A BMW Isetta With a Meter - Interview

Who: Chuck Miller, 66, custom-car guru
What: Isetta taxicab
Where: New Boston, Michigan

This is not the first of your cars to appear in Car and Driver, right?
Right. I built the Corvette Sportwagon that was on the cover in July 1972.

That design was by Harry Bradley?
That’s right. I built the prototype and then built six more of them. I still have one in my shop.

How long have you been building custom cars?
My first custom—my first car—was a 1950 Ford coupe that I bought for $35. I was 16 and still in high school [Lincoln Park, Michigan]. When it was finished,Rodding and Restyling magazine did a feature on it. May of 1961.

When did you open your own shop?
Actually, I worked at my shop through high school, before it was my shop. It was Dick’s Collision then. In 1963, the owner wanted to retire, so I took it over, renamed it Styline Customs, and operated there for 36 years. I sold out in 1999. The shop’s still there and still operating in River Rouge. I’m semiretired, but I still do little projects like this, and I work with the Autorama show people in Detroit.