

He doesn’t like cars but he also loves the movie industry. Do you have family you are hoping to pass the business on to one day?Ī. So at the age of three years old, I had Hot Wheels of the cars that my dad had built and I had plastic model kits that I could build like my dad, so today I consider my career to be just an extension of my father’s. The cars that he was building, AMT is the plastic model kit, so plastic model kits would become available to them after they had built the cars and then Hot Wheels was built the little diecast toys of them. He was building a lot of cars for television. As a kid he worked for a company called AMT which was in Phoenix. How long was your dad in the industry for?Ī.

So at 7, I knew I wanted to go to Art Center. Alex told me about Art Center College of Design. When I saw Alex’s drawings, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. At 7, I started going to the shop and I would like to say that I was helping him but I think I destroyed more than I actually helped.Īt the age of 7, I also met another designer, Alex Tremulis who was the head of the Ford Thunderbird studio through the 60s. When he was done he would leave it on the table and I would draw it over and over again because I wanted to be as good as my dad. When he would do a drawing I would sit next to him and copy it. So when I was a kid I started sitting next to my father at the age of three and I would draw. My father started his own shop when he was 14 years old. Is your dad the person that sparked your interest in hot rodding?Ī. When I first started with my father, if we needed a motor or pieces to put something together, we went to the wrecking yards and got pieces off of old cars and made them work.

Now you can order pretty much any part you need over the phone. What have been the biggest changes in the industry in the last 30 years?Ī. His answers have been edited for length and clarity. “The greatest thing for me is that when I’m at a show, and I don’t know that one of my customers is going to be there, and I walk around the corner and see one of the cars that we built just sitting there.”įoose sat down with the Register to discuss hot rodding and how television shows have changed the industry.
