If you had to guess the time and place for the grand re-emergence of the storied Golden Sahara II, you’d probably choose a traditional American rod custom show. Detroit Autorama, maybe, or the Grand National Roadster Show. Maybe even SEMA.

For our part, we were betting on Autorama. Sneak-peek shots of the George Barris-designed, 1953 Lincoln Capri-based radical custom -- formerly owned by the late Jim “Street” Skonzakes, and purchased at auction last year by Chicago-area collector Larry Klairmont -- loaded onto a car-hauler, sporting a sparkling new coat of paint, only seemed to reinforce the notion.

And then it turned up in Switzerland, on display at the Geneva motor show alongside the Bugattis and the Pininfarinas and Koenigseggs.

Though it’s a high-dollar show car through and through, the Golden Sahara II is hardly your typical Geneva fare. Conceived as a futuristic dream machine, the Golden Sahara drew crowds on the custom car circuit; it eventually evolved into the Golden Sahara II, which incorporated high-tech features like automatic brake assist, aircraft-like controls and a television in the dash. Eventually, however, its looks started to fade, and Street tucked it away -- for half a century.

The car made a splash when it emerged from hiding and headed to the 2018 Mecum Indianapolis auction last May, where it sold for $350,000. Then, radio silence. Would it be preserved or restored? Would it be back on display or tucked away for another five decades?

Now we know -- and its overseas debut is yet another example of how, even after all of these years, the Golden Sahara still manages to surprise.

With the lights dimmed, the glowing tires really pop. Goodyear

Following last year’s sale, the task of bringing the Golden Sahara II back to life ultimately fell to Chicago’s Speakeasy Customs. Speakeasy's Gregory Alonzo is there in Geneva with the car; our Mark Vaughn is on the show floor and caught up with Alonzo to ask him about the car (the Golden Sahara II is on display in the Goodyear booth, right across from a Level 4 autonomous shuttle sporting airless tires), find out how this bit of American custom car culture ended up with Switzerland -- and learn what it took to get it there.

“It’s kind of a long story, but (Street) used to tour the car,” Alonzo says. “Eventually it started to deteriorate to the point where it started to embarrass him. So he put it away, and he wouldn’t let anybody see it for almost 50 years.

“When he passed (in 2017), his family pulled it out of storage. Klairmont Kollections -- Larry Klairmont -- purchased the vehicle and was going back and forth. Was he going to preserve it, was he going to restore it, what was he going to do with it. I was working with him at the time, trying to develop a relationship (with him and the collection). I’m not sure if he was toying with me or testing me, but the first task he gave me was to try to get the tires duplicated. The glowing tires ... the glass tires.”

Along with all of its whizbang electronics, one of the Golden Sahara II’s signature features was its translucent, light-up golden (naturally) Goodyear tires. “Gold Glass Slippers,” Street -- ever the showman -- dubbed them.

“I knew it was a long shot, but after a couple of months of lots and lots of phone calls, lots of dead-ends, lots of research, I ended up speaking to someone named Keith Buckley in Akron, Ohio, at Goodyear Tires. He knew about the car’s history, we talked about it, and in the end, he told me that Goodyear’s not going to want to get involved in this -- it’d be too costly to reproduce (the tires). But let me talk to some people, let’s throw something at the wall and see what sticks. He did that, and it stuck,” Alonzo says.

“And basically, once I let Larry Klairmont know that they were going find a way to duplicate the tires for him, he went ahead and awarded me the entire restoration.”

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

That was, of course, no small task. One look at the car as it rolled across the auction block, its shimmering pearlescent paint faded (ironically) to a curious gold color, made it clear: The Golden Sahara II was going to need a hell of a lot of work to get it show-ready once again.

“The funny thing about it is, and a lot of people don’t know this story, is they used ground-up fish scales in the paint to achieve the pearl color they were looking for, like a rainbow pearl,” Alonzo says. “That’s why we believe the car turned this color because over 50 years, those fish scales decomposed, and it turned it this brown color. A lot of people think it was painted gold, but it’s not -- it’s actually a funny twist to the story, how it turned gold after time. I took a piece of sandpaper and I scuffed it and it turned white immediately. That’s how we were able to determine that nobody had painted the car; it was just the deterioration of the original pearl, which had organic material in it.

“We went ahead and we duplicated the pearl color, the white, as closely as we could. We have an inside source that knew Jim Street, and he tells us that Jim Street would have been very proud of the color because he felt that the original was a little too cold, a little too blue. When we did it, we added a little gold pearl and a little blue pearl, and we were able to achieve a much warmer color.”

But what about those showstopper tires?

“The tires are made of Neothane,” Alonzo explains, Neothane being Goodyear’s name for urethane. “You probably remember old skateboard wheels, the big chunky skateboard wheels or roller skate wheels? That’s the same material.

“These tires are solid; the original ones were hollow and were able to fill with air. There are actually light strips built into the rim, and the polyurethane is poured over them -- they weigh about 150 pounds apiece; I think there’s nine gallons of urethane in each tire. The thing is, as they are now, they’re not really drivable,” Alonzo says.

The car can be driven at slow speeds into a show hall, for example, but it’s usually pushed around on rollers in order to keep the treads squeaky clean. The LEDs embedded in the tires can be programmed to shine in any color, though gold is the default for obvious reasons. The extent of the car's interior restorations and the functionality of its exotic-for-the-1960s technology remains unclear at the time of writing.

If those light-up tires were the key to Alonzo’s involvement with the project, they also imposed a hard deadline for the resto: Goodyear needed the Golden Sahara II to be ready for Geneva in order to incorporate it into its “120 Years of Innovation” display. “We only had a little over three months to restore the car, because of the fact that it needed to be there,” he says. “The last three weeks we were working from 7:00 a.m. to 4:30 a.m., taking a three-hour break, coming back at 7:30, working till midnight -- by far, this is the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life.”

To complete the restored Golden Sahara II, Goodyear produced a new set of its light-up Neothene tires, with one catch: Because they're solid, they're super heavy -- which means the car can only be driven at slow speeds in a controlled environment.

As impressive a feat as the restoration effort was, the decision to pull back the covers on the car on the Continent was bound to ruffle a few feathers back here in America.

Here, the Custom Car Chronicle’s Rik Hoving offers some perspective. “In my opinion, it makes perfect sense if you know all the facts. When I heard the GS would debut in Geneva a few months ago, my first response was WOW, Jim Street would have so totally loved that,” he tells us via online message. “After having had the GS on the show circuit in the US for over a decade, and innovating the GS during that period, he would be really excited to see his GS be part of the Goodyear Tire Corporation’s special 120 Years of Innovation display. It would just fit with the way Jim thought about the Golden Sahara, and how he always enjoyed experimental cars from Europe.”

Plus, he notes, “Without the involvement of Goodyear, we might not have even seen a restored GS at all.”

“I feel very sorry for those people that traveled from far to see the Golden Sahara at the Detroit Autorama after the false news report, that it would debut at that show, was shared all over the internet,” Hoving says. “Many people asked me where it would debut -- which I knew, but could not say -- but I was able to rule out all suggestions that were made, including Detroit.” Rest assured the car will make the circuit in America in the coming years (though Hoving is lobbying to have in on display in his home country of the Netherlands for a while).

In any case, you can’t deny the importance of this moment. “To me personally it is one of the major stories in Custom Car history in the last couple of years,” Hoving says. “Everybody has been waiting for this moment the ‘magical’ Golden Sahara would be revealed to the public, and then later the anticipation of it seeing all restored to its former glory. I know for sure Jim Street would enjoy every second of this event. And he would be so totally impressed with what the social media can do… and to see how huge crowds of people still enjoy his Golden Sahara after so many years.”

Mark Vaughn contributed to this report

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io