WHEELING INO THE SPOTLIGHT Creating Hot Rod Dreams in Knightsen
	January/February 2005

by Leonard Lopez
Photos by Brad Shifflett

I was born and raised in Walnut Creek and got a job in the high performance automobile industry when I began working for a Pleasant Hill racecar manufacturing company while still in high school.

That job got me started learning the art and science of manufacturing high performance vehicles. After graduation, I got a job with Sbarbaro Hot Rods, Co., and began getting paid for doing the very thing I was passionate about. I put together my first street rod in 1988.

While at Sbarbaro I also began pursuing the hobby of driving competition midget racecars — open-wheel dirt racers. I built and raced these things for 15 years.

Building Custom Cars for Fun and Profit
I eventually started my own hot rod manufacturing company at my home in Knightsen, called Dominator Street Rods. My first notable project was the Dupont Dominator — a1940 Ford street rod sponsored by Dupont Custom Finishes.

Dupont toured the car for a year. That was the beginning of a good relationship and we’ve been creating tour cars for Dupont ever since.

Last year, for example, we created a Bear Fiberglass composite replica of a ’33-’34 Ford. For you car-buffs, we built the car on a round-tube space frame chassis with independent suspension at either end of the 117-inch wheelbase. We used a rocker arm for the front suspension, a Champ suspension on the rear, and a 500 horsepower GM 502 Ram Jet under the hood.

We are currently building the 2005 Dupont car, which is the chopped, sectioned, and wedged 1933 Ford 2-door Sedan that was featured last March on the TV “Rides” show on TLC.

One major value-add of our products is that each creation rolling out of our garage is different than anything anybody ever saw before. I currently have about 15 cars in various stages of completion in my shop. I’ve created everything from classic ’30s-era Fords to a ’72 Challenger. None of them are the same as any other hot rod that was ever built.

Any custom street rod will seem to uninitiated people as a radical machine, but hot rods can actually range from conservative to bleeding edge. For example, ’32 Fords were popular machines 50 years ago. They will be popular 50 years from now, because they provide a James Dean California-kid sort of experience that will never grow old or fade.

On the other hand, some of these cars are trendy. A Ford 33 Xtreme design Roadster was a rage a few years ago, but is now going out of style somewhat.

Some of our creations are astonishingly different from anything ever seen before! For example, one of our clients, a veteran fighter pilot from WWII, commissioned us to build a version of a 1934 3-window Ford Coupe that would be reminiscent of the P-38 he flew over Germany. Sounds impossible, but we did it! An awesome machine!

The creativity on one of our products has to take place within definite boundaries. Since we typically work on cars that are seven decades old, we must recreate each of these things as a totally unique version, but, nevertheless, one in which the lines of the original must be clearly recognizable.

We had to make sure that people would be able to tell, for example, that the P-38 is a Ford — but appearing in a version that is almost infinitely improved, both in the design as well as in the underlying technology.

The Process of Creation
Development of one of our hot rods follows a four-stage process:

1. I sketch the design, eventually developing a concept that the client and I feel could be worked into the kind of machine the client is looking for.
2. An artist creates a full-color rendering of the design.
3. We mock up the car and roll it out for the client and me to examine.
4. We build the car itself.

The third stage — the mock-up — is probably the most unexpected of the four parts of the process for someone unfamiliar with our industry. This prototype stage is absolutely essential, however, and can save a client thousands of dollars because, even though the artistic renderings are gorgeous, they’re only 2-D. It is up to us to create a full-scale model of the actual car itself from the pictures and the plans.

One of the main things we are looking for when we roll out the mock-up is the “stance” of the car, which refers to the way the car sits on its wheels, including such things as tire combinations, suspension, and the geometries of length and width ratios.

Sometimes we look at a mock-up and instantly realize that something in the proportion is just not right. This can only be discovered at this prototype stage; the 2-dimensional renderings weren’t able to make the problem clear.

We might prototype the car several times before we are satisfied. The proportion has to be satisfying — artistically and geometrically correct. On one project, for example, we ended up stretching a 32 Ford Roadster six inches before we were satisfied.

We build upside-down cars, which means if you could turn one over (or, more realistically, put it on a rack), you would see that the car is as nicely engineered on the underside as it is on the top. We have a reputation for over-building these things. It is a reputation that we deserve.

Adding Art to Science and Mechanics
Building custom hot rots is an art form, in an important sense. I’m an artist. Chrome, steel, fiberglass, and electronics are the component parts that create the media I work in.

In another sense, however, I extend and implement the creative urges of my clients. I’m no prima donna about what I do; I’ll give a client whatever he asks for. There are hundreds of solutions for a given problem. None of the choices are wrong.

I’m a perfectionist about the details of the mechanics and the quality of the design implementation. We build excellence into every product. Beyond that, however, as far as I’m concerned, the car has to be able to accelerate, stop, and turn. Everything else is personal preference by the client.

Does the client like chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry? It’s that kind of thing. After all, there is no accounting for taste. Some of the stuff that rolls out of my garage looks rough to me, but if the client thinks something is good, then it really is good. “Ya’ want bubblegum ice cream with hot fudge over it? Let’s do it!” That’s my attitude.

Besides the from-the-ground-up custom projects that we specialize in, we also refurbish cars. Some of our clients have had an old car sitting around for decades and finally decide to get it refinished.

Other clients simply like to have something different from everybody else. They might bring in a Cadillac that is three decades old and ask us to trick it out so that all the working parts are new. They drive down the street in an essentially new car that looks just like their old Caddy. It’s like being in a dream for some people

We’re done some crazy things at my shop. Some people love our most insane creations. “They have to live with it in their garage, not in mine” That’s the position I maintain.

What I prefer myself, however, is to create something that most people will look at and say, “I love that! Awesome!!” Our custom cars are all like that.

Affordable Fancies
Many of our customers are middle age, successful professionals who have earned enough money to buy whatever suits their fancy. In many cases they treasured these things when they were young — perhaps they built a street rod in their own garage. That would have been before I was born, so I’ve spent a lot of time in researching what young men thought were hot cars back in the 50s and 60s when these guys fell in love with the technology.

For some of my clients I’m scratching an itch they’ve had for decades.

We’re also beginning to do projects for a somewhat-younger clientele. For example, I’ve done custom cars around a ’72 Challenger, a Boss 302, and a ’57 Nomad.

It requires between one and two years to take one of our custom machines from concept to drive-away. That means a completed car will cost $120,000 and up. Sometimes, depending upon the client’s wishes, way up. I’ve never built a half-million dollar car, but I’ve seen them. That’s ten Humvees. We’ll build anything anybody wants (and can afford).

Some of my projects seem cheap to me to sell but expensive for the customer to buy. For example, the total price for a Deuce (’32 Ford) we’re currently working on is about $180,000. That’s a lot of money to spend for a car! But I out-sourced the paint job, which cost me $33,000.

That seems like a lot of money just for a paint job, but the guy who did it probably put 1,500 hours into the job. (We’re not talking Earl Scheib here!) Same thing with the upholstery, which cost me $16,000, but took a lot of hours of impeccable hand-stitching to put in.

Building a premier quality custom hot rod cost takes a lot of cash but, on the other hand, there’s a lot of money out there right now. The hot rod industry is currently in a period of tremendous growth. It is not uncommon for 3,000 participants to pay the entry fee at local car shows. The big national shows might attract 14,000 entries.

If you can imagine wishing to show a car in such an event, you might imagine why these guys come to us. We can build them a machine that will attract a crowd in a show with 50,000 other cars.

Quality Beyond Excess
If you haven’t been around the custom hot rod industry lately, you can hardly imagine the quality of the products we turn out. Our custom cars provide an incredible blend of engineering, fabrication, and performance, which help set the standard for the industry. And we’re raising the bar all the time.

In our garage we seek to combine the beauty of street rodding with the function of well-engineered racecars. Fifty years ago driving a hi-performance hot rod was sometimes like being dragged over the ground in a box. But we’ve improved our products to the point that the custom rods we create are as responsive and as comfortable to drive down the highway as a BMW.

For example, I created the chassis for the Dupont Dominator out of 105 feet of round structurally uniform tubing. We designed our own pushrod suspension, with inboard coilover shocks, and upper and lower A-arms on both front and rear, which provide superior actuation and a nearly 1:1 travel ratio for incredible handling characteristics.

On the other hand, our cars are small so they are more aggressive than any BMW. We put high performance engines under the hood of these things so the power-to-weight ratios go right off the scale. After all, I learned my trade building racing machines.

For example, when that former fighter pilot puts the pedal down on the Ford Coupe we’re building for him, the result really will remind him of his P38. He better have a clear field in front of him or he’ll be going over or through objects whether he intended to or not. Nothing’s going to stop that thing when he gets it cranked up.

My cars are both fast and safe, since I use experience gained during my 14 years driving racecars to provide my custom cars with competition-level design and safety features.

Reaping Rewards
Our cars have won many rewards. For example, we were the Builder of the Year at the Grand National Roadster show in Oakland in 2001. I became a member of the Sacramento Autoram Legends in 1999. I know being a legend makes me sound like I must be in my 80s, but I got that honor when I was only 36 years old.

Last fall one of my cars, a blood-red 33 Ford, won the prestigious 2004 Goodguys America's Most Beautiful Street Rod award at the 18th West Coast Nationals in Pleasanton, California.

One of the things that make this fun is that there’s no such thing as a perfect car. We’re reaching for a goal we can never grasp. That’s the challenge!

Another part of the business that adds to the quality of my life is that my 10,000 sq. foot assembly plant (all right, shop) is next door to my home. My commute is only about 75 steps. (A hundred steps, perhaps, if the sprinklers are on.)

I’m having fun. Some parts of this job are difficult because we’re getting paid to work on people’s toys. That means we have to pay a lot of attention to making sure the client is enjoying the experience and satisfied with the results. In this field, customer satisfaction is such a gray area that attempting to achieve it with a 100 percent success rate can produce stress. However, creating one of these custom cars is always a fresh and wonderful process.

Creating objects of great beauty must be one of the most satisfying activities on earth — especially when the creation actually takes the breath away of some of the people who see it!

Not many people in this world have the opportunity to work hard at their job or profession and then have people look at the results who in some cases can’t find words to describe their admiration. “Awesome” just isn’t enough in many cases. Nor “cool,” “rad,” or “stupendous.” Sometimes people seeing on one of our cars for the first time are beyond words. They can only stand and gape with their mouths open. That’s always a great thing to see!