WELL...DUH!!!!! What would you expect a guy like him to build back in the 60's? A pink Porsche! Come on...that was the point if his whole existance...he wasn't a follower!
Here's another Roth/VonDotch story... I work with a guy named Lee Harden. In the 60's he bought himself a really nice 56 Chevy and his buddy told him to take it Roth's for some pinstripes. So he drops it off and tells ed to stripe it up. Ed says what are you looking for? Lee says "surprise me!". He comes back the next day and VonDutch had striped 3" squares,front to back!!! But wait...that's not the kicker! Ed had taken a ball/peen hammer and put a ding in the middle of EVERY square!!!!! Lee said "what the hell did you do to my car?" Ed says "what's the matter...you're not surprised?" LOL!!!!!! Next time I talk to him,i'll ask him what he did with the car. Bet it would be worth some big bucks today!!! Here's another one... My best friend and I would walk home from grammer school every day and get some Roth bubble-gum cards at this little market in Bell. One day when we stopped,they had just put this new gumball machine out front,FULL of Ratfink keychains!!! We ran home and got all the change we had and emptied out the whole machine!!! Id say there were about 100 or so. We split them between us and still have almost all of them. The green one I had in my Merc slipped down the A-pilar at the Primer Nats!!! Now I have to get a metal hanger and try to fish it out,HA HA HA!!!
looks like the collection that the Wishbone is coming up for sale in late April https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2018/12/18/tupelo-automobile-museum-to-close-sell-off-collection/
Roth's Wishbone did run and drive, but it won't go very far, it has no cooling tin or cooling fan on the old 36 horse engine.
Goes on the auction block this Saturday: THE TUPELO AUTOMOBILE MUSEUM AUCTION 27 Apr 2019, 10:00 CDT LOT 526: 1967 "BIG DADDY" ROTH "WISHBONE" US$ 80,000 - 120,000 To be sold without reserve 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!
Guess Roth really was a genius.....he built a Ryan approved, H.A.M.B. friendly, very fancy looking dune buggy! And it was built after 1965!
Roth is my favorite builder I like "cookie cutter" roadsters and coupes but flakes and bubble tops rule!!!!!
He was the Gary Larson (Farside) of the automotive world. Had a brief conversation with him at a D.C. World of Wheels late in his career while he was signing a drawing I bought. (Hangs on my office wall.) He intimated that for all the fame and glory of being "Big Daddy", there was also a price.