Fred Beindorff photographed Ed Roth with his Ford F-100 pickup for Rod & Custom magazine in April 1957. The truck also appeared in the Nov. ’57 issue of Car Craft. Dave Shuten and his crew at Galpin Auto Sports returned the truck to this original state, right down to the Olds Fiesta hubcaps.

1957, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth pretends to paint “Pinstriping by Roth” advertisement on the truck’s passenger door for Beindorff’s camera.

1957, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth pretends to lay a line on the truck’s grille for Beindorff’s camera.

Back in 1957, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth bought a brand new 1956 Ford F-100 pickup. He repainted the light green truck white with bright red flames, installed a tonneau cover with a monstrous airbrush job on it, lettered it for his business (“Any car $4 an up,” read the tailgate), and then used it as his rolling business card.

Roth didn’t own the truck for long. Oliver Bradshaw (who goes by O.Z.) spotted it on a car dealer’s lot in Bell Gardens, California—not far from where Roth had set up shop in Southgate—and bought it, flames and all, in late 1957. “It had probably short of 1,600 miles on it when I bought it,” O.Z. says. He had married his high school sweetheart, Delores, in 1955, was serving in the Army, and was looking for transportation. With Roth’s eye-popping F-truck, he got that, and more.

O.Z. Owned the truck for close to 60 yrs, it ended up in a barn about 10 years after he purchased it, where it laid dormant (unfortunately he’d repainted it except for the grille, which at the time he’d planned to replace) for almost 50 yrs until it was discovered when O.Z. decided it was time to let some things go in a sale. Apparently he never even knew “what a big deal” Ed Roth was… 

Read the full story and see the restored Roth Truck here:  via Hot Rod Magazine 2016