols.
Tommy’s Merc, front profile, taken in San Francisco (Life With Father film billboard indicates 1947). Early speed equipment on the Merc’s Flathead included McCollough blower and Federal-Mogul high-compression heads.
Sailor Tommy with his customized ’40 Merc convertible in San Francisco, circa 1946-47. Black and sleek, chopped Carson top, Appleton spots, seamless fenders, recessed plate chamber, and rear taillights, this car made a stunning impression on a young and aspiring custom car builder, one Joe Bailon.
Tommy did ’em all: pedal car fire engines, big white fire engines headed to Britain during the war, motorcycles, boats, and airplanes. Just one proviso: “We’ll do it Tommy’s way.”
In the late ’40s, Tommy created this elegant dark green custom ’41 Caddy convertible for San Francisco society restauranteurs and show producers, Al and Katharine Williams, owners of the Papagayo Room in the Fairmont Hotel. Note the Duvall windscreen and separate passenger seating. Tommy no doubt learned bodywork at his uncle’s garage in Oakland.
This stylishly customized ’36 Ford phaeton was entered by “Tommy The Greek” in the first Oakland Roadster Show, January 1950, at the city’s Exhibition Hall. Tommy’s sensitivity to styling included seamless fenders, Duvall windscreen, removed door handles, and a low, dark silhouette.
From the rare monograph, “Cruizin’ in a Dream Decade/The ’50s,” art and words by Craig Clemens, son of an Oakland body and paint shop owners. “My first car was a ’36 Ford phaeton bought in 1953 for $350. Customized in about 1949 with a ’47 Ford driveline, chrome dash, ’40 Olds spade bumpers, white and blue tuck ’n’ roll, and painted Washington blue with ‘Tommy the Greek’ stripes in white and light blue.”
Applying the final accent line on Ken Fuhrman’s A-V8, which was a display buildout in the Romeo Palamides Automotive booth. Oakland Roadster Show, 1958.
A study in concentration and perfection. Tommy precisely accents each louvre on the hood of Dean Moon’s ’34 Ford coupe. Oakland Roadster Show, 1955.
Scallops and ’stripes begin to take shape on Joe Castro’s radically redone ’55 T-bird “Candy Bird,” 1958, one of Tommy’s earliest collaborations with builder Joe Bailon.
Sculptor and custom car enthusiast Tyler Hoare met Tommy in the mid ’70s and later made sure he attended the West Coast Kustoms events in Paso Robles, where, in 1998, Tommy was inducted into the event’s Hall of Fame. Hoare also helped stage the annual Tommy The Greek lunch at now-gone Pier 29 on the Oakland Estuary. Hoare, of Berkeley, is celebrated for his Snoopy/Red Baron sculptures in the tidal flats of East Bay shoreline, among other public artworks.
Tommy added light accent lines to Andy’s Instant T in the ’70s.
Tommy’s flame and motion scallops enhanced Don Ricci’s A pickup in the first Oakland Roadster Show, January 1950. The car placed Third in Originality, Street Division.
Accentuating motion and body symmetry, Tommy’s spiked flame scallops imitated speed on Hubbard Racing Cams’ fuel dragster at Vaca Valley Raceway, 1958, with Dick Hubbard driving. The DeSoto-powered slingshot was built by Jack Friedland. The car had style and balance but did not perform to class standards.
Palamides’ “Untouchable” jet dragster gave Tommy a huge canvas to apply his brilliant embellishments. The car is shown at starting apron area Fremont Dragstrip, 1966. The driver is Oakland’s Lon Gredetti, one of Palamides’ daredevil pilots who also raced speedboats.
Lee Chappel’s Tornado streamliner at Mojave, spring 1951. At one time Tommy’s shops were close to the Chappel works on East 14th Street. There is no direct evidence that The Greek did Chappel’s streamliner, but accent details reflect his work on other race cars and hot rods in the same time period.
Since the first Oakland Roadster Show, Tommy was close to the Hubbard racing family in Oakland. Here his work graces the nose and body of the Hubbard B/Comp flathead-powered Crosley at Bonneville, 1952. Running a de-stroked motor, the car set B/Comp sedan record at 131.96 and took a second in C/Comp with a 296-inch engine. Those identified include a young Romeo Palamides (’striped shirt) and driver Richard Hubbard (rear of car).
A similar treatment on one of Romeo Palamides’ showy dragsters from the late ’50s/early ’60s.
Jim McLennan’s celebrated ’34 Ford pickup, a Champion Speed Shop workhorse, received a subtle, lowkey Tommy The Greek treatment in the ’50s. Note The Greek’s “J/M” flash signature on the truck’s spare tire wheel cover, left front fenderwell.
The Edelbrock-Bosio-Ladley-Edelbrock roadster. In 1956, the black ’32 bearing Tommy’s simple ’striping, won the AMBR title at the Oakland Roadster Show. Then-owner Eddie Bosio, San Francisco, is at the wheel and is joined by his sidekick, premier San Francisco engine builder Charlie Tabucchi. Bosio bought the roadster in the early ’50s from speed parts wizard Vic Edelbrock Sr. and transformed the spare and fast dry lakes racer into this street cruiser.
Fast-forward almost 40 years and the car was the centerpiece in a rare gathering of Northern California rodding figures, all now gone. They include Tommy Hrones (at the wheel); then-owner Jim Ladley, Sonoma; in the passenger seat and standing (left to right) Jack Friedland, Oakland; Jim McLennan, San Francisco; Ed Hegarty, Richmond; and Ed Binggeli (Bing’s Speed Shop), Windsor, CA. Ladley sold the car back to the Edelbrock family soon after this 1995 photo and the roadster was consigned to the Roy Brizio Street Rods in South San Francisco where it was restored to its ’40s and ’50s lakes racer trim.
Frank Rose’s ’27 T bore one of Tommy’s more flamboyant scallop treatments when it won the 1954 America’s Most Beautiful Roadster award at Oakland. Shown here that year at Oakland’s Lake Merritt, the car featured a tubular frame and fender and hood metalwork by master shaper Jack Hageman Sr., a longtime Tommy The Greek collaborator.
Oakland’s Frank Rose with his AMBR-winning ’27 T roadster in 1954, posed alongside Dick Kraft’s T roadster before the Oakland Roadster Show opening that year. Kraft, of course, made American hot-rodding history running his spare and dreadfully exposed “Bug” dragster at the first Santa Ana drags in 1950.