Bill Cushenbery was one of the top car customizers in the world in the early 1960’s. Originally from Wichita, Kansas, he moved to Monterey, California and built iconic cars that revolutionized the custom show car world. His “Matador” put him on the map in 1961, followed by the “Marquis,” and the “Limelighter” among others. All these cars were restyled from existing bodies - Fords or Buicks mostly. 

But Bill’s greatest reputation was for designing and “scratch building” totally original bodies. His first, radical, one-of-a-kind vehicle, built on a shortened Buick chassis with a Ford 427 engine was called the “Silhouette,” the greatest show car of the era. Bill entered it in the 1963 Oakland Roadster Show Tournament of Fame, competing with the top customizers in the business, and the Silhouette took first place. Bill’s career took off from there.

Bill was one of the team of builders of the “Dream Rod” and was invited to join the Ford Custom Caravan along with
​George Barris and Gene Winfield. 

At his Monterey, California shop in 1963, Bill started building his next show car, which at first he called the “Scorpion,” with a scratch-built aluminum body and bubble top. 

He changed the name to the “Silhouette II Space Coupe” and took this work in progress to his new shop in North Hollywood, California, right around the corner from his friend, and competitor, George Barris. Toward the end of 1964, Bill had a dispute with his financiers and took elements of the car with him and moved to a new shop, thinking he would get the rest of the car back to finish once the dispute was settled. Instead, the car mysteriously went missing. It surfaced a couple of times in other shops in the 70’s, and then vanished completely until 1999. Bill died in 1998, never having seen his long lost masterpiece again.

In late April, 1999, Carl Green, another car customizer from Kansas who had moved to California to make his name in the show car business, found the much abused “Mystery Car,” as the Silhouette II had come to be known. It was discarded among tall weeds on a property in El Cajon, California, and the owner was preparing to have it hauled off and crushed.

Carl cleaned and patched up the car and put it on display at Darryl Starbird’s Rod and Custom Hall of Fame Museum in Oklahoma, but he was unable to raise enough funds to restore the car, and so it languished for another 8 years until he moved it back to Southern California in 2007.

In 2008, Barry Gremillion, an old friend of Carl’s, stepped in to finance the restoration and began making a documentary about it called “The Cushenbery Project.”

A renowned aluminum body man from New Zealand, Willie Newman, worked for a few months and made great progress on the body and chassis while Jeff Williams at California Corvairs re-built and chromed the engine and drive train.
In December 2008, the project took what was supposed to be a 2 week break so Carl could return to Kansas and Willie to New Zealand for holidays with family. The project was on target for completion by Spring 2009. Unfortunately, Carl and Willie never returned and a series of events unfolded that delayed the project for another 7 years. The car remained with Carl’s nephew, Rodger Green, in storage in Nebraska until Carl passed away in late 2015.

In June 2016, the Silhouette II Space Coupe returned to Southern California, where Barry Gremillion is overseeing the final restoration process. 

Slideshow of some magazine articles about Bill Cushenbery's career and the Silhouette II Space Coupe