RIP Boyd Coddington

[SoCal-s130]

http://jalopnik.com/361391/boyd-coddington-hot-rod-king-dead-at-age-63

[jackjack]

say wha??????????????????????????? damn.

RIP

[steve_o1989]

Wow that was a surprise to see. Definatly didn't expect that one...RIP

[allntrlundrgrnd]

damn that blows he built some sick cars

[Z33dori]

wow that is scray, me and my friends where just talking about him and Chip Foose the other night...

truely a lost to the Hot Rod community.

RIP

[kensreliableb18b]

RIP

thats a shocker

[VROOOM]

That sucks. RIP. that guy built some amazing cars

[sillyvia13]

RIP Boyd...
you will be missed...

[Phlip]

Wow, I am amazed to be hearing (err, reading) this right now...
Only 63, I am curious to know the cause

[240trainee]

Because he was an ass

and beat 1 style into the ground.

I dunno, condolences to his family and shit.

[DUFFM4N]

did NOT see this one coming...but then again, when do u ever

RIP hot rod king

[Antihero983]

RIP boyd, you will be missed.

[EvilRB]

WOW, RIP Boyd!

I'm surprised at this news!
My only time meeting him I felt bad for him.
It was at SEMA and there was a huge crowd around Chip Foose and like 4 people at the same time trying to get Boyd's autograph and he had such a nasty look on his face as I caught him looking at Foose's crowd.

Still condolences to his family.

[BustedS13]

that sucks, i loved that show. nice looking cars always, unlike chopper.

[SUPERSTAR]

This is Sad, I really admired this man for his EYES. He had a great eye for custom builds and great wheel designs.

RIP Boyd, (will be missed by many)

[Yuri]

WOW, RIP Boyd!

I'm surprised at this news!
My only time meeting him I felt bad for him.
It was at SEMA and there was a huge crowd around Chip Foose and like 4 people at the same time trying to get Boyd's autograph and he had such a nasty look on his face as I caught him looking at Foose's crowd.

Still condolences to his family.

It's amazing the difference being nice to people compared to being an asshole to everyone can be.

It's no coincidence that Boyd wasn't able to hold onto his employees, and they ended up working for Chip or other companies.

[soreballz]

Boyd was an asshole, and the style of cars he built was super played out.

His family, and fanbois that never met him will miss him.

My condolences to the family, but no worries, the hot rod community will live on strong without that prick.

[alindeman1989]

Dam that sucks. He built some sweet cars. rip

[burnsauto]

didnt see this coming...i'm wondering what will happen to the company. who will take over, etc.

[muddafakka]

Wow, I am amazed to be hearing (err, reading) this right now...
Only 63, I am curious to know the cause

According to Wikipedia, "Boyd died of a lacerated ulcer, no doubt from stress." :ugh: :aw:

But it also says "he died on the 27th of February of, as yet, unannounced cause."

Thanks Wikipedia.

[Jimmy Up]

Yea, he always seemed stressed out. Having been into musclecars for a while, this guy is a huge loss to the industry. RIP

[mRclARK1]

Like him or hate him, he had an influence and a reputation. It's a loss no one saw coming. RIP.

I met him once, must have been having a good day, he was really friendly to me and my (at the time) gf and her dad. Even took a look at her dads car and gave him some suggestions.

[mehsilvia]

RIP
Regardless of his "style", he was still a contributor to the hot rod community and competition for guys like Foose. Which in its own way is also a great thing.

I will miss his wheel designs, damn i wanted a set of his wheels Baaad when i was building my Ranchero.

Did get to meet him and his crew in person at a Pomona meet/show, he definately wasnt a friendly or happy fella. Thats for sure.

[lazy240]

i talked to him before he was a total dick

[sleepy_s13]

Wow. Thats a shock. R.I.P

[s14dude]

Saw it this morning, RIP Boyd. =/

[qwikspool]

wow at 63. that sucks. rip

[Phlip]

According to Wikipedia, "Boyd died of a lacerated ulcer, no doubt from stress." :ugh: :aw:

But it also says "he died on the 27th of February of, as yet, unannounced cause."

Thanks Wikipedia.

Since an ulcer is an ailment and not an organ and, in such, can't be lacerated I am going with "unannounced"

[DarkPhoenix]

RIP! He was a prick, an asshole, and all of those other things. First and foremost, he was an enthusiast, and had such a big impact on the custom auto scene, he will be missed regardless.

[azndoc]

Damn that sucks. Rip Boyd.

Never met him, loved the show though.

I have a vendor that sold to him and he said that boyd always tries not to pay for the products due to him having a show.

Some of the cars were really nice but I also heard that they don't last long though. Don't know how true that is though.

[inertiaticism]

I guess it's true that you actually CAN die from being a weiner.
I wonder if he's going to get a billet gravestone made.

Still, unfortunate for his family and what friends he had.

[TiNMAN]

rip, keep doin big thangs!

[Naughty240]

I wonder what will happen now? His son is dead and has an x wife and new wife. Does he have a daughter?

[Naim]

This saddened me, I really loved his show.

R.I.P Boyd.

[MrMcgarrett]

I didn't know he was that old.
My neighbor use to work for him.

[Taniguchi_Is_#1]

i just saw this on my email home page. WTF?


RIP boyd.

[180sExy]

Wow speechless..........R.I.P.

[S14DB]

Boyd Coddington, 63; custom car designer starred on 'American Hot Rod'


By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 29, 2008
Boyd Coddington, a renowned Southern California hot rod and custom car designer and builder who starred in the cable reality-TV series "American Hot Rod," has died. He was 63.

Coddington, a longtime diabetic, died Wednesday at Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital in Whittier of complications stemming from a recent surgery, said publicist Brad Fanshaw.

Once described by Hot Rod magazine senior editor Gray Baskerville as "the Stradivarius of car building," Coddington was a onetime maintenance repairman and machinist at Disneyland who customized cars and built hot rods at home in his off-hours before opening Hot Rods by Boyd in Stanton in 1978.

"His cars set the standards for custom automotive design because rather than just take a selection of parts from other vehicles, he would design and manufacture virtually every part for the cars that he built," said Fanshaw, former president of Hot Rods by Boyd and Boyds Wheels.

Coddington launched Boyds Wheels in 1988.

"He was the first person to utilize billet aluminum in the manufacture of automotive wheels," said Fanshaw. "Prior to that, all custom wheels were made in a cast manufacturing process where the aluminum is melted and poured into a mold. Boyd developed the use of solid aluminum and machining it and sculpting it for the final wheel.

"It gave you a much stronger wheel, a much more beautiful wheel, and you had much more design latitude when you did it that way."

Two cars built and designed by Coddington are in the permanent collection of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, which had an exhibit of his cars in the mid-1990s.

"Boyd Coddington is one of those guys who'll go down in history as one of the great names in the customizing and hot rod world," said Dick Messer, the museum's executive director.

Because of Coddington's background as a machinist and his ability to make precision parts for his cars, Messer said, "his stuff was very finely put together. A lot of the stuff he did looked like jewelry rather than automotive parts."

Coddington, Messer added, "had a great design eye. And some of the big names in the automotive world today, particularly in customizing and design, worked for Boyd at one time or another," including celebrity designers Jesse James and Chip Foose.

Among the iconic cars to come out of the Boyd shop are CheZoom, which Fanshaw described as "an extreme reinterpretation" of the classic 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air; and the Aluma-Coupe, Boyd's reinterpretation of a 1933 Ford coupe that was hand-fabricated from aluminum.

Then there's the sleek CadZZilla, a radically re-powered and re-stylized 1948 Cadillac coupe designed by ZZ Top band member Billy Gibbons and automotive designer Larry Erickson.

"It was Boyd Coddington's masterful execution, along with his team members, that created perhaps one of the most memorable customized cars in recent history," Gibbons told The Times on Thursday.

Reflecting on Coddington's career, Gibbons said: "Boyd's contributions were on a par with George Barris and all the other American car customizers combined. He will be missed."

Coddington won the America's Most Beautiful Roadster Award seven times, including an unprecedented six times in a row. He also won the Slonaker Award, another prestigious automotive award in the hot rod industry.

Honored as Hot Rod magazine's "Man of the Year" in 1988, Coddington twice received the Daimler-Chrysler Design Excellence Award.

He also was inducted into the Grand National Roadster Show Hall of Fame and the National Rod & Custom Museum Hall of Fame, among others.

His cars have been reproduced in Testors model car kits, made into a series of Mattel Hot Wheels toys and issued by the Franklin Mint as die-cast metal models. And one of the cars he designed and built -- a 1933 Ford coupe stylized with the trademark "Boyd Look" -- was featured on the cover of Smithsonian magazine, which profiled him in 1993.

In 1997, Ernst & Young named Coddington "Entrepreneur of the Year."

But a year later, Boyds Wheels, his successful company that went public in 1995 and merged with Hot Rods by Boyd, was in bankruptcy.

Although devastated, according to a 2000 account in The Times, Coddington formed a new company in 1998, selling his Ferrari for $150,000 and some real estate holdings for $1.5 million to fund operations.

"I was crushed like an ant, but I want to come back and prove to myself and customers that I can still do it," he told The Times.

With the debut of "American Hot Rod" in 2004, the bearded car builder whose trademark attire was a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap became a TV star.

The show, a behind-the-scenes look at building custom cars at Boyd Coddington's Hot Rods and Collectibles in La Habra, aired through last fall on the Learning Channel.

Coddington was born Aug. 28, 1944, in Rupert, Idaho, and grew up on his father's dairy farm, where he devoured custom-car magazines.

At 13, he acquired his first vehicle by trading his shotgun for a 1931 Chevrolet pickup truck. His father promptly made him trade it back, but Coddington's course was set.

"That truck kind of started everything," he told The Times in 1996. "From there, I built all kinds of different hot rods: I had a '40 Ford coupe, a '55 Chevy, Model A's and all kinds of vehicles."

In 1967, after attending a trade school and apprenticing for three years at a Salt Lake City machine shop, he moved to Southern California.

Coddington is survived by his wife, Jo; five sons, Boyd Coddington Jr., Christopher Coddington, Thomas McGee, Gregory Coddington and Robert McGee; his sister, Klis Ruesch; six grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

Instead of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Coddington Foundation to benefit a variety of charities.

Donations may be addressed to Coddington Foundation, 811 E. Lambert Road, La Habra, CA 90631.

Services will be held at 9 a.m. Wednesday at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, 900 W. La Habra Blvd., La Habra.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-coddington29feb29,1,910979.story

[unwed_transient]

this week on american mortuary:

we got boyd's funeral in one week and the coffin hasn't gone to paint, it's gonna be tight.

[Naughty240]

Its ok Charlie will stay and..... o wait....

O no Im going to hell I should stop now.

[jrocslider]

i know its kind of an older thread but... i heard that he died of medical complications when going into surgery for his ulcer. a friend at O'Reillys who knew him personally told me this so i'm guessing it credible.

[muddafakka]

There's another hot rod guy who died a few days after Boyd's death. I forgot his name.

[S14DB]

There's another hot rod guy who died a few days after Boyd's death. I forgot his name.

"Li'l John" Buttera

[muddafakka]

Yep that's the one.

[VROOOM]

"Li'l John" Buttera

that sux, i knew his son a while back. he used to tell me about crazy prototype harleys

[berz]

master fabricator from back in the day to the present. he will be missed.