Rat rods aren’t anyone’s idea of typical cars. T.J. Lutkins, 46, of St. Clair Shores, said his 1950 Ford Custom, “affectionately known as a Shoebox by car afficionados,” might even be too ratty for some. He bought it for about $3,500 about two years ago and has been rebuilding it with his dad, Scott, since. His daughter, Audrey Rose, handled the painting. “I like rat rod culture. It’s a way of celebrating car culture without having a bunch of money … you don’t need a $10,000 paint job to enjoy the hobby,” said Lutkins, whose day job involves working with automotive collision data. T.J. Lutkins, of St. Clair Shores, had a skull theme in mind for his 1950 Ford Custom rat rod. Lutkins' car was one of the rat rods in the lineup at “Autorama Extreme,” which took over the lower level of Huntington Place during this year’s Detroit Autorama, which wrapped up earlier this month. His vision for this car was informed by a particular fascination of his. “I like skulls, obviously, so we added a lot of skull accoutrements to it — skull headlights, did a custom skull centerpiece for the grille, the mirrors are skull hand mirrors.” There’s even a skeleton hand cupholder, a skull that he uses to hold his cell phone and a skull knob for the shifter. The mostly black car does have some blue accents on the outside and some green on the inside, particularly the steering column, a $75 replacement Lutkins found through Facebook. The car was missing a dash, so Lutkins made one out of sheet metal. The seats are out of an old Chevy truck, and because they came with seat belts built in, it saved him the time and hassle of welding anchors to the car’s B-pillar. That’s time he can spend on the wiring, something that is a big part of working on a rat rod. The “good news is the wiring’s easy to do on them, but the bad news is you’ll be doing it a lot ,” he said. Eric D. Lawrence is the senior car culture reporter at the Detroit Free Press. Send your tips and suggestions about cool automotive stuff to elawrence@freepress.com. Become a subscriber. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.