Thursday, September 24, 2015

The story behind the cover, how Gil Ayala got on the cover by hard work, instead of constantly working to get on the cover like, well, rhymes with Barris


One of the best and perhaps most beautiful Ayala covers was taken by Felix Zelenka for the October 1951 issue of Motor Trend. The original photo must have been taken quite some time before it ended up being used for the cover. Odd is that Al Ayala can be seen working on the unfinished 1940 Mercury on this cover photo from October 1951, while the finished car was already on the cover of the November 1950 issue of Motor Trend!


In Pat Ganahl’s Ayala articles in TRJ he showed that Felix originally shot a color transparency of this Ayala shop scene. But it was decided that the cars needed a bit more color and light for the magazine cover, so a colorized version was made by Don Fell. In this colorized version some of the cars received different colors than original so that they would look better, more attractive on the cover of the magazine.


This November 1950 Motor Trend cover with the Gil Ayala 1940 Mercury on the cover is a rather rare magazine. As can be seen on the cover, on the top right it reads “Edition C”. As far as I have found out, the Mercury was used on the cover of the magazine distributed to California only. The Rest of the US/World had a cover with a Henry J on it, as can be seen in the inset. The cover and the description about the cover photo on page 5 is the only thing different on the inside of these magazines. So if you ever come across one with Gil’s Mercury on it you better get it.


Here is another Gil Ayala cover, it's a damn good photo composition

Found on http://www.customcarchronicle.com/custom-cars/ayala-covers/

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