Melvin Murry remembers quite vividly the days he spent at the track, as his father drag raced when he was younger. It was his father who helped him develop his love of all things automotive and sparked his interested in customizing cars. “My father took me to car shows and got me interested in all types of cars—especially muscle cars—then we’d wrench on things since he was also a mechanic,” he remembers.

At first, working on cars was strictly a hobby. Murry’s day job was as a union plumber, and he’d customize cars on his free time out of a two-stall garage he rented from someone in a commercial area when he was 23 years old. It wasn’t until he was 35 that he quit his plumber job to work on customizing full time. “At first, it wasn’t even a business since I had a full-time day job,” he says. Now 38, he is proud to see his shop doing well in the small community of Peoria, Illinois, about an hour-and-a-half away from Chicago.

When Murry started out, he was doing basic things like two-tone paint jobs (which he is now famous for), vinyl graphics and simple customizations. While his dad taught him the mechanical aspects of car building, he learned about custom car painting from two different people, one being the former owner of the shop that he currently has now. “Louie Huffman owned the shop before me. I used to work for him a bit, and he showed me the ropes in terms of painting cars and making them truly unique,” he explains.

While Murry’s Custom Autobody might not be located in a thriving metropolis, his notable paint jobs and custom work on muscle cars have preceded him. He currently gets tons of cars from out of the area. “We can either go pick it up or the client usually has it shipped to us,” he says. Right now, Murry is working on a ’57 Nomad and a ’68 Camaro. He’ll be showing a customer’s ’72 Cutlass convertible at the Chicago DUB Show Tour stop in August, too. “We do work on a lot of showcars,” he explains. “Our paint jobs are so unique and eye catching that people know they’ll take home something after bringing their car to our shop.”

Murry’s detailed and custom paint jobs are so impressive, that it makes up a huge percentage of his yearly business. He likes to credit the type of paint he uses and his impeccable technique to explain why his paint jobs are so famous. He uses candy color paint, which is a brightly colored, typically high-gloss, automobile paint that provides a lot of shine and makes the car look like a “Jolly Rancher” candy, according to Murry.

But, besides his renowned paint jobs, the shop can do it all. “We specialize in muscle cars, but we do other types as well like Chrysler 300s,” Murry says. Hoping to expand the type of vehicles they wrench on someday, his shop still sees business flowing in regularly…and he’s not complaining because he’s appreciative for even the smallest requests from his customers, especially in such harsh economic times the country is facing.

When he first started working on the shop full time, he was the only employee. Now, he has four. On a monthly basis, the shop does about three full customizations—which includes a full customization paint job, wheel and tires package, suspension, some restoration if needed and, maybe, some stereo work. “Besides being a customization shop, we’re also a collision center, and we get more than 20 of those a month,” he explains. “Right now, there is a one-month waiting list to get a car fully customized at Murry’s Custom Autobody and the wait list is constantly getting filled given the fact that there is only three of us.”

Before he started specializing in muscle cars, Murry’s interests leaned more toward lowriders. “I used to do tons of hydraulic jobs before air bags took over,” he explains. “Lowriding didn’t exactly catch on over here. Now all you see is muscle cars, donks and cars with big wheels. I don’t miss it though. I’m loving the big wheel trend. It’s open to everybody. Lowriding was geared more toward Latinos and not a lot of African-Americans got into it. I’m also loving the new muscle cars with the Hemi engines like the new Chargers and Challengers. I like horsepower and like working on cars that go fast…it’s what my father liked and did.” Right now, he has been getting a lot of request for the big wheel look, as well as donks. But instead of riding the big-wheeled cars high, he prefers to have them low to the ground. “We try to ‘tuck ’em,’ which is the street term for riding low on big wheels,” he says. “That’s what makes us different from other shops.”

So far, Murry’s most beloved customization is the one he did on his father’s ’67 Camaro. “My father bought it in 1968 to drag race with it. It’s been in the garage since 2005 when I first began the restoration. It took me two years to finish. My love for my father and automotives inspired me to do it,” he recalls. “I wanted to take it to another level. When I was done with it, my father sat in it, but didn’t drive it. He hadn’t heard it start up for about 20 years. He was very pleased with it.” The car has actually won several awards, including some at the Chicago and St. Louis stops of the 2007 DUB Show Tour. While Murry took the 2008 show contest season off, he’s back in full force for 2009, hoping to take home a couple more awards on his latest pieces of work. His shop also just won three awards for his highly prized Camaro at the 2009 DUB Show Tour Memphis stop in April.

Having been born and raised in Peoria, Murry doesn’t see his shop anywhere else. Most of his clients are regular Joes, with a few notable local personalities, but Murry would like to expand into having a versatile clientele, including a couple of celebrities. “Peoria is a small town of about 150,000 people or so,” he says. “But it’s a growing town that has money to spend. My goal to open the shop was never to cater to only the elite. I wanted to offer a quality customization job to regular guys interested in car culture. My goal has always been to offer a big-city-car-look in a small town. I have to thank Christ for all my talents, strengths and my success thus far since it’s through him that the shop has been successful thus far.” So far, he is succeeding at following his original goal of providing regular guys quality jobs, but is now looking ahead into the shop’s future that hopefully includes a Rolodex of celebrity clients.

Photos: Elle G.