hot rod at the
National Automobile Museum in
Reno, Nevada|alt=A white car with brown stripes, with open wheels and a clear bubble canopy over twin seats, and exposed, chromed engine with a blower. Beatnik Bandit II and a few of Roth's other cars are also on display in this museum. Roth is best known for his grotesque caricatures—typified by
Rat Fink—depicting imaginary, outsized monsters driving representations of the hot rods that he and his contemporaries built. Roth began airbrushing and selling "Weirdo" T-shirts at car shows and in the pages of
Car Craft magazine as early as July 1958. By the August 1959 issue of
Car Craft "Weirdo shirts" had become a full-blown craze with Roth at the forefront of the movement. The article featured Roth along with fellow
Kustom Kulture pioneers
Dean Jeffries and
Pete Millar. Inspired by Roth and
Barris Kustoms (whose shirts were airbrushed by Dean Jeffries),
Detroit native
Stanley Miller, a.k.a. "Stanley Mouse", began advertising his own shirts in the pages of
Car Craft in January 1961. The lesser-known Rendina Studios of Detroit and Mad Mac of Cleveland also joined in on the monster "Weirdo" shirt craze, but Roth was certainly the person who widely popularized the "monsters in hot rods" art form. In 1959, Roth created the Outlaw. This fiberglass Kustom hot rod was featured in the January 1960 issue of
Car Craft. The car was covered in
Car Craft and
Rod and Custom, and appeared at custom car and hot rod shows. Other hot rods include the
Beatnik Bandit (1961), the twin Ford engined Mysterion (1963), the
Orbitron (1964), and the Road Agent (1965), among others. In 1965, Roth's surf buggy, the Surfite, was featured in the film
Beach Blanket Bingo starring
Frankie Avalon and
Annette Funicello, and also in
Village of the Giants, featuring
Beau Bridges and
Tommy Kirk. One of Roth's personal drivers was a tangerine orange 1955 Chevy 2-door post with a
Ford 406 cu. in. engine under the hood; he drove this car to his shop every day for years. In 1962, the
Revell model company began selling plastic models of Roth's cars and from 1963 to 1965 Revell also manufactured plastic models of many of Roth's monsters, including Rat Fink, Brother Rat Fink, Drag Nut, Mother's Worry, Mr. Gasser and other weird creatures created by Roth. Revell continues to re-issue Roth's Monsters and Kustom Car kits. In 1963, the
Hawk Model Company issued its line of "Weird-Ohs" plastic models and
Marx Toys issued
Nutty Mads, both clearly inspired by Roth's work. Both items were quite popular in the mid-60s and remain sought after collector's items to this day. Hawk Models continues to re-issue its "Weird-Ohs" periodically. A “corporate publicist” gave the tall Roth the nickname "Big Daddy". Numerous artists were associated with Roth including artist
David Mann,
Rat Fink Comix artist R.K. Sloane,
Steve Fiorilla who illustrated some of Roth's catalogs, and most notably, Ed Newton, who worked for Roth and designed several of his cars and T-shirt designs beginning in 1964, and Kustom Kulture icon
Robert Williams who began working for Roth in late 1965. In the mid-1960s, Roth began customizing motorcycles. Mainstream motorcycle magazines refused to run his articles and ads, so he started his own publication called
Choppers, which featured articles on extending forks, custom sissy bars, etc. It was a small, black and white publication that ran from 1967 to 1970, and was the first magazine ever to exclusively feature custom motorcycles, or
choppers. Roth also built the first known VW powered trike. From 1970 to 1975, Roth worked for Brucker's Movie World and their "Cars of the Stars" display. Brucker said that Roth was very loyal and a very hard worker, even though he was not making much money. Brucker said that when building something, Roth had a natural knack for seeing how things fit together — he would build something in a few days which would take others a couple of weeks. Although Roth was laid-back and amiable, Brucker also remembers that Roth was a fighter and if anyone came through the museum causing trouble, Roth would put them in line. He was fearless. Roth's Druid Princess was one of the many cars displayed there. Also during the 1970s, Roth worked for
Knott's Berry Farm as a sign painter and artist. He worked there for 10 years until about 1980, and among other things, did the lettering on many of the descriptive labels for objects in the Western Trails Museum at Knott's. In December 1977, Robert and Suzanne Williams, along with Skip Barrett, organized the first Rat Fink Reunion to celebrate the legacy of Roth. Rat Fink Reunions are still held to this day at the site of Roth's final residence in Manti, Utah and near Los Angeles. In 1993, a major exhibition was held at the Julie Rico Gallery in Santa Monica shortly after the Laguna Museum show "Kustom Kulture". It was at this time that the
lowbrow art movement began to take on steam. Featured in the exhibition titled, "Rat Fink Meets Fred Flypogger Meets Cootchy Cooty" were Roth, Willams, and Mouse and their creations. The L.A. Times placed Roth's
Rat Fink on the cover of the Culture section December 20, 1993, with a full article about the entire exhibition. Artist Jean Jacques Bastarache collaborated with Ed Big Daddy Roth for this exhibition creating paintings called Master Finks. Images were used from historical watershed paintings by well-known artists like Duchamp, Whistler and Miro among others. Roth drew an image of his Rat Fink character acting out in a funny way on each painting while Jean Jacques Bastarache created the Master Fink underlying painting. The paintings in all can be seen in the book titled Rat Fink: The Art of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth published by Last Gasp in 1993. The
Orbitron, a Roth custom car that was the subject of a number of articles in automotive enthusiast magazines (most notably, in
Car Craft magazine in 1965) which was feared lost in subsequent decades, was discovered in Mexico in the summer of 2008. The Orbitron was built in 1964. The car, in dilapidated, inoperative condition, had been parked for some time in front of an adult bookstore in
Ciudad Juárez. The owners of the shop were also the owners of the car. It was purchased and taken back to the United States by Michael Lightbourn, an American
auto restorer who did business in Mexico. The Orbitron has been restored to its original condition by
Beau Boeckmann. Roth was active in counterculture art and hot-rodding his entire adult life. At the time of his death in 2001, he was working on a hot-rod project involving a compact car planned as a departure from the dominant tuner performance modification style. The year after his death, he was named as one of the "50 Who Made a Difference" at the 50th annual Meguiar's Autorama in Detroit. He was also inducted into the show's "Circle of Champions" in 2000, and was showcased as its "Builder of the Year" in 2006. ==Mr. Gasser & the Weirdos==