He was born Edward Roth on March 4, 1932 in Beverly Hills, California. He had one brother named Gordon Roth. Their father kept them out of trouble by supplying them tools and a work shop. At an early age Ed Roth made incredible things out of wood. His family spoke German and the children learned English from school. Even when he was going to school, in his spare time he would draw monsters and hot rods.
In 1946 Roth purchased his first car, which was a 1933 Ford Coupe. He liked to work on the car and do little things to it to make it different form all the others. When he graduated from high school he went to college for engineering, but he found out that all the classes had nothing to do with cars. He joined the Air Force in 1951, becoming a very good map maker and he was a barber on the side. He claimed that there was existence of UFO's while he was in there. Four years later he was honorably discharged.
Roth married and had five sons. To have money for the family he got a job at Sears in the Display Department, also he started pin striping cars after work. In 1958 he went in to business with "The Baron" customizing cars and pin striping. Roth started to create cars in his garage with fiberglass. His first creation was the "Little Jewel" but shortly after that he created "The Outlaw." These cars where such outrageous vehicles, people would just stop and stare when he would go driving by. He would get an idea in his head and just start creating with fiberglass and the finished product would be great. By the time he died Roth had made around 31 cars.
He had many more wild ideas but not enough money to make them come to life, he didn't even have enough to take care of his family. He was sitting in a diner one day with his friend telling him how he needed to make money and thought he knew how. Roth got a pencil and a napkin and started drawing this crazy looking rat. He said that he could draw some kind of thing like this on shirts and make drawings of this rat with cars. He also made a lager drawing of the rat on his fridge. A few days later some people wanted to see this new character, so Roth had to take his fridge over to the shop. Rat Fink finally came to life, shirts, stickers, drawings and custom art were all made and sold at car shows. His new creation was a huge success and he made enough money off of them to start making cars again. Some other characters that he made were Mothers Worry, Mr. Gasser and Drag Nut.
Roth finally hit the big time, he hade to move his shop out of his garage and into a new shop in Maywood. He also had to hire people to help him build his cars and produce Rat Fink shirts. Soon even Revel produced the models of the "Beatnik Bandit" and "Road Agent". In 1963 when Revel first started making his cars, Roth got one cent royalty for each model sold and at the end of the year he made $32,000 just from the royalties. He got his name Big Daddy for being the father of the car enthusiasts and showing them the right way too go. The "Beatnik Bandit" was one of the top ten Hot Rods of all time in Hot Rod Magazine.
In the year 1999 Roth lived in the quiet community in Utah and was still tooling around with cars and drawings. He was working on his new car "THe Stealth 2000," which was showcased at the American Institute of Graphic Design in the month of October 1999 in Las Vegas. Also during this year I got the honor of meeting Roth at the Detroit Autorama. We talked for a few minutes and he gave me a Rat Fink drawing with his signature on it.
On April 4, 2001, Ed Roth died from a heart attack. I guess we all have to go someday. He was a great inspiration to everyone who loved cars. Roth geniusness has created a timeless monster that will always be around.
