HOT ROD Ford Flex - Part 3 - video Dailymotion

MotorTrend

See how the build process of the HOT ROD Ford Flex works in Part 3 of this video series.

Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:03 Hot Rod was a counterculture.

00:20 It embodied the lifestyle, a passion, a zeal.

00:23 Hot Rodding was a club.

00:24 It's about who you are and what you are.

00:26 Hot Rod is where it all began.

00:27 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:31 In the early years of Hot Rod, which

00:35 was started by Robert E. Peterson, it wasn't journalism.

00:39 It was affinity journalism.

00:41 Bob Peterson knew that he had to go out and be one of the guys.

00:45 In order to do that, he had to walk the walk.

00:47 He had to talk the talk in order to successfully launch

00:50 a magazine like Hot Rod.

00:52 Well, I think in every world, we have

00:55 to have good cars to start with.

00:57 And obviously, the Ford vehicles were where Hot Rod began.

01:02 They got this Ford panel.

01:03 It was the perfect deal.

01:04 Rickman could throw all his gear in the back.

01:06 They could drive out from Los Angeles up to Bonneville

01:10 or out through the middle of nowhere

01:12 and represent the magazine well.

01:14 It wasn't a Hot Rod necessarily, but it was Hot Rod.

01:17 With Hot Rod celebrating its 60th anniversary,

01:23 it was time to rekindle the relationship with Ford

01:26 and perhaps bring back a staff vehicle

01:29 that we could be very proud of that

01:32 illustrated what Hot Rod was.

01:34 The fact is, we could have gone and built an old vehicle,

01:36 old car, and made it a Hot Rod panel

01:39 or done something like that.

01:40 But when Ford approached us to build a Flex,

01:43 they asked us, what would you specifically do?

01:46 What would you want?

01:47 What would get across the Hot Rod attitude in a Ford Flex?

01:51 And it was immediate.

01:52 There was no question what we were going to do.

01:55 The thought was, paint it suede red,

01:58 give it a metal flake roof.

02:00 What better way to have a great branded vehicle

02:02 that hits all the marks in terms of what we're

02:04 trying to accomplish with the magazine,

02:06 and that's sell more of them.

02:07 It was a Friday afternoon.

02:15 The whole concept of what would Hot Rod do with the Flex

02:18 flashed in our mind.

02:20 I immediately picked up the phone

02:21 and called Davis Highlander, a young illustrator

02:23 from Washington state who I've worked with a lot.

02:26 And he actually called me to do the illustration

02:28 to begin with to kind of kick the project off.

02:30 That was a great introduction into actually getting

02:33 your designs published in the Hot Rod magazine

02:35 and getting them out there.

02:37 And said to Davis, this is my vision.

02:40 Paint it suede red.

02:41 Give it a metal flake roof.

02:43 And give it kind of a Bonneville attitude.

02:45 Davis, 72 hours later, had these illustrations

02:48 that we're looking at behind me.

02:50 And they were done, and they were perfect.

02:51 And we shipped them off to Ford three days

02:54 after the original concept, and they loved them.

02:56 It's pretty much an honor, you know, having Hot Rod magazine.

02:59 It's basically the leader in what

03:01 I see in the automotive aftermarket

03:04 as far as publications.

03:05 And they call on me, you know.

03:07 I'm pretty dang new.

03:09 And they have me design a vehicle for them.

03:12 It's a great honor.

03:13 Obviously, after we had the designs finished,

03:20 we sent them off to Ford, and almost immediately,

03:22 they responded, said, yes, this is exactly what we want.

03:25 This is something that illustrates

03:27 Hot Rod with our newest platform vehicle, the Flex.

03:31 I had in mind, you know, call Larry Weiner at Performance

03:34 West Media Group, because these guys are

03:37 excellent at taking concepts and making them reality.

03:40 And we didn't have much time.

03:41 I think we had eight, nine weeks to go

03:43 from having nothing done to having the finished and

03:47 completed vehicle.

03:48 You know, I'm proud to say we're done, and it looks great.

03:51 Jerry called me on the phone in the office

03:54 and told me what he had in mind for the Ford Flex.

03:56 Would I take a look at it?

03:57 What's great is Larry took the concept that we had designed.

04:01 Jerry said, well, who would you like to work

04:03 with as far as executing and building?

04:05 I says, I'd really like to do this car in Merlin, Oregon

04:07 at Hulse Customs.

04:08 Not only do they have tremendous capability

04:11 of building a vehicle and painting,

04:12 but they have great fabrication skills, which to me

04:15 was critical for this vehicle.

04:17 [MUSIC PLAYING]

04:20 Inside, we turned to Catskin, who

04:24 makes some of the most beautiful leather

04:26 seats in the aftermarket.

04:27 And they're available to everybody.

04:29 But we took just the basic black leather seats,

04:32 added a red insert, put a hot rod embroidery

04:35 on the headrest.

04:36 We took all the different looks and textures

04:39 and made them all consistent.

04:41 So what we would do is add more of a hammered metal look

04:44 to the interior bright work.

04:46 And the exterior bright work, so it's very consistent

04:49 throughout the vehicle.

04:50 But we knew that there was going to be

04:52 a motor in the back of the car.

04:53 So it's got to be anchored securely.

04:55 And there you're looking at what's

04:56 the subframe in the bottom.

04:57 Where can we pick good points to anchor it and bolt it down?

05:00 So you've built a safe vehicle, a durable vehicle.

05:04 For the graphics, our goal was to use our retro hot rod logo.

05:09 And so we simply had Jason make up a vinyl mask,

05:13 lay it out on the doors.

05:15 And then they would spray out the white right

05:17 over the flat red.

05:19 And it just comes off as perfect.

05:22 It's door art.

05:23 It's everything that we wanted to accomplish.

05:25 For the wheels, put a moon disk on it.

05:27 For the tires, we used Pirelli Scorpions.

05:30 It's the latest technology, but the retro look.

05:33 [MUSIC PLAYING]

05:38 Now, this project's gone really smoothly.

05:40 And that's because there was so much planning and so

05:43 much detailed execution.

05:44 And when we designed it, we knew we had a fast pace to get to.

05:48 Here we are.

05:49 The vehicle's done.

05:50 And it is everything everybody expected.

05:52 And it's what the plan was, because we

05:54 had great communication, great understanding.

05:56 And everybody understood what they needed to do.

05:58 In reality, this project was so well managed by Larry and Jason,

06:03 I didn't lose any sleep over it.

06:05 I knew I had a capable and able team.

06:09 And that's why we chose to all work together.

06:12 We all had the vision.

06:13 We knew what we had to get to get accomplished.

06:15 And we accomplished it.

06:16 [MUSIC PLAYING]

06:20 [MUSIC PLAYING]

06:24 [MUSIC PLAYING]

06:27 [BLANK_AUDIO]

HOT ROD Ford Flex - Part 3

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