Some guys have their hearts set on a particular make or model of car they want to customize. Others are less picky-they're just looking for a vehicle with the right elements to mold into their vision of the ultimate personalized cruiser.

For Frank Hinmon, building this '57 Imperial was as much a matter of happenstance and a yearning for certain design attributes as it was about crafting a late-'50s Chrysler product. "I wanted a car with big fins," Frank says simply, "and this car has fins for days."

The Bakersfield, California, go-cart track owner stumbled across the big Crown coupe on the Internet, and wasted no time traveling several hundred miles to procure it. "The car barely fit into my trailer-only about an inch of clearance on each side, and it was all the winch could handle," Frank reports. "The car had sat in the Arizona desert for years and was full of spiders and rat droppings." Still, the rust was minimal and everything was there, making the car a great ground-up project candidate.