Boyd Coddington....dead.

It is in pretty bad taste to speak ill of the dead. Do you know this to be true first hand or are you basing this on what you saw on a scripted tv show?

 

I will wear a loud floral shirt tommorow to remember Boyd by.

While i found the show to not be the greatest thing, I do think that at one time in his life Boyd really was a passionate leading edge hot rod builder.

Who else agress with the prediction that Duane will be eating from a soup kitchen soon?

 

But wasn't this "languishing" brought about because of the hot rod magazines switching from a "get it from the junkyard" mentality to a "buy this shiny chrome widget from Joe's House of Chrome" mentality? I was reading HR, PHR, Car Craft, Super Chevy, etc, since the late 70s and those magazines switched from a "do it yourself" attitude and became advertising tools for manufacturers in every article. And the dreaded VAN era was the worst of all. Nailing shag carpeting into the back of a clunker van and calling it a "hot rod". Gag. Then they started doing all these build up articles with BILLET everything. Barf. The worst was one article where the builders, with thousands of commercially available wheels, just could NOT find one to suit their fancy. So they had a custom set of wheels CNC milled out of billets of aluminum. They probably had more in that set of wheels than most people have in their cars.

Even today's modern hot rods are just KIT cars, even though the builders have a paranoia about admitting it. They think that a fiberglass 32 Ford is somehow more "authentic" than a fiberglass Bradley GT on a Volkswagen floor pan.

 

He built the best Hot rods!

R.I.P

 

Yeah it really shows that he isnt very classy. Its sad when ever some one dies exspecially young like this.

 

And some may say changing your opinions about someone as soon as they die is flaky.

Has anyone written anything bad about Hitler lately?

 

So Boyd is Hitler now? This is a guy that built cars and may have bruised a few egos along the way and may not have had many people skills but I think comparing him to Hitler is a bit of a stretch. You don't have to change your opinion but bad mouthing someone you only know from a scripted television series when they are dead is a classless act IMO. Just because a thought pops in your head it doesn't need to be vocalized or posted on the internet. I know a few people who are dead that were first rate SOB's when they were living , I just don't make a habit out of telling everybody that they were mean SOBs

 

Apples to oranges here. Your comparing someone that killed millions of people to someone who built cars. If you liked the guy great if you didnt great but you cant ignore what he has done for hott rodding.

 

Yeah i think that happened a few years ago actually, because i know Charlie (boyds really good painter), was getting fed up with the crazy deadlines and left. Two weeks later i was watching over haulin' and saw charllie painting the car. I kind of chuckled inside.

Thanks though good to know a little bit about the falling out they had.

 

So you used to work for him or did you buy a car from his shop?.

I totally understand about the ridiuclous deadlines but other than that I couldn't see anything wrong with how he treated his workers. He seems like anyother builder in the business and I was looking forward to meeting him but now that chance is gone.

I have seen a few of those hotrods by boyd and they are basicly Supercars with a Hotrod body.

 

Not only that but the other dude also jumped ship the one from Colorado with the hat endedup on Over haulin a few months after boyd figured out he was doing some inside work for Chip. The other painter also left and jumped on the foose bandwagon.

So whats next for Boyds hotroding company?. I donno if his son is going to pickup where he left off but from what I remember the show was going in the wrong dirrection and man everybody was leaving or dieing.

 

Lawdy help 'em all if that male ***** managed the line of the damned. He needs to be on the receiving end of somethin'-somethin', that's for damn sure.

IMHO, Boyd Coddington died a long time ago.

 

Sad, he was a great car builder.

 

It is sad hope the cars keep coming somehow. RIP

 

I like this quote on his site:

"Boyd, whenever there are clouds in the heavens, we'll know it's you showing God how to do a great burnout."

That's actually really touching, and I'm not even religious.

 

Oh ****, who is gonna buy the rest of the Beach Boys shirts?!

 

Boyd was a client of mine when Boyd's Wheels was just getting off the ground and Chip Foose was the guy on the drawing board in the room down the hall. Boyd was a little guarded with me at first, which I put down to him being in the kind of position where a high percentage of the people you meet either want something from you or are some variety of flake. As I got to know him though, I found him to be warm, engaging, interested and genuine. Losing the wheel company and with it, the ability to put his own name on products for a number of years, plus whatever else went on that I knew nothing about, probably had an effect on him. I'm guessing that many of the previous comments about him in this thread are based on seeing him on a tv show. Which is about as accurate as knowing what a dish tastes like based on watching someone cook it on tv. I'm sorry he's not around any more. For myself and for motoring enthusiasts everywhere.

 

Did he go bankrupt at some point?

 

+1 Most people have the "worker mentality"! They dont get that the owner might/will lose everything if the workers slack off. The only thing the worker would lose is his/her job! Most employees dont even think about the owner's overhead cost cause all they care about is the salary, so they dont really see why their employers push them to meet the "quota" per say. I make it a point (everyday) to let all my employees know that if they take care of the company, then the company will take care of them!

 

CHIP FOOSE COMMENTS ON BOYD CODDINGTON'S PASSING

Chip Foose and everyone at Foose Design are saddened to hear of the untimely passing of legendary hot rod builder Boyd Coddington. Chip and Boyd spent many hours together in the early years of Hot Rods by Boyd, becoming so close that Chip considered Boyd almost as a second father. Boyd allowed Chip and all his employees the freedom to design and fabricate the ultimate in custom vehicles and provided the necessary customers to grow. Boyd formalized the Hot Rod business and thereby legitimized it-the result was the creation of an industry. Boyd’s contribution to the Hot Rod and Aftermarket are significant and unparalleled. “I appreciate all of the opportunities Boyd offered me while I worked with him and I owe a large part of my career and success to the great working relationship we had. I pass on my deep sympathy and respect to everyone at Boyd’s and the Boyd Coddington Family. He will be greatly missed”

 

A Class Act

 

I've always had a great amount of respect for Boyd. We can argue about his personality etc but looking at what he accomplished and realizing it didn't happen by itself stands on its own in my opinion.

I had the opportunity to meet Chip briefly about a year ago. This was at a fairly large local event and he genuinely enjoyed just talking cars with the gathered masses there. The handlers were constantly pulling, tugging and pushing on Chip to move him around different places and Chip would completely ignore them until he was done talking with whomever he had engaged. The handlers were getting downright pissy and Chip really couldn't have cared less about them. Classy guy.

 

There is a difference between rational deadlines and crazy self-imposed deadlines that cause your workers to put in 70-80 hours a week. That's OK short-term when necessary but long term it will lead to unhappy employees, spotty work, and lots of turnover, which is exactly what happened to Boyd.

You can't push people that hard for that long without a lot of pushing back. Yes, all they have to lose is a job, but all they have to gain is a paycheck. There needs to be a work/life balance.

BTW, I get where you are coming from. I'm a business owner as well. But what I saw on that show was excessive.

 

Duane definitely didn't help with the stress either. He would go bug someone who was in the middle of working on something. Ask, rather accuse him of something stupid, then yell at him to GET BACK TO WORK!

We've all worked long hours at one time or another. Hell I grew up seeing my dad work well over 80+ hours for years. No vacation for at least 5-6 years so he could send my mom and me on vacation.

And as you said, especially when it comes to something that takes delicate time to make right. You can't rush the build of a car 24/7. And it's the reason Charlie and others ultimately left. If I remember part of the show correctly, Charlie was always mentioning something about his wife being tired of him never being home.

 

Like him or not, He set a standard many of we Rod builders can only dream of. Ignore the "reality" show and look at the product. I`ll put on my floral shirt and gaze at the pic. of Vern Luce` car hanging over the milling machine. But that doesn`t mean we shouldn`t bash his last wife........If she was the "trophy", I`m glad I wasn`t in the contest. Jerry