He left and started Project Design, his shop. When you have my paycheck, I’ll bring the equipment back.” They never called him. They hadn’t paid him for some work that he had been doing.ĬF: My dad loaded his truck with all the equipment in the shop, drove around to the office and said, “I’ve got all the equipment. I have since, but not when I was at that age. TG: Did you ever get to drive any hovercrafts when you were a kid?ĬF: No, I never did. One was doing government-funded safety programs, Mini Cars. He worked for a company in Santa Barbara called Mini Cars and Lift, Inc. We traveled around and worked with Gene and then in 1968 my father left Gene’s.

If you’re familiar with Gene Winfield, when I was only, not even two years old yet, he went to work with Gene Winfield and ran his shop, AMT, down in Phoenix. When he got out of the military, he went right back into doing body work. Went into the Army, ran a body shop for the Army and was also on the rifle team doing exhibition shooting. Grew up in Santa Barbara, and ended up getting a job in a body shop there. He started a shop in his garage that he was living in when he was just a kid. Talk about his shop.ĬF: My father has been on his own since he was fourteen years old. He was supposed to leave the next Friday to go to a show with the truck, because it was a show truck at the time.ĬF: It had been in Hot Rod Magazine and everything else. The funny thing is my father was supposed to leave. Were you in big trouble?ĬF: I hit the Rolls, and I shoved the Rolls into a Porsche. I have that grill sitting upstairs right over here. At twelve years old, that was my first accident also. There was a Rolls Royce sitting in front of the shop waiting to be picked up by the owner, and I smacked right into the grill and headlight of the Rolls. With my body weight pulling on the wheel, my foot slipped off the brake and I, standing, I stood on the throttle, lit the back tires up, truck lunges forward.

I remember I’m pulling on the steering wheel with all my might trying to turn this thing because we’re just creeping along, and I had my foot on the brake. When he asked me to park in front of the shop, I was pulling in and the truck was just lowered with big wide tires and no power steering, and I’m using my body weight to try and turn the car, trying to pull that steering wheel.

I drove all over the airport and didn’t miss a shift. He had his shop on the airport property up in Santa Barbara. I started getting in the passenger side and he said, “No, no. One day after work, he said, “Come on, we’re going for a ride”. One day he had noticed that when I was sitting next to him I was pretending like I was pushing in the clutch and shifting it and letting the clutch out and working the throttle. When I was twelve years old, I used to ride to and from work with my father, and if I rode my bike to school then I’d ride to the shop after school I’d throw the bike in the back of the truck and we’d drive home. 3m stencil shortage.Ted Gushue: Chip, what was the first car you remember driving?Ĭhip Foose: First car I ever drove? It was that black ’56 pickup that I just showed you out there.

Chip foose paint jobs