Part II - Boyd Coddington Exclusive Interviews

WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Never-before released interview with hot-rod legend Boyd Coddington. In multiple-parts, in tribute, now through SEMA Show 2009. By Joe Mavilia for The Weekend Drive.

Part II of three parts

(Part I was posted July 17, 2009)

... So who is this man behind the art and the machine? A myth, a legend? ...

...as things turned out, I also learned as much about him from others who knew him from TV, visiting his showroom or being a neighbor. I met those people a week following my meeting with Boyd. I was attending my nephews wedding aboard a boat in Newport Harbor… a big boat. The setting was private, elegant and peopled by movers and shakers. You always find people like that on a road less traveled. It was just the setting where you’d expect the name Boyd Coddington would be known.

I hadn’t seen Marty and Sharon in a decade but as we got to talking about old times, I found they now live in the ‘Heights’ above La Habra. After a few connections and coincidences Marty told me about the house he built there … a big house. One day while he was out jogging, this guy, Boyd Coddington, was driving by and stopped Marty just as he rounded the final turn to his house. “Who owns this house”, Boyd asked. Looking more like the gardener than a prosperous businessman, Marty replied, “I do!” Later the men and their wives got together and discussed the possibilities of the Coddington’s buying the home, even though it was not for sale. Money was no object, but in the end the answer was still no. Some things not even money will buy. Personalities enter the play like a poker face in a smoke filled room. Obviously there wasn’t a meeting of the minds and it must have been a disappointing rejection.

Boyd was also disappointed with the recent loss of his chief designer Chip Foose and that required a lot of adjustment. But Boyd says the move was ok and he talks with Chip often. A look around the boat on this beautiful sunny California day, somehow contradicts such outcomes. The bet doesn’t always matter. In both cases, the answer was… I’ll see you and raise. The stakes are not always about money.

Boyd seemed distant and aloof when we met and I concluded that he’s just shy. But he hosts a TV show so how can that be, you say. Well, I’m pretty outgoing but my knees knock when I get in front of an audience. Anyway, it was our first meeting and that can make such celebrities, appear removed. People who are successful are by any measure bizzzzy bizzzzy people. They have demands placed on them 24/7. And that, in part, explains why I felt like I was an irritation to his busy day. But for all the demands, Boyd was outwardly calm. Or maybe he was about to fall asleep. I don’t usually have that effect on people. But then his cell phone would ring and wake him up. “Now where were we?”

Like so many of us, the cell phone is our constant companion and our umbilical cord to the world anywhere, anytime. Boyd spends even more time on his cell than most because the world is his office. There is no question that I was more excited about meeting this “legend” in the custom rod world than he was in meeting me. It was I who wanted to know more about him and he did share a little of his life and feelings about family, business and success, all of which he says require a lot of hard work.

True enough. Hard work matters a lot, which brings to mind the saying that “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” – Thomas A. Edison. I suspect most of us want to believe we too have worked hard for what we’ve accomplished, even if we fell into it or married it. But Boyd’s beginnings were indeed humble. The farm was small, as farms go, at 40-acres. It was primarily a dairy farm but also produced some of those famous Idaho potatoes. What kind of man was your dad, I asked? He didn’t hesitate or blink. “Dad was a great guy, who worked hard from morning to dark milking cows and all the many other things you must do on a small farm.” His dad’s heritage is Danish and Welsh and his mom is English. Both were born in Idaho.

Boyd has good memories of his youth. He recalled his first car for me. “I traded a shotgun for a 1934 Chevrolet Pickup Truck, but Dad made me give it back.” He was 20 years old when he left the farm and traveled to California. Why California? I asked. “After I finished high school and a Trade Tech, I figured California was the place for custom rods.” Armed with an extraordinary work ethic he hit the road. He didn’t pass Go, didn’t collect $200 and didn’t find any rods when he got there either. He was greatly disappointed.

Look for the final part III that picks up after his trek from Idaho along Route 66 and Boyd's new life after he got to Huntington Beach, California... No rods but the beginning of the next chapter in his life and a new job at Disneyland.