The truck had been painted green, but the grill had been left the original white with red flames. It turns out the truck had been stored in a barn in Oklahoma for more than 30 years. Ed had traded this truck off to a dealer and it was lost until it was found again in 2016. One of my favorites, Ed’s 1956 Ford F100 shop truck. The Wishbone was restored back to “Big Daddy” Roth’s original version and done very well by Dave Shuten and Galpin Auto Sports. Dirty Doug put the pieces of the Wishbone back together and put it on the show circuit as the Electra in red paint. The Wishbone was the first and last car Roth built with a flat-four, air-cooled Volkswagen engine. The Wishbone never became a model because Revell said that the delicate front suspension and spindle wheels were too difficult and expensive to mass-produce in scale for the model kit. ![]() The Wishbone was built in 1967, and designed by Ed Newton, had even been cut in half by the order of Ed himself. Up until very recently, most of these cars had been lost, or unrestored, or only cloned. ![]() A handful of Rat Fink artists work dots the landscape as you enter the space of the Roth exhibit and immediately you see the Wishbone, the Roth shop truck, the Outlaw, the Orbitron, the Beatnik Bandit, Tweedy Pie, and the Mysterion, and your mind is blown. As you walk through the maze of Corvette history there are subtle ques of a Rat Fink here and there making you salivate to finally get to feast your eyes on “Big Daddy” Roth’s creations. When the opportunity came together that 7 of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s car creations were going to be on display at the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, I knew that I would need to make the 5-hour journey to see this kustom kulture mecca exhibit. The dirty stinking Rat Fink, I wore that shirt with pride, feeling that I was a part of something cool that not everyone was aware of or understood. I found Ed’s creations at the hobby shop, toy stores, and the local mall t-shirt store where I promptly threw my paper route money down on an iron-on Rat Fink shirt. ![]() I was already a little crazy for anything loud and fast and Ed’s creations blew my mind open. When I was in elementary school, I was in the library and stumbled upon a book on Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and his tripped-out car creations and hotrod monster shirt art. Story and photos by Dennis "Menace" Jackson
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |