Trending: Hot Rod Fabrication

One of the most popular classes at KnowledgeFest this year is not your typical car audio class, instead it’s the Hot Rod Fabrication session, led by Mobile Solutions’ Bryan Schmitt.

Hot rod fabrication has been around since the 1930s, but in the past five or six years, it’s gone upscale and in new directions. A group of car audio fabricators claim to have launched a new wave of hot rod interior fabrication using new materials, CAD designs, CNC machines, and magnets to create a new style.  Since then, some cars at the annual SEMA show have begun to reflect the trend and more car audio shops are dabbling in it or applying the lessons learned to the newer cars they work on.

And at least two 12 volt retailers–  Avant-Garde Design in Palm City, FL and JK Automotive Designs in Stoneham, MA– have converted to full time hot rod/custom interior shops.  The latter made the change only two months ago.

Jeremy Carlson of Avant-Garde was one of the leaders in the shift to the new wave of hot rod interiors.  A hot rod shop approached him with a build (even though car audio was his main area of expertise) and he began exploring working with new materials and applying what he knew in car audio to hot rod interior design.

“I didn’t take what traditional upholsterers are doing because I didn’t know, so I took what I had taught myself and turned it into hot rod interiors,” said Carlson.  “The traditional shops used plywood or thin wood. I use fiberglass or carbon fiber or plastic sheets. No wood, because it rots. ..” he said, adding,  “Also, coming from the 12 volt side, one thing I came up with is using neodymium magnets to hold all my panels in… that has caught on like wildfire.”  He works with CAD using the SolidWorks program and he uses a CNC router, laser cutter, and CNC sewing machine.

“I was in the car audio side for 23 or 24 years.  Then in 2012, I won Installer of the Year.  Then a little later I thought, ‘What’s next?’  It wanted to go onto something different,” Carlson explained.

He teamed with Schmitt at Mobile Solutions and began to teach hot rod interior classes, which became some of the most popular classed offered by Mobile Solutions.  Schmitt teaches making diamond pleats with a router, French seams with a sewing machine and using aluminum to build brackets instead of wood. He agrees that magnets are a big trend, say, for a cover panel in the back of the car.  The magnets are strong enough to secure the panel so that is never comes off unless you pull it. So the panel is concealed but accessible.

Schmitt says the skills for matching interiors to hot rod vehicles can be used to perfect interior design with any car, not just classic hot rods.  “We have a tool that makes diamond pleats. You see that in a hot rod but also in a Bentley,” he said.

Nick Aiken of MusicarNW in Portland, OR explained the movement in fabrication this way.  “These interiors being built now are so much more advanced.  There’s so much more time and effort put into them so that the interior hot rod industry is starting to put more focus on interiors.  Up to 5 years ago, it was all paint, body and motors and guys would spend $1/4 million on a build and $10,000 of that would be the interior. Now we’re seeing $100K plus interior builds. The guys changing the industry come from car audio,” he said.

Some of the hot rod guys might disagree on which camp started the trend, but at the very least, a growing number of car audio installers are expanding into hot rod and other custom interiors.

A noted car audio installer, Jeremy Katz of JK Automotive Designs in Stoneham, MA, decided two months ago to convert his shop into a custom automotive interior shop.   The shop continues to perform car audio and electronic installation, but only if it is  incorporated into one of its custom interior builds.

Katz opened his car audio store in 2002. But in the last five years, he started moving into custom interiors.  A typical car in the shop is a ’57 Belair, or a ’68 Camaro, or a ’70 Chevelle. And a typical job can take 450 hours to complete. The car will get an overhaul, the inside stripped and then it’s sent to JK Automotive.

Katz now turns down jobs regularly and is booked about three years out.

“We took a big gamble and it worked. We turned down 80 percent of the [car audio] work that walked into our door. We wanted to have a niche where the end result was rewarding and we weren’t competing in a race to zero [in price],” said Katz. He turned down simple radio and speaker jobs, lighting, fixes, simple upholstery and some radar work.

“We waited on the right clients who appreciated great quality work and were willing to pay the price that it takes to do that. In return, they would tell their friends about the work we do and our approach. We finally got to our goal late last year and are currently booked out for a couple of years now. It took about four years to get to where we are now.”

Katz works with a partner,  whom he calls a “very talented upholster,” Justin Cunningham, who originally owned an upholstery shop in the same building as JK Automotive.   “We decided in the last couple of years to partner up and just do the hot rod stuff,” said Katz.

John Metcalfe is the shop manager and Peter Iannaco does most of the CAD work and also helps with fabrication.

There were times along the way, when Katz turned down smaller jobs, and the shop would have no work that day, but he still paid his employees.  “It ended up all working out. Now we are lucky to have so much work that we turn down jobs we wouldn’t mind doing.”  The shop sends the jobs it turns away to a local car audio store.