The Raven is a custom car designed and hand built from scratch in the 1950’s by Arthur Bentas. It took 9 years to build. Arthur only built one car in his lifetime, but what he built was considered one of the finest custom automobiles of its day. In 1959 Arthur completed the car and won the 1959 NHRA National Champion Custom Car Show in Detroit, Michigan. During that year and the following, he won over 25 awards with the Raven. Then, suddenly in 1961, he put the car on blocks and covered it in the back of his shop where it sat for 46 years.

It is built on a 1939 Dodge chassis with the 6 cylinder L Head engine from the same car. It has body parts from quite a few different cars and many custom built ones as well. It was restored and is currently owned by Joe Germann. For more info go to www.motorheadextraordinaire.com/content/15-raven. Here is a link to a slide show of older photos of it www.motorheadextraordinaire.com/slideshow/raven/.

I had photographed it previously and Joe, its owner, and I arranged to do a portrait session when I was in Boston visiting my daughter. We drove it around to various places to photograph. It was a lot of fun to ride in.