Lance Troupe

I am the son of a Cow Boy,and Saddle Maker. I grew up with a 11 year older brother who was into hot rods. I was introduced to hot rods in the summer of 1957, as I was spending my summer in Seattle Washington wile staying with my brother Lynn and his new bride JoAnn. I was only six then and I didn't have anything to play with during my two month stay so JoAnn prompted my brother to take me out and buy me something to play with. We came back with an AMT model, 1940 ford tudor sedan with an olds engine. That was very cool for me at the time because Lynn had a friend come over a few time's in a metallic green 40 ford coupe with white interior, and an olds engine in it with three two's just like my model. I had already remembered the names of the engine parts down in my brain. I didn't know what they all did but I could describe valve covers and carburetor's, and at six years old, that blew away some of his buddies when they stopped by to show off their newest up date's to their rides and I could almost Identify most of the hot rod goodies, all from reading the instructions from the models Lynn would buy me.
We moved to southern California back in 1966 during the hay day of mussel car's. After high school I went to work for Cal Worthington Dodge as a car porter in the leasing department. That was a great job for a 18 year old kid who was into all cars and loved my job. Then I was drafted into the Navy, and became a Navy SeaBee, going down to the Antarctica twice to build the South Pole Station. Once I left the Navy after 4 years I built up a 1950 chevy pick UP, and Joe Mayall Did a feature on it, and it came out in the magazine called Street Machine's 1976. He called it the screaming yellow zonker.
I spent 36 years in the auto trimming business, and did work for Dick Magoo for many years. I met Joe Mayall way back in 1976 wile learning the upholstery trade through Dave High,s Auto Art. Then in 1978 I started working on my own when a friend Bob Christman of the LA roadsters, told me that Magoo was looking for an upholstery guy, as his wife Lois didn't want to do it anymore. I got the job, and the rest is history. From their, I met Brian Brennan who was just a kid at that time and I worked with him on many a project's for magazine article's. Over the years their have been more than 60 cars that showed up either in Rod Action, Street Rodder, Hot Rod, Rod and Custom, 1001 rod Ideas, and many more. I was lucky enough to have had More than 20 on the covers and one time or another.
So, what it al boils down to, it's all my older brothers fault when he bought me my first AMT model, 40 ford Kit. To this day I still build models of hot rods and have an impressive collection in Jewelry cabinets for a dust free climate. I once had more than 400 models at one time but I am down to a few hundred, and about 50 are Die-cast that I bought because they are cool. But I never leave them alone as I always take em apart and restyle them.