#Chip foose paint jobs how to

On the day he left, he discovered Lynne was pregnant with their first child, his mortgage payment was due, and he had just $700 in the bank. Years later, as Hot Rods by Boyd descended into bankruptcy, Foose was faced with a choice: He could continue to buy parts for client's cars with his own money, or strike out on his own. Even if the thought of designing door handles for the rest of my life didn't excite me.' 'I never thought that what I loved to do–designing and building hot rods and show cars–could ever be a career,' he says, 'but I figured I was still young enough that I could join a carmaker if it didn't pan out. He'd been working for hot rodder Boyd Coddington on the side for two years, 'building cars and having a ball,' when Boyd suddenly trumped Ford's offer to keep him from leaving. She became his wife and business partner.įoose bought his way out of his ASHA contract, interviewed with both VW and Ford, and accepted Ford's offer to come to Dearborn. 'He raised them to an art form…We truly hated him.' Lynne, however, didn't. 'His modeling and drawing skills made it damned tough on those of us who followed him,' says BMW's Bangle with a smile.

Others, however, wish he had stayed away. He returned to school with AHSA backing when his newly minted lawyer girlfriend announced she wouldn't marry him unless he completed his degree. (To read about Amy and her disease, visit Devastated by the loss, Chip adopted her can-do, optimistic attitude in tribute.

#Chip foose paint jobs how to

'When I left Art Center, I really didn't know how to draw what I was thinking,' he says with no sense of irony, 'but the four years I spent as Mark Stehrenberger's assistant showed me how to stop fighting the process.' Around this time, his youngest sister, Amy, died of Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome, a disease that prematurely ages its victim and leads to an early death. Moderately successful, he felt no need to continue his studies.Īt ASHA he learned to build full-size clay models, pull molds, build bodies…and draw.

To make ends meet, he did illustrations for magazines, worked with his father, and freelanced for Stehrenberger-Clenet Design as it morphed into ASHA Corp. Unfortunately, it proved to be more expensive than living in the converted tool shed at his parent's house ('I loved that,' he says), and he was forced to leave two years into his studies. Impressed, Tremulis told Chip about Art Center, and suggested he attend. There he met former Ford and Tucker designer Alex Tremulis, and also took over building scale models for Tremulis from his father. 'Dad likes to say I worked my way up to my allowance of 17 cents an hour in seven years,' he deadpans.įoose learned basic drawing skills by copying his dad's technique and designs, and progressed to drawing the vehicles the shop would build. At the age of 7, he joined his dad's company, Project Design, and learned to do body and paint work. When Sam Foose moved over to Minicars to build government-funded safety car prototypes, Chip tagged along. 'I spent the weekends of the first three years of my life at AMT with my dad, who was building their show cars along with Gene Winfield,' Foose recalls.