http://cache.jalopnik.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/jalopnik.com.png http://jalopnik.com/tag/ed roth http://jalopnik.com/tag/ed roth

This weekend's Barrett-Jackson Car Auction features a wide variety of cars and trucks. Many of the cars have already crossed the block and found new owners, but you can still dream. What is the 2011 Barrett-Jackson vehicle of your dreams? More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5740325&view=rss&microfeed=true

Finding a battered Orbitron, one of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's most iconic custom cars, in Mexico is like finding JD Salinger slumped over a bottle of Mescal in a Tijuana speakeasy. The 1964 product of the Roth mind and fiberglass shop recently turned up south of the border, where it had been carnival attraction and trash bin in front of an adult book store. Orbitron scared the kneepants off a young Jalopnik when he saw a photo of it in a tattered library book. The picture was from 1963 and the Orbitron, then in progress, looked like nothing more than an mound of barely formed plaster of Paris. By 1964 it had taken shape as the spaceship-dragster that, the late Roth one said, was a failure at the shows. He blamed the Orbitron's lack of appeal on its chromed 1955 Chevy engine, which the kids of the day considered beyond passé. And, a novel headlamp, created from three primary-colored lenses aimed at a single beam, apparently was too geek when geek wasn't cool. The new owner says he hopes to restore it. [Hemmings via Iowahawk]
More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=295010&view=rss&microfeed=true

Back when we were in our teens, some friends of ours had a band called Stickman Lincoln, an oddly-instrumented semi-avant pop group, that in our estimation, was the best Sacramento band you've never heard of. And they had an official vehicle: guitarist/violinist Damian Sol's Datsun 810 wagon. Random appendages were added, the bumpers were caution-striped. One door was painted in a rough approximation of a Sacramento County Sheriff's vehicle's livery. But honestly, both in legend and execution, the bullet-hole-and-bondo-ridden 810 can't hold a candle to Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's hand-lettered Honda Civic. More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=186309&view=rss&microfeed=true

Long ago, there was a magical place in Buena Park, California called MovieWorld: Cars of the Stars, owned by a pair of brothers by the name of Brucker. Ed Roth worked there. Von Dutch lived in a bus on the property, and although the museum closed in '79, the Bruckers' stored collection contained some fabulous artifacts of lowbrow art history. Our friend, mentor, and sometime-collaborator Mike LaVella of Gearhead, covered last weekend's auction of the Brucker collection and kicked us down a bit of science as he frantically readied himself for a trip to buy a suit in Hong Kong. More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=173949&view=rss&microfeed=true

Ed Roth's Mysterion was widely acknowledged to be a pile of crap; its construction shoddy even by Roth show car standards. But the important thing was the look and with its bubbletop, swiss-cheesed chassis and twin Ford FE mills, the Mysterion had it in spades. Grand Rapids, MI's Dave Shuten inherited the project from notorious Rothophile Mark Moriarty and went to work duping the lost-to-the-winds Mysterion as closely as possible. For this we thank him, our father thanks him and we're sure LaVella thanks him, even if ol' Roth would most likely be perplexed. More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=136331&view=rss&microfeed=true