1967 "Big Daddy" Roth "Wishbone"

*Unique "Big Daddy Roth" Creation
*A piece of automotive history
*Volkswagen Boxer powerplant
*A real showstopper

THE MOTORCAR OFFERED

Born in 1932 to a German speaking household in Beverly Hills, California, Ed Roth's passion for design began early. In his youth, he spent plenty of time drawing pictures of airplanes, hot rods, and monsters, but it would take him roughly two decades before his transportation into "Big Daddy," the hot rod Kustom Culture icon of southern California, was fully formed.

After a spell in the Air Force and pin striping cars after his day job at Sears, Roth decided to further supplement his income in order to provide for his growing family. Utilizing his artistic abilities, he began to sell airbrushed t-shirts of his whacky characters at car shows and within the pages of Car Craft magazine. These "Weirdo Shirts" proved to be immensely popular and Roth soon became famous for his "Rat Fink" character. Soon after, he went full time into the car business with "the Baron" and his grandson Kelly in 1958. Utilizing fiberglass and junkyard parts, their first creation was the "Outlaw."

Roth developed a proper business selling his art to finance further automotive custom creations for the purpose of presenting at car shows. His operation eventually became sizable enough to set up in a new shop located in Maywood, California. By this point, popular model producers Revell held a contract with Roth to offer small scale versions of his creations.

Revell soon would begin to fund the creations themselves-enter the Wishbone. Always the man to push boundaries Big Daddy Roth sought to prove the viability of Volkswagen's ubiquitous boxer 4-cylinder powerplant within a custom. As the story goes, Roth turned out to not be a particularly big fan of the car, and Revell themselves held issue with the thin front suspension components being too delicate for their plastic models.

Roth ordered for the car's body and frame to be cut into pieces and thrown away, never to be seen again. Fortunately, a member of the team, Dirty Doug, was quite fond of the vehicle, so he requested to keep it for himself. Roth agreed under the condition it was never reassembled. Naturally, this promise was not kept and the car was pieced back together and reentered the show circuit. Roth was understandably upset about the situation, as his name was still very much attached to the car and in addition, he was incapable of making money with the creation after relinquishing ownership.

The interim period of ownership is not well known, but the car resurfaced in the early 1990s and was sold at Auction to the Tupelo Automobile Museum.

Of all of the oddball creations dreamed up within Big Daddy's workshop, the Wishbone stands out on its own being one of the only one to be powered by a Volkswagen Motor. To this day, the vehicle is a showstopper and will surely gain the attention of anyone who has the pleasure of passing by. Now is truly a unique opportunity to buy a piece of hot rod history!