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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Galpin Auto to Trick Out Custom Truck

Among the polished and glossy vehicles in the collection of Galpin Auto Sports sits a 60-year old green pickup truck with rust spots on the body, crumbling wood in the bed and a cracked brake light on the back. This is not just any Ford F-100 truck – it is one of the earliest custom vehicles produced by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, the car designer and illustrator best known for creating the Rat Fink character that adorned model kits and T-shirts starting in the early 1960s. “This began the outlandish style of his, let’s say that,” said Dave Shuten, who will head up restoration of the truck at Galpin. Galpin Auto Sports is the customization and personalization shop at auto dealer Galpin Motors in North Hills. The shop introduced the sunroof to American drivers and kicked off the van conversion craze in the 1960s. It was featured on two seasons of MTV’s custom car reality show “Pimp My Ride.” Galpin President Beau Boeckmann said that restoring the Roth pickup fits in with the company’s strategy of finding vehicles that seem lost forever. “There’s something so incredibly special about bringing a major piece of automotive history back to life, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to restore the Roth truck like we have done with so many others,” Boeckmann said in a prepared statement. Galpin Auto Sports has 10 other Roth-designed vehicles, including the Mysterion, the Rotar and the Rat Fink Harley motorcycle. Roth passed away in 2001. Boeckmann bought the F-100 from its previous owner who found the truck in a barn in Oklahoma. Despite its beat-up condition, the owner had known it was a Roth creation from the distinctive custom grillwork and other features, Shuten said. The restoration work will involve sending the drive train to a shop in Dayton, Ohio where the Packard engine will be overhauled. The remainder of the work will be done in-house at Galpin which includes complete body work and painting, Shuten said. “It will look just like it did when Ed Roth had it in 1957,” he added. While Galpin didn’t estimate the cost of the restoration work, the company benefits from the publicity of such high-profile jobs. “It gets us money on the back end,” Shuten said. Out of the Roth vehicles that Galpin has, Shuten said that his favorite is the royal blue, bubble-topped Orbitron that he helped restore in 2008. The vehicle came to Galpin after being found outside a sex shop in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico where it was used as a dumpster. – Mark R. Madler

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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