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Author Tom Cotter Hemings Daily

It was hard to escape Ed “Big Daddy” Roth when I was a kid. To young guys in the 1960s, Roth’s google-eyed character, Rat Fink, was plastered on T-shirts and his monster cars were all the rage for kids of a certain model-kit-building age. Roth, an artist, cartoonist, pinstriper, and custom car designer and builder, was all the rage in the ’60s, and much of model kit manufacturer Revell’s revenues was based on scale versions of Roth’s creations. The man was a brand and industry onto himself, having created the weirdo T-shirt craze that others quickly copied. Some of Roth’s more memorable automotive creations some readers may remember include Tweedy Pie, Mysterion, Beatnik Bandit, Surfite, Outlaw, and the Road Agent.

As a kid, Beau Boeckmann was also a Roth-freak. Now, Boeckmann has taken his interest to another level—he has established a small museum dedicated to Roth vehicles and memorabilia.

Boeckmann, 43, is vice president of Galpin Motors, a Ford dealership in Los Angeles that his father bought in 1946. So he has literally grown up in the car business. And when the news spread that Roth’s Orbitron had been spotted in Mexico after going unseen for decades, Boeckmann was all over it. It was found by El Paso, Texas–based car hunter Michael Lightbourn. Lightbourn frequently travels south of the border in search of significant American cars that migrated to Mexico and stumbled on Orbitron in the city of Juarez, where it was basically a dumpster in the front of a sex and video shop. The shop’s owner was reluctant to sell, but the partly destroyed hot rod had languished in front of that store for years, and Lightbourn convinced the owner to sell.Orbitron had deteriorated badly over the decades; the unique front nose cone that carried the car’s distinguished three-headlight pod was missing, and what remained elsewhere was in poor condition. “Michael [Lightbourn] and I started talking at the 2007 SEMA Show,” Boeckmann says. Lightbourn wanted to keep the car and restore it. “But when I told him my vision for the car, we made a deal. So I got on a plane and flew to El Paso to see the car.”

Boeckmann saw the car in all its depressing glory. He and Lightbourn then drove to Juarez to see where the car had been parked for all those years. “I was a little bit nervous, because Juarez is known as the most dangerous city in North America,” he says.

Once Boeckmann had the car back in LA, he worked with many of the car’s original contractors to assist in the Orbitron’s restoration. Larry Watson and Bill Carter painted the car when it was new in 1964; they painted the car again during its restoration. Joe Perez originally stitched the Orbitron’s upholstery and was hired by Boeckmann the second time around. “The toughest part of the restoration was finding the original type TV set that sat in the dashboard,” Boeckmann says. “Roth did everything by eye,” he adds, “nothing was measured.

“We didn’t change any of Roth’s techniques during the restoration.” So if it’s still a little out-of-this-world, well, all the better.

Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s Orbitron, now restored. Photo courtesy Beau Boeckmann.

After being used as a makeshift dumpster in Mexico, Beau Boeckmann bought the Ed “Big Daddy” Roth Orbitron and brought it back to California for a full restoration. Photo courtesy Beau Boeckmann.