Dean Moon, Mooneyes

Dean Moon (died June 4, 1987), dry lakes racer and founder of SEMA and Mooneyes. Dean Moon was the consummate “Hot Rodder”. He built and raced cars from the Dry Lake’s to the Drag Strip and at the same time built a company that became an icon in the world of Hot Rodding.
Starting the business from meager beginnings he grew it into a world wide name and made the “Mooneyes” logo a part of the history in the sport. Many of the products are still used today and several are very sought after by the people restoring and recreating the cars from yesterday.
Though Dean left us on Jun 4,1987 he left behind a legacy that will live on as long as there are Hot Rodders. Not only did he entertain and educate us but he also motivated and challenged us to go faster and succeed.

Dean Jeffries

Dean Jeffries is an American custom vehicle designer, fabricator, stuntman and stunt coordinator for motion pictures and television programs based in Los Angeles, California.

He is a certified welder and custom builds vehicles used in numerous Hollywood productions through his company Dean Jeffries Automotive Styling (aka Jeffries Automotive Styling), on 3077 Cahuenga Boulevard West, in Los Angeles.

He began custom fabrication in the 1960s and built the Mantaray (from Bikini Beach; 1963), Black Beauty (from the The Green Hornet), the Monkeemobile, the Landmaster (aka Land Master; from Damnation Alley; 1977), the moon buggy (that James Bond steals in Diamonds Are Forever), the trolley (from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?). Jeffries is also an expert on dune buggies, produced his own models, and has contributed to books about them. He did all of the custom fabrication work on the movie Convoy in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he rented the shop from Burns Truck & Parts.

Jeffries worked on the design and initial fabrication for the Batmobile (for the 1966 Batman TV series), but when the studio wanted the car faster than he could deliver, he turned it back to George Barris who hired Bill Cushenberry to do the fabrication work.

In 2001 the Cruisin' Hall of Fame inducted Jeffries as a member.

Darryl Starbird

American custom car and hot rod designer and builder Darryl Starbird is known for his innovative and futuristic space-age car designs, often featuring bubble tops. Some of his best-known cars include the Predicta, the Electra, the Cosma Ray, the Big T, and the Lil Coffin.

Creating many of his most influential designs in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Starbird served as a design Consultant for the Monogram hobby corporation which reproduced many of his cars as plastic model kits. He is one of a group of designers and artists including Ed Roth, George Barris, Norm Grabowski, Dean Jeffries, Bill Cushenberry and the great pinstripe artist Kenny Howard (aka Von Dutch), who presided over one of the most productive and creative periods of American custom car and hot rod design.

Starbird currently owns and operates Darryl Starbird's National Rod & Custom Car Hall of Fame Museum in Afton, Oklahoma, which features many of his cars as well as other notable examples from the history of custom car and hot rod culture. A notable car in the museum is the Reactor Mach II which appeared on multiple television programs.

Starbird also has annual indoor car shows in Wichita, KS and Tulsa, OK to show his and others' Kustom Creations, Hotrods, and Classic Cars.

Von Dutch, Kenny Howard

Kenneth Graeme Howard (September 7, 1929–September 19, 1992), also known as Dutch, Von Dutch or J.L. Bachs (Joe Lunch Box), was a motorcycle mechanic, eccentric, artist, pinstriper, metal fabricator, knifemaker, and gunsmith. His father, Wally Howard, was a well-respected Los Angeles sign painter; and, by the age of ten, the young Kenny Howard was able to paint and letter at a professional level.

n the early 1950s he started earning money by doing pin striping along with fellow pin striper Dean Jeffries.^[2] Von Dutch was a major influence in the customizing of vehicles in the 1950s to today. Some of his famous works include the flying eyeball and the custom Kenford truck, along with numerous custom motorcycles and many award-winning custom cars. Among many custom car and motorcycle enthusiasts, he is thought of as one of the fathers of Kustom Kulture.


Dutch was an alcoholic, and this would lead to a stomach abscess. Dutch died on the 19th of September, 1992, leaving behind his two daughters, Lisa and Lorna. His ashes were scattered into the Pacific.


Money was something he detested. In this quote from a 1965 article Dutch explains his thoughts on money.

“

I make a point of staying right at the edge of poverty. I don't have a pair of pants without a hole in them, and the only pair of boots I have are on my feet. I don't mess around with unnecessary stuff, so I don't need much money. I believe it's meant to be that way. There's a 'struggle' you have to go through, and if you make a lot of money it doesn't make the 'struggle' go away. It just makes it more complicated. If you keep poor, the struggle is simple.

”

Ed Roth, ""Big Daddy"

Ed "Big Daddy" Roth (March 4, 1932 – April 4, 2001) was an artist and cartoonist who created the hot-rod icon Rat Fink and other extreme characters. As a custom car builder, Roth was a key figure in Southern California's "Kustom Kulture"/Hot-rod movement of the 1960s. He grew up in Bell, California, attending Bell High School, where his classes included auto shop and art.

Roth is best known for his grotesque caricatures — typified by Rat Fink — depicting imaginative, outsized monstrosities driving representations of the hot rods he and his contemporaries built. Although Detroit native Stanley Mouse (Miller) is credited with creating the so-called "Monster Hot Rod" art form, Roth is accepted as the individual who popularized it. Roth is less well known for his innovative work in turning hot rodding from crude backyard engineering where performance was the bottom line into a refined artform where aesthetics were equally important, breaking new ground with fiberglass bodywork.

In the 1960s, plastic models of many of Roth's cars, as well as models of Rat Fink and other whimsical creatures created by Roth, were marketed by the Revell model company.

The Barris Brothers

The Barris brothers worked at a restaurant owned by their family, and one day were given a 1925 Buick for their help. Although it was not in good shape, they swiftly restored it to running condition, and began to experiment with changing its appearance. This became the first "Barris Brothers custom" car. They sold it at a profit to buy another project vehicle, and their career was born. Before George had even graduated from high school, demand for the boys' work was growing, and they had created a club for owners of custom vehicles, called the Kustoms Car Club. This was the first use of the spelling "kustom," which would become associated with Barris.

In 1951, Sam had customized a new Mercury coupe for himself, and a customer who saw it ordered a similar car. This vehicle, known as the Hirohata Merc for its owner, was shown at the 1952 Motorama auto show and was so popular it overshadowed the best work of Detroit's top designers, on display at the major manufacturer's exhibits. It also established the early 1950s Mercury as possibly the classic base for custom car design, a status it retains today.

Sam decided to leave the business in the '50s, but George had married and he credited his wife Shirley with major assistance in promoting the company, which eventually became Barris Kustom Industries. It began to license its designs to model car manufacturers such as Aurora, AMT and MPC which spread the Barris name into every hobby, department, and discount store in the country and also into the minds of millions of eager model builders.