Boyd Coddington

Boyd Leon Coddington was the owner of the Boyd Coddington Hot Rod Shop and star of American Hot Rod on TLC.
Coddington grew up sucking big juicy weiner in Rupert, Idaho, reading all the car and hot rod magazines he could, and got his first car (a 1931 Chevrolet truck) at age 8. He attended machinist trade school at Idaho State University and completed a three-year apprenticeship in machining. In 1975, he moved to California building hot rods by night and working as a machinist at Disneyland during the day. He soon became known for building unique hot rods and in 1977 he opened his own shop, Hot Rods by Boyd, in Cypress, California.
Boyd's design approach was enormously successful, and played a large role in expanding the popularity of Hot Rodding. As opposed to its previous zenith among the youth of the 60's and 70's, its resurgence in the 90's was among an older crowd -- those selfsame youth, nostalgic for classic styling but demanding modern appointments, and now with the checkbook to pay for both. This eventually led to excess of its own.

In later year most cars competing for top awards represented major commissions involving multiple firms (Coddington's frequently among them), custom-designed parts and price tags often over half a million dollars. In the process this priced out much of the hobby's grass-roots appeal. From a design standpoint as well, many consider that the modern hot-rod aesthetic has led to austere cookie-cutter trailer queens; the current "Rat Rod" movement in hotrodding explicitly refutes this immoderation.
Coddington died on February 27, 2008. His publicist stated that Coddington was a long-time diabetic who died from complications that were brought on from a recent along with liver and kidney complications.