If there was anything to do with tools, Roth wanted to be part of it. Roth began collecting electrical things, radios, tubes, resistors, anything dealing with electricity, and studied them. He learned welding as a teenager and in high school took a deep interest in art. He soon began drawing posters and cartoons. Roth also had a wild personality that drew in anyone who met him.
After high school, in 1951, Roth joined the Air Force and was shipped to Morocco. He made extra money lettering fellow soldiers' names on their duffel bags and cutting hair. After the service, he settled with new wife, Sally, near Los Angeles and began to earn a meager living pin-striping bicycles, wagons, cars, just about anything with wheels on it, in his driveway.
In order to put food on the table, Roth needed more income, so he took a job at Sears and Roebuck making displays and dressing windows. After finishing work at Sears, he'd run down to his one-car garage and pinstripe for the rest of the night. There were only a few pinstriping shops at the time and all charged more than Roth. He put a sign out front "Complete Car - $4."
His wild artwork, which has become his trademark, began when the Drag Wagons, a local car club, wanted some T-shirts made up. Roth began airbrushing not just the Drag Wagons logo, but a caricature of each member and his car. By happenstance, a magazine photographer took a photo of one of the members leaning over into his Model A and published the photo. The magazine was inundated with letters wanting to know who made the shirts. Always one to recognize a lucrative business opportunity, Roth began selling "Weird-O Shirts" at $4.50 each.
Roth grew intense in his quest to design, fabricate and build the wildest custom cars. In fact, he built one per year for 10 consecutive years. All told, Roth built more than 40 specialty cars, and the futuristic vehicles appeared in movies and on magazine covers. He built the original Beatnik Bandit in 1960, and it was hailed by contemporary writers as the "Hot Rod of the Future." Now restored, that car sits in the National Automobile Museum in Reno.
Roth's car-building skills were sometimes overshadowed by his colorful artwork. He is likely more known for his bulging, bloody-eyed, drooling characters such as "Rat Fink," a Roth trademark. At the genesis of counterculturism, Rat Fink was an underground response to the sanitized Mickey Mouse, and transcended car culture to become popular with teens regardless of their automotive interests. In retrospect, Roth's creation was a prelude to crudely drawn icons such as Bart Simpson, Ren and Stimpy and the kids from South Park.
How much Roth made from each model Revell sold has been argued, but one article after his death reported that he made a penny per kit. He got the nickname "Big Daddy" from a Revell model company official who reportedly told him, "You can't put 'Beatnik Bandit by Ed Roth'" on a model kit box, according to Pat Ganahl's book, Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth: His Life, Times, Cars and Art. In response, Roth told the Revell official he was called "Big Ed" in high school because of his 6-foot-4-inch frame. So, the Revell exec suggested "Big Daddy" and Roth loved it.
The 1960s were the Roth era. Starting with the "Outlaw," finished in 1959, Roth built a string of paradigm-shifting automobiles such as "Road Agent," "Mysterion," "Orbitron," and the "Druid Princess."
Most of his creations were eye candy, but even Roth called "Wishbone" ugly. It got its name from the frame design: two frame rails welded together down the center of the car and forked out in a wishbone shape at the rear, where it housed a Volkswagen engine. Roth fabricated his own intake manifold for this car and took off the fan and shrouding. The front of the car was half Ford and half VW.
Before the onslaught of custom motorcycle builders like Jesse James, Roger Bourget and Billy Lane, Roth was building wild bikes and three-wheelers, far different than anything the modern-day builders roll out. One of those custom trikes, dubbed "Kolob," featured a six-cylinder Porsche engine, a rear wing, dual headlamps and, of course, chrome and custom paint.
Roth eventually amassed a small fortune doing what he loved. But in 1969, Roth put most of his money into Choppers, an outlaw motorcycle culture magazine, which was a dismal failure. He lost most of his money and went back to work as a sign painter at a California amusement park. He eventually became a devout Mormon and moved to Utah. By the 1970s, even Roth's influential characters were fading out of fashion.
Among other hot rod builders of the time, he was criticized for using fiberglass and building cars that were not practical. But as fast as his empire dissolved, a rage for nostalgia in the mid-1980s and a decidedly low-brow art movement embraced "Big Daddy," rediscovering his eccentric vision. Demand for his art and "Rat Fink" has returned, evidenced by the annual Rat Fink Reunion in California.
Roth died at age 69 on April 4, 2001, reportedly from a heart attack in his workshop at his Utah home. Like the decade that spawned him, Roth was an icon who did everything to excess. There will likely never be another like him.
This article originally appeared in the AUGUST 1, 2005 issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines.
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December 7, 1941
