Ashlee Botelho is 25 years old and hails from the East Bay Area of Northern California. She recently furnished a preview from her photo set alongside Rico Novachick’s wild ’50 Chevy kustom.

Seeing gorgeous traditional kustoms like Rico’s is what inspires us when we spend nights dreaming about the progress of Project Tiger’s Eye.

While there are many build styles that encompass this side of the automotive realm, one thing remains–whether you’re passion is to restore, heavily modify through make and model swaps, or to hot rod your pre-60s vehicle with performance upgrades–the spirit of the golden era of American automobile production is a force to be reckoned with.

Kustoms, in my eye, represent not a bastardizing or attempt to disparage the beauty of an old car–when done with quality in mind, a kustom showcases the ingenuity that both concept designers, who originally designed the cars, and kustomizers, who found a way to puzzle the different makes into a harmonious one-off piece, truly had.

Rico’s ’50 aka Kandy Passion features a slew of modifications that create one pristine form: A ’49 Mercury front grille, Packard taillights, air suspension, and a 350ci out of a Corvette are just a couple elements that push the boundary when it comes to shapeshifting the car’s factory appearance.

The back window has been flipped, the hood chopped, and the quarter panels have been elongated. Frank DeRosa Sr. was responsible for morphing the body into something truly mystical. The gorgeous paint is a candy apple red with randy wine laid by Art Himsl and Bill Reasoner.

This photo set was shot in July 2014. According to Ashlee, “Rico Novachick built this car a year ago after his wife passed away from cancer and she loved the color candy apple red.” These images were taken by Photographer Paolo Diavolo and Rod Authority is honored to have been given a preview of the set.