Photo: Beau Bachman
"Big Daddy" Ed Roth was a principal founding member of what became known as the Kustom Kulture car cult during the 1960s in Southern California.
Roth, one of the pioneers of modifying cars as rolling artwork, built example after example of barely or hardly street-legal machines which featured bright custom color paintwork, space-age bubble windshields, strangely wrought and often torturous bodies, wild running lights and whacked out and often faux-fur interiors.
Oddly enough, Roth didn't make his money building custom cars, he cashed in being Ed Big Daddy Roth, selling t-shirts and various kinds of accouterment based on his famous cartoon character Rat Fink. As a side note, I have a working model Rat Fink Model A electric car on the shelf next to me.
Roth also did well by licensing his car designs to model and toy companies from Revell to Mattel for their Hot Wheels series.
Roth's Orbitron was a sort of tone poem to celebrate the relatively new technology which was color television. The light from each of the three variously colored headlights set into the nose of the Orbitron combined, cathode ray tube style, to merge into white light. And odd as it was, this car was actually legal to drive on the street.
The owner of Orbitron, Beau Bachman, who runs Galpin Auto Sports, a renowned Los Angeles car customizing shop, restored the Orbitron to its original condition. And the Koolest thing about the finished product? The super lighting effect actually works.
When Roth first rolled out the Orbitron for its debut in 1964, it proved a bit of a failure at shows. According to Roth, he attributed the “failure” of the car as being due to the fact that the engine was hidden from view. He added that his enduring regret about the car was that he covered the engine.
As a side note, Roth blamed The Beatles for the “failure” of the Orbitron and said at the time, “the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and all model sales stopped. Guys got guitars instead of cars.”
Another of his creations was the Rotar, and it wasn’t actually a car at all. The Rotar was in fact a very compact hovercraft. And for the record, it hasn't taken wing since one disastrous car show at Detroit's Cobo Hall back in 1964.
The car shattered when one of Roth's team of assistants wound the turbine of the Rotar far too fast. That error caused one of the fans to explode into shards of shrapnel and seriously injure several innocent bystanders.
According to Bachman, one of the flying turbine blades was later pulled out of the Cobo Hall ceiling after some 45 years mailed to him.
Bachman claims to have the largest single collection of Ed Roth cars in existence. He also has a large collection of Roth memorabilia.
Oddly enough, Roth didn't make his money building custom cars, he cashed in being Ed Big Daddy Roth, selling t-shirts and various kinds of accouterment based on his famous cartoon character Rat Fink. As a side note, I have a working model Rat Fink Model A electric car on the shelf next to me.
Roth also did well by licensing his car designs to model and toy companies from Revell to Mattel for their Hot Wheels series.
Roth's Orbitron was a sort of tone poem to celebrate the relatively new technology which was color television. The light from each of the three variously colored headlights set into the nose of the Orbitron combined, cathode ray tube style, to merge into white light. And odd as it was, this car was actually legal to drive on the street.
The owner of Orbitron, Beau Bachman, who runs Galpin Auto Sports, a renowned Los Angeles car customizing shop, restored the Orbitron to its original condition. And the Koolest thing about the finished product? The super lighting effect actually works.
When Roth first rolled out the Orbitron for its debut in 1964, it proved a bit of a failure at shows. According to Roth, he attributed the “failure” of the car as being due to the fact that the engine was hidden from view. He added that his enduring regret about the car was that he covered the engine.
As a side note, Roth blamed The Beatles for the “failure” of the Orbitron and said at the time, “the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and all model sales stopped. Guys got guitars instead of cars.”
Another of his creations was the Rotar, and it wasn’t actually a car at all. The Rotar was in fact a very compact hovercraft. And for the record, it hasn't taken wing since one disastrous car show at Detroit's Cobo Hall back in 1964.
The car shattered when one of Roth's team of assistants wound the turbine of the Rotar far too fast. That error caused one of the fans to explode into shards of shrapnel and seriously injure several innocent bystanders.
According to Bachman, one of the flying turbine blades was later pulled out of the Cobo Hall ceiling after some 45 years mailed to him.
Bachman claims to have the largest single collection of Ed Roth cars in existence. He also has a large collection of Roth memorabilia.
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