Tales of the Rat Fink

Renaissance man Ed "Big Daddy" Roth engineered a shift in mid-20th-century culture with his customized cars, "monster" T-shirts and America's alternative rodent--"Rat Fink." The subject of Tom Wolfe's essay "The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby," Ed Roth helped fuel the "Kustom Kulture"/hot rod movement of the 1960s in Southern California. Hot rodding grew from crude backyard engineering where performance was the bottom line into a refined artform where aesthetics were equally important.