Tom McWeeney: A Tribute to a True Automotive Visionary

A Tribute to Tom McWeeney, 1970-2023

FROM JASON MULLIGAN

Tom McWeeney was a father, grandfather, husband, son, friend, and pinstriper. To me, he was someone who was always being creative and having fun. Tom was a true artist, and his creativity could be seen in every aspect. He drove his ‘bagged, longbed custom C10 daily to work at a custom art and automotive paint supply store named Coast Airbrush, in Anaheim, California. His style of art went beyond old school hot-rod pinstriping, and his art could be seen all around his garage and house, as well as the houses of his customers and close friends. 

Tom’s garage became an art studio and hangout that also helped encourage another generation of custom car and truck enthusiasts. The “corner of crap” he created his artwork in was a mix of memory lane souvenirs, random cool stuff, and inspiration. You could scan the shelves for hours daily, and still find something odd and new to check out.

He had his colors: orange, ivory and, of course, green to honor his Irish background. Tom’s pinstriping work accents many builds, and a few select custom paintjobs are now memorialized. Every hood or tailgate that his striping brush touched is much more meaningful now.

I have a handful of Tom’s artwork on display and memories of his first full paintjob on my first truck build. I am most thankful for being his friend and fellow Relaxed Atmosphere club member. Over the years, we have collaborated on several trucks and projects together.

Tom also has a long history with Street Trucks magazine. From feature builds, how-to articles, and several cover trucks (he might even hold the record for most personal appearances on the cover)—he did it all.

I think we lost count, but he has been involved with at least 12 cover trucks on the magazine over its 25-year history—with three of them being his own he had built. I know there are some milestones for my time at Street Trucks magazine—my first and last cover truck photoshoots featured Tom and the trucks he helped Marcel Venable create. And of course, my red, flamed OBS truck was featured as part of Street Trucks’ 10-year anniversary.

Tom got his love of cars from his father Terry who put on numerous classic car and lowrider shows when Tom was growing up in the mini-truck era. Tom always had a truck. He’s had a bit of a variety from an early Euro-style Toyota, several ‘bagged S10s, old school Buicks and Cadillacs, a C10, a ’37 hot-rod truck, and a few full-size OBS trucks. And the XXX Sled, a retro inspired unibody S10, featured airbrushed murals of modern-day 1950s pinups (think about it).

One of the first times I hung out with Tom was at the Truck Jam. He had helped judge the event, so his S10 was to the side of the stage. During the award show, Tom’s stereo loudly broadcasted out, let’s just say, videos featuring these modern-day pinups.

Tom was always creating and having fun. Often, he would hide little Easter eggs in his pinstriping work if it was on the truck of someone he knew. He would paint just about anything. From skateboards and custom panels to Christmas ornaments, coolers, and of course, even toilet seats.

Tom was our “plus 1” at many SEMA shows and even provided a “celebrity appearance” or two hanging out and pinstriping at the magazine’s SEMA booth. Since then, he was a staple at the Red Kap booth, striping phones and souvenirs at SEMA.

One of our favorite stories that we would retell over the years included a green candy painted World War II style bomb. It was a large piece of his art worth around $800, which apparently wasn’t enough for the credit card belonging to the guy I sold it to at a show.

Tom got his love of cars from his father Terry, who put on numerous classic car and lowrider shows when Tom was growing up in the mini-truck era.  

The photoshoot for the Street Trucks issue featuring his father’s 1937 Ford truck that Tom built and painted (orange and ivory, of course) was among the most memorable and special for me, and I know it was for Tom and his dad Terry as well.

The shoot with Juan Trevino and Gil Lara’s Chevy trucks by LA photographer Estevan Oriol took place at Bob’s Broiler in Downey, California. We were going for that classic diner cruise-night look at a drive-in where, in 1957, Tom’s father actually attended his first cruise night. This location is where the McWeeney’s familial love of custom cars, trucks and art began. Thankfully, it has continued.

While we have all lost a great friend; his art has remained a lasting memory.

FROM MARCEL VENABLE

What am I “allowed” to tell you about my friend, Tom McWeeney? Well, like his father before him, he embraced the car club culture during Terry’s years as a South Gate police patrolman. He would “stop in” on the likes of Larry Watson, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, and the Barris Bros. Even at a young age, Tom would ride along with his dad and brother Mike to check out what the kustom godfathers were building over on Tweedy Blvd.

By his early 20s Tom was already a standout in the mini-truck scene with his yellow 1989 Toyota on the cover of Mini Truckin’ magazine back in 1994. By then he had joined a local truck club called Synergy Minis. He would soon meet his future wife, Kerry. Eventually, Synergy merged and joined with Relaxed Atmosphere, a club started by MT editor Mike Shartsis. It was at that time, through mutual friends John Llado and Allen Hayes, that I met Tom. It was the early 1990s and we had similar styles and ideas.

After high school, Tom became a teenage father to his son Adam, and that meant he needed a job. After a few quick cash gigs at Wheel Warehouse and Trader’s Truck Center, Tom settled in at Boyd Coddington’s hot-rod shop. There, he lived his dream working all across the shop and billet wheel business.

He would always brag that he was the smallest guy around the shop and the only one who could fit into the show cars when they loaded them into the big rig for shows. He would mention how he got to drive the famous cars like Chezoom, Alumacoupe, and even Cadzilla.

For the 1996 SEMA show, he got a brand-new S10 and laid it out. Tom joined up with Jay La Rossa, at Sport Truck Specialties where Jay and Steve Platt (Steel Flame Hot Wheels S10) ran a small shop out of Long Beach. It was here that his ‘bagged OBS truck, that we called the “Recycler” after it was on the cover of Sport Truck and Street Trucks, before eventually ending up in the scrap yard. Sean Smith drew the rendering that featured green tribal style flames.

Kevin Lee at Sport Truck asked if he would like it to be on the cover with only one hitch—that he had to repaint the green flames. Tom chose a copper color to go with and added a camper shell to it.

Tom’s career and truck building only accelerated from there. He worked at MIC alongside Rob Maggi, Sean Mahaney, Art Gomez, and many others. At that time, his father bought a ’72 C10 to drive daily. Sean Mahaney notched and ‘bagged it, and Eric Jackson laid down the orange tribal flames over the white pearl. Tom’s next iconic truck was the XXX Sled. During the after hours at MIC, they ‘bagged, bodydropped, and unibodied his S10 and it was featured on the cover of Sport Truck magazine.

Tom then began working for me at corporate Line-X, spraying bedliners.

Things went well at first. He was a quick learner and had some car painting time under his belt, which helped him with the learning curve of spraying Line-X. After a few weeks passed, Mike Fillon from Pro Design contacted us about spraying a “color matched” bedliner in his new crew cab C10 project. Tom begged to spray it, as he knew Mike from the truck world. It was supposed to take a few hours for Tom to spray the custom bedliner. A little while later I was called downstairs to look at the “damage” that Tom did to the truck bed. The machine had come off ratio, which creates a nasty, goopy mess that never dries. Tom was in a panic as we watched the material dripping down the sides creating even more of a mess.

I turned to Tom and told him to “get out of the F’n bedliner business!” and stormed off to call Mike and delay him so we could fix it. Tom walked up to me and said, “even if you fire me, I still want to fix what I did.” I was amazed, and from that moment on, I knew that he had my back.

The time at Line-X would take us all over, working with franchisees and even with US defense contracts. That’s right, a bunch of mini-truckers were given access to the inside of the Pentagon after it was attacked on 9-11. I could tell you all about what we did, but I’d have to kill ya.

Tom was a natural—he could lay down the lick designs, and I saw that he enjoyed it. I knew that he was going to get good at it.  

I could see Tom fall in love with painting after he laid out retro-inspired scallops on his XXX Sled S10. After we pulled the masking paper and tape off, it came to both of us, “who’s going to pinstripe this thing?” We looked at one another and it was decided that one of us is going to need to learn how to pinstripe.

Tom was a natural—he could lay down the lick designs, and I saw that he enjoyed it. I knew that he was going to get good at it. It was then that he told me that he really wanted to be an artist who paints cars, and he wanted to call it Kustoms Inc. Both of us knew a few custom painters that needed a spray booth, so I invited some of those guys down to use the booth on their projects. Tom was always there helping and learning the craft as any apprentice would from painters like Steve Deman and Pete Santini, but he became especially close with Dave Monning at Coast Airbrush, where he would get paint supplies and network with other artists.

He would carry his striping box around shows where he would be striping cars and trucks and selling artwork at his booth. He wanted to next work on a full custom paintjob. Luckily, Jason Mulligan, a young guy who hung out at GOEZ Customs, and worked for Tailgate magazine and did design work was looking for a paintjob with a double set of flames on it. Tom had sprayed red Line-X on his truck a few years prior. The truck made its way to my Line-X shop in Huntington Beach, and we were over our heads with the idea for the flames. Tom’s tattoo artist Blake Weaver, who in partnership with Steve Van Demon years earlier, created a similar style of flames to what Jason wanted. Tom sprayed the red basecoat, and Blake laid out and painted the flames.

With that being said, the easy part was complete, and after the masking paper was lifted off, the same question came to light—who was going to stripe this thing? Tom jumped at the task and over the next few hours striped 141 flame licks to perfection, as well as the large art piece on the center of the hood.

Kustoms Inc. was now officially a professional paint studio, and Jason’s truck was featured on the cover of the 10th anniversary of Street Trucks. During a material run over to Coast Airbrush, we got into a conversation with Dave about finding good employees. Tom asked if he was looking for help, and the rest is history after Tom began working the front counter at Coast. He loved working there as he got to meet and collaborate with tons of artists.

We built my Nissan truck called Pepe for Line-X’s SEMA booth back in 2006. His third S10 was another crack at the Retro Inspired square S10 that had been passed around from Courtney Halowell to Jay LaRossa to Tom, when we built the thing from the ground up in 11 days. The “Hot Rod,” as he called it, was another Mini Truckin’ cover truck shared alongside Mike Bach’s retro Toyota. The photos were done at Coast Airbrush, and it was cover number seven for Tom.

Tom’s exposure to the Coast Airbrush world opened up the floodgates for Tom. He began striping panels that soon led to skateboard decks to canvas, hell even tikis. He had a ton of talent walking in and out of the door every day for him to learn from. Having uber talented coworkers like Jenn Hallett, Art by Sig, Ryno, and knowing guys like Tom Kelly, Craig Frazier, Cory Saint Clair, along with influences from Doug Dorr, Wild Bill, Bob Iverson, and Jeff Styles, made it easy to get advice.

In 2013, Tom, with help from his friends, rebuilt his dad’s 1937 Ford pickup with Ryno laying down flames on the fat fenders. That same year, we debuted that truck and my C10 “Foxy Cleopatra” at SEMA together. Tom helped mix up the Foxy gold color and paint to stripe it.

When it was time for Foxy to be shot for the cover of the 15th anniversary issue of Street Trucks my way to thank Tom for all his help was asking him to be the one in the photo. It was something that we did with all the trucks we did together, including my Nissan ST cover and my ’56 ST cover. Tom got the go-ahead to be the cover talent for Foxy’s cover.

Hell, I lost count on covers. I think that makes 11—12 if you count Gil’s truck “Rosie” he worked on.

Since then, Tom has had his hand on tons of custom projects, from his friend Andy’s OBS “Shirley” to Carey Hart’s “Irish Mist” van that he custom painted with Ryno. He even painted a lowrider-style Scion for Toyota/Scion and chef/TV host Eddie Huang.

The car made it to SEMA that year and made the list of “Top 10 Worst Vehicles of SEMA.” I was pissed but Tom thought it was funny. I can remember driving home and him telling me that he had never been in the top 10 of anything, so being recognized was still being recognized.

A few years later, we teamed up again to rebuild and update Terry’s C10 that Tom would eventually be seen driving to work at Coast Airbrush every day. Jason Mulligan and I had formed Auto Revolution and captured the rebuild, as well as our antics on the Peaches & Buttercup Show and Roadside on Amazon Video.

We did some live streams spoofing talk shows with some amazing guests that featured Jessi Combs, Mike Alexander, a full-size Easter bunny and even a marriage proposal.

We dubbed the truck “The Cruise Night Killer,” which Terry enjoyed bragging to his friends about saying, “look what my kid did to my truck!”

Needless to say, we had a good time.

The truck is now his daughter Jenna’s and Grandpa Terry’s favorite.

FROM JUAN TREVINO

I first became familiar with Tom McWeeney back in the late 1980s because he and his club at the time, Synergy, would assist his father Terry McWeeny with his event The Azelea Festival Car Show in the city of South Gate. Tom and his fellow club members would judge the truck classes. Being that I would enter my mini-truck, they would stop by and chat while judging my truck. The show would always attract legends in “kustom kulture” as well as Southern California’s top clubs in all genres of custom automotive styles.

By the early 1990s we both joined Relaxed Atmosphere where our friendship started to grow because we both shared some many of the same interests in paint and pinstriping. Somewhere around the early 2000s is when I first noticed that he started painting and striping cars himself, and it blew us all away how easily it came to him.

In May of 2007, Relaxed Atmosphere hosted its first car show Relaxing in SoCal and Tom immediately stepped up to help paint and “pinstrip” (IYKYK) all of the awards. He also pinstriped cars and trucks at the show under the name Kustoms Inc. We continued to host the show until 2017, and every year Tom without hesitation would volunteer his time and donate several items for the fundraising raffle as well as painting the custom awards. That is the kind of man he was, one to always give so much of himself to help others and not ask for anything in return.

During the pandemic shutdown, we found ourselves without our beloved car shows to attend as well as the fact that we weren’t even meeting up as a club to enjoy time together was bringing us all down. Tom, always being the life of the party and the one who loves to throw a party, decided to host a cruise night completely guerrilla style at an empty mall parking lot, and so was the birth of Relaxing with Kustoms Inc. He set it all up himself and we just came along to help and motivate others to come out and enjoy ourselves again. He would custom paint and stripe all the awards with the help of Panel Jammers making him the custom panels. The show helped spawn off other events but primarily focused on cruising and enjoying ourselves while the world was on lockdown.

His cruise night helped bring us all together during that time. In the 30-plus years I knew Tom, I can’t say there was a dull moment when we were all hanging out—even when he sweet talked us into attending “sanding” parties at his house so he could apply his skills to a member’s ride. We were all so blessed to have him in our club because he made us all look our best. He also was the one member we all looked up to and respected.

The last event we all got to participate with Tom in was the Grand National Truck show in Pomona, California. He had wanted to sit it out because he felt his truck needed a refresh, but he got a personal invite from the promoter to have his truck inside the main building, and he was so proud and happy that he accepted the invite.

It’s a memory none of us will ever forget as we lost him a week later.