5/30/2023 0 Comments Chip foose shop locationWhat would I do differently? I’d never agree to the eight days or less. When they asked me if I wanted to come back and do the show again, I said I’d love to. It was a complete burnout by the end of the third season. That was me not sleeping for an average of 24 days a month. The first five years that we filmed, we did every one of those cars in eight days or less. And it’s more fun to do it for people who could never imagine having something like this in their life. C/D: Ultimately, was being on Overhaulin’ a net positive? CF: It was definitely a positive. Kids today, their dream isn’t to build something, it’s to buy something. The biggest crime happening in America is the fact that they’ve pulled all these shop classes out of schools. It’s at the point now that the labor is the expensive part and there’s less creativity. It used to be that the parts were expensive and the labor was always affordable. C/D: Are people afraid to cut into old cars now? CF: Time has become the expense. And I thought, just make it with beautiful wheels, bring the car down, but leave the body alone. That’s a car I thought if anybody messes with it, they try to make it like a Ricky Racer car. I don’t know if you saw the Pantera I just finished. C/D: Are there cars you look at and think shouldn’t be touched? CF: There are a lot of cars that don’t need to be messed with. I want to do something different and new every time. I know I would get bored being repetitive. It makes it really easy to be repetitive. C/D: What do you think of things like the Porsche 911 Reimagined by Singer? CF: It’s great that they’ve made a business out of that. C/D: What’s the upside to fame and fortune? CF: I wouldn’t say that I’ve made a fortune, but the upside is that a lot of people want to work with you. I’m sad that I don’t get to share those moments with my son and share the passion that we have for cars. Which I don’t mind doing, but it breaks my heart that some of my favorite memories with my dad are walking around shows and looking at all these different cars and talking about them. It’s not fun for him to stand there when everyone wants to take a picture or get an autograph. How is that to deal with? CF: The biggest downfall about the success of Overhaulin’ is that I just can’t take my son and enjoy a car show. I don’t care what the underneath is as long as I get to be creative and build something no one has ever seen before. C/D: Could you hot-rod something like a Tesla? CF: I don’t think it’s impossible. That’s how they used to build them back in the ’20s and the ’30s. I would love to find a chassis and design and build my own body. C/D: Is there something you’d like to build? CF: What has really been on my mind a lot is that I want to build a Duesenberg. It will look like an original Cadillac until you look underneath. Last night, I was in the shop until one in the morning fabricating on Wes Rydell’s ’39 Cadillac that we’re building. C/D: Are you going into the shop every day? Or are you spending more time on designs? CF: That’s the great thing about this job. C/D: Have you learned how to protect yourself from that? CF: Well, I married an attorney. I can say that just about everything I made on Overhaulin’ was spent there. When he didn’t deliver cars, people came after me. All I did was a drawing, and I was supposed to collect a royalty when he sold or delivered a car. CF: How did you know I was thinking of them? That was a nightmare. C/D: Unique Performance in Texas, which collapsed in 2007, had a license to build ’69 Camaros under your name. C/D: What is the pitfall of licensing your name? CF: You’re not in control of what someone else is doing to your reputation. As a builder you’re thinking, “We’ve got to push the envelope,” and that’s not what it’s about now. The way they’ve done the judging, your guess is as good as anybody’s about what you need to build. What I'd Do Differently: Chip Foose In 2015, the hot-rod designer whose cars have won eight AMBR awards and four Detroit Autorama Ridler awards finished his ninth and final season of Overhaulin' JULY 2016 BY JOHN PEARLEY HUFFMAN PHOTOS From the August 2016 issue C/D: So which is better: the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster (AMBR) or the Ridler award? CF: Boy, that’s getting political, isn’t it? The difficult thing with the AMBR award right now is that there’s no target on the wall about what you need to build. Road and Track's John Pearly Huffman takes a few moments to hear what friend and MagnaFlow ambassador Chip Foose has to say about what he would do differently.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |