“Big Daddy” Roth built the fun stuff, wild whimsical cars that tickled the fancy, and pickled a kid’s imagination for life. As a rule I don’t usually write news stories, or any story for that matter in first person, but I’d like to share recollections of “Big Daddy” Roth the man, and the wild custom cars he built… And of course some insights on the recent Sotheby’s Auction where a recreation of “Big Daddy” Roth’s Mysterion sold for a whopping $246,400 double of what the car was expected to go for.
For a SoCal kid in the mid ‘60s attending a custom car show and walking up to “Big Daddy” Roth and talking to him he was a pretty neat guy. Ed wouldn’t miss a beat he’d just keep airbrushing a creepy monster driving a hot rod or riding a chopper and talk with you, no problem. The airbrush “Big Daddy” was using was a hot-rodded Paasche VL, by hot-rodded “Big Daddy” explained the coral colored plastic handle was missing, so a person could pull the needle back on a VL and make it do better tricks.
David Mann was a friend of mine, and Dave told me about moving out to California to go to work as an artist for “Big Daddy” Roth. Dave said the first thing they did was Ed drove around town, and introduced him to people. They went by Larry Watson’s shop, and watched Larry deal with a potential customer. The guy had a custom paint job that was going south as in blistering up from underneath, and wanted to know how much Larry wanted to fix it. Larry told the guy he should have come to him first and he wouldn’t be having that problem. No more words were spoken the guy left, and Larry went back to talking with David, and “Big Daddy.”
Watson painted the original Mysterion in candy lime green acrylic lacquer over a white pearl base. Instead of a silver base the pearl white base turned the candy lime green, yellow. The Candy Yellow might have had a little Murano gold pearl in it with a ton of clear acrylic lacquer poured on for a topcoat. It was never hard to tell which of Roth’s creations were painted by Watson, or if “Big Daddy” had painted it himself. Watson was a fanatical custom painter with a thousand awards to testify to the quality of his work, and first and foremost “Big Daddy” Roth was truly an artist… function followed form.
There are two recreations of “Big Daddy” Roth’s Mysterion. One that sold at RM Sotheby’s Icons of Speed & Style 2009 at the Petersen Museum, and Jeff Jones of Bakersfield, California built the Mysterion that just sold for $246,400.
Here’s a link to the article Chris Shelton wrote about the Mysterion, Dave Shuten built; Mysterion – Ed Roth Custom Hot Rod
Jeff Jones penned a book Ed Roth’s Mysterion The Genesis, Demise and Recreation of an Iconic Custom Car by Jeffrey A. Jones about building his version of the Mysterion. In talking with Jeff we learned he went to fanatical lengths to replicate the Mysterion, and even farther than Roth to make it run. In an upcoming edition of Street Rodder we’ll run a full in depth feature on the Mysterion, it’s an interesting saga from the history of it as a custom car show spectacle in the 1960s to the tremendous amount of effort, expense, and dedication it took Jeff Jones to recreate the car for future generations to revel. SRM
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