



People who work in the automobile industry admit that specialists in that field usually have one or two skills they are good at, whereas Chip was successful at develop all those specialities almost up to perfection.īoyd Coddington was very enthusiastic about his company – “Boyd Wheels” – and hoped it would help “Hot Rods by Boyd” to overcome the difficulties they had, but it all turned out a failure and the company declared bankruptcy in 1998. While working on these creations, Chip improved several skills at once: designing, fabricating, painting and welding. Chip had a chance to work on such famous projects as as the Boydster and Boydster II. Eventually, Chip got the post of the president of “Hot Rods by Boyd”, a company which Coddington created for new fresh ideas in hot rods design. While he was working full-time for Stehrenberger Design and only part-time for Boyd, he transitioned to fully switching to Boyd’s company. In 1990 Chip started his fruitful co-operation with Boyd Coddington. Chip subsequently graduated from Art Center College with honors, and then having 31 jobs offers to choose from. Chip met his girlfriend and future wife Lynne during 1989, and she insisted on his returning to college since she told Chip she didn’t want to marry somebody without a college education. Douglas Sam “Chip” Foose EducationĬhip was very motivated to learn and study, and after high school, in 1982 he started attending Art Center College of Design where he studied there for two years but then had to quit due to financial difficulties, and went to work for Clenet Coachworks for four years to raise some money. Chip officially announced that his father passed away on his Facebook and Instagram accounts. Sam Foose died on 29 November 2018, leaving the family grieving. As his father told him later, that ‘was the best way to learn from mistakes’. Sam was satisfied by his son’s work, and Chip was proud of himself, but to his shock Sam at once took the hammer and dropped it right on the fresh paint of the hood and asked Chip to fix it again. When Chip was nine years old, Sam gave him a real treasure – a wrecked Volkswagen with which Chip was thrilled by the opportunity to do the whole work on his own, and spent all his spare time after school and on weekend to fix it, mesmerized by the magic of hammering out the dents and fixing the smashed metal.

People gathered around him to watch him drawing, and even paid seven or eight dollars to get their hot rod drawn by him. Chip accompanied his father to cars shows and hot-rod runs whenever Chip liked a car he saw, he took his sketchbook and his colored pencils and drew it, sitting right on the ground in front of the car. Chip met him when he was a teenager, and intended to enter the Art Center College of Design. to help his family to deal with bills and debts, which he actually enjoyed he was strongly inspired by the talents and success story of Alexander Sarantos Tremulis, an automobile designer who worked for the Ford Motor Company and Tucker Car Corporation – Preston Tucker’s company. The work was worth it, as Sam appeared in several hot-rod magazines with his custom creations, and people started talking about him.Ĭhip started working at his father’s firm when he was only seven years old. Terry didn’t want the kids to miss their father so she brought them to Sam’s shop so they could have a family dinner together. He spent the days on repair work and the nights on his true passion, hot rods. They married on 2 December 1959, their union was a success, although there were times when Sam worked for 100 hours a week to earn enough money for his family to have a good life. Terry was a passionate car enthusiast herself, and their similar interest in cars and design made them a close couple. Terry Loose, Sam’s wife and Chip’s mother, supported her husband as hard as she could. One couldn’t call that company a prosperous one in late ‘70s. His father, Sam Foose, was an automobile general specialist and had his own company in Santa Barbara called “Project Design”. Douglas Sam “Chip” Foose was born on 13 October 1963, in Santa Barbara, California USA.
