Ten years ago, Laurie Gidosh was selected as a winner on the reality TV show Popstars 2, becoming a member of the show’s synthetic pop group Scene 23. In one memorable episode, the nice-looking but unglamorous Gidosh gushed over sultry, maquillaged video footage of herself that transformed a girl who said “I never thought I was pretty” into an undeniable show biz siren.
If the 1960 Rambler American is Laurie Gidosh — friendly, cute even, but not leading lady material — then the image above is the “before” photo. The Hollywood starlet transformation can be found on pages 74–75 of this month’s Street Rodder.
I don’t think of myself as a huge fan of traditional hot rodding, but it’s amazing how often I find something of interest in Street Rodder magazine. Since I’m not a hardcore member of their target demographic, this speaks admirably of the editors’ content and production values. More often than not, when I decide to impulsively buy something off the magazine rack at the 7-11, it’s a copy of Street Rodder. This morning’s mid-commute coffee stop was one of those times.
I was originally drawn in by articles on vintage Caddy V8s and “The Latest Lo-Tech Carburetion,” but I forgot all about them when I hit a four-page spread featuring two cars built by Ted Lesher of Ted’s Body Shop in Des Moines, Iowa. In addition to an extremely well-crafted but fairly traditional dropped ’49 Plymouth, the other car was a 1960 Rambler American station wagon Ted built for his wife LuAnn. As it happens to be Wagon Wednesday, I thought I’d share it with all you Hoons.
Of course, the gorgeous “golden hour” hero shots in this months’ issue of S-R aren’t posted on their web site but, fortunately, a quick bounce over to tedsbodyshop.com revealed this digital snapshot of the car. The body is pretty much stock, but it has been nicely enhanced with deep black paint, a cool roof rack, solid glass side windows (replacing the kludgy sliding side windows still present in the shot above), and sharp chrome wheels (although I’d personally prefer slightly less modern, higher profile tires on 16s). The stock 195 six still resides under the hood, providing only 125 horses. Even though more grunt would be a nice addition, it doesn’t make the car less pleasing to the eye, and since this is a car intended for routine driving it’s an understandable nod toward practicality.
Go pick up a copy of Street Rodder to see the beauty shots and decide for yourself if this car (and photographer Josh Mishler’s skills behind the lens) could possibly be showcased better.

[Image Source: tedsbodyshop.com]