By Lindsay Tice,Staff Writer

Dick Fritz has spent years turning his beloved 1962 Chevy Nova into an award-winning show car.

Painted flames – in three shades of blue – dance along the outside. A special, tubular grill decorates the front. The low hood scoop, basically an air vent bump on the hood, adds character.

“It’s almost like a form of art,” he said.

But Fritz has never been able to customize the classic Nova as much as he’d like. More radical alterations, including doors without handles, would look really cool. But they wouldn’t pass inspection.

Until now.

Starting this summer, the state will offer Fritz and other car enthusiasts a special “custom vehicle” registration and license plate. For the first time, they can remove door handles, lower car frames and make other changes to their older vehicles but still pass a safety inspection. The cars will be completely street legal.

“I’m very excited,” said Fritz of Arundel, who keeps seven custom cars. “I think it’s a great thing.”

He’s already planning to redesign his Nova.

For years, car buffs could choose from four types of registrations: regular, “horseless carriage” for cars built before 1916, “street rod” for cars built before 1949 and “antique” for cars that were built after 1915 and were more than 25 years old.

The problem? To get a regular registration, older cars must pass the same inspection as new cars straight from the factory, which meant owners couldn’t customize as much as they wanted. Horseless carriages, antiques and street rods could be slightly modified, but they couldn’t be an owner’s primary vehicle.

Just over 7,800 vehicles were registered as horseless carriages, antiques or street rods last year, about 630 of them in Androscoggin County.

Some owners registered their custom vehicles as “antiques” and drove them sporadically.

Others went with the regular registration, refusing to saddle their cars with the “antique” plate. Corvettes and Mustangs don’t belong in the same category as the Model T, they said.

“It doesn’t really fit the true meaning of antique,” said Frank Barron of Auburn, a member of the Knucklebusters Motor Club and the owner of two classic cars, including a 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass.

Custom car buffs got tired of their choices. They were spending tens of thousands of dollars – and sometimes up to $200,000 or $300,000 – to customize their cars, and they wanted to drive them without restriction.

“It’s a whole culture. The American icon is the automobile. It’s also a way to express freedom,” Barron said.

During the last Legislative session, they asked State Rep. A. David Trahan, a Waldoboro Republican and the proud owner of a classic Chevy truck, to submit a bill creating a registration especially for custom vehicles. The bill passed, and state police and custom car buffs hammered out a deal.

Owners would be allowed to narrow windshields, remove door handles, alter the rear window, lower the frame and make other changes, but only to cars that were built after 1948 and were at least 30 years old. And the cars would still have to be judged safe.

“A lot of people who do these vehicles have $30,000, $50,000 tied up in them. They aren’t going to make them unsafe,” said Ray Simond, co-owner of Cy’s Foreign Auto in Lewiston and a member of the Maine Custom Auto Association.

The new custom car registration and license plate will be available July 1. Registration will cost $25, the same as a regular car.

Fritz can’t wait to get a plate for his Nova. And then some.

“It opens the door for me to do other cars,” he said.