Ed “Big Daddy” Roth was a hot rod pinstriper who practiced his art in Southern California in the 60’s. Southern California was the center of hot rodding in its early days. The Bucket ‘T’ was the car of choice. Roth followed the trend with the Bucket T Tweedy Pie. It was a cool hot rod, but did not do much of anything different than what had already been done. His next Bucket T
was something much different. I first saw a picture of Roth’s Outlaw in Rod and Custom Magazine. It blew me away. It was so cool. The Outlaw was so much more different than any ‘T’ I had seen before. Do you know how he did it? He did not use metal, lead and torches. He used plaster and fiberglass. This was before the fiberglass replica bodies of today. Fiberglass boats were coming on the scene and becoming popular, but not in hot rods. He piled plaster of paris over a crude buck set on the the car frame. He then carved and shaped a mold on which he laid up a fiberglass body. This was out of the box thinking. Roth took different ideas and methods, put them together and came up something new. Can you imagine what his peers were thinking when they saw Roth using ‘Plaster” to create a hot rod rather than traditional steel and a welder. I think the Outlaw’s creation is what creativity is all about.
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