The Barrister, which Barris referred to as a 1930s-style modern sports car, began its life as a 1979 Corvette. After Barris lengthened the frame, he added a long hood, radiator shell, faux side-exhaust pipes, v-windscreen, and fastback humps behind the driver and passenger headrests. The interior features bucket seats, wood trim, and under the hood is a Chevy 350 V-8 engine matched to an automatic transmission.
It wasn't always so easy to stand out, even for the mega-wealthy, especially postwar. There wasn't much individuality available in the marketplace, so celebs that didn't want the typical Mercedes or Rolls-Royce often turned to the aftermarket for solutions. Customizer and movie-car builder extraordinaire George Barris played muse to these societal elite, catering to their whims with outrageous and over-the-top designs.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Barris built a series of neoclassical drop-tops he christened "Barristers" for this attention-hungry customer base. Starting with the then new C3 Corvette, Barris stripped off all semblance of the Chevy, going so far as to lengthen the frame. Barris wrapped the Vette bones in a design that was a strange mishmash of eras, incorporating a long hood, a split front windscreen, a golden radiator shell, a tapered tail, and fake external header and exhaust pipes. The result was something that looks quite similar to the contemporary Stutz Bearcat II, another two-door neoclassic. The Barrister attracted its fair share of celebrity attention, with James Caan, Bo Derek, and Sammy Davis Jr. among them. Liberace, the king of excess, ordered a black and gold example.
"George Barris is among the best-known customizers of all time and just about anything he built is collectible", says Hagerty valuation editor Andrew Newton.
George Barris and Frank Monteleone had a long history of collaborations and friendship starting in the late 1940's in California until George's death in 2015. Frank died in 2021.
