I'd consider myself an "in-betweener". I would likely never be able to completely custom-build a car from random parts, but I do have good fabrication skills. I learned much of what I can do from my years of building custom-modded computers, long before you could buy pre-modded cases and just add colored parts & lights inside.
I guess I would say I'm not satisfied to just restore an Optima to "box art" or any other kind of copycat model. I don't want my cars to be faithful representations of a stock car or anybody else's car. I want them to have some unique features that other people haven't done, so I can answer those "Where did you get that part?" and "How did you make that?" kind of questions.
For one example, I recently fabbed a cool antenna tube mount for my Optima because the stock method of mounting the tube looks hokey to me. I bought some alloy antenna mounts (gold for one Optima, blue for Project CYANide) and figured out a way to mount them. It's just a small detail but it catches the eye and looks a bit different.
