Anyone with drive and talent on the scale of Boyd Coddington reaches considerable success in their chosen field, but for Boyd the chart went where he "couldn't have imagined it in a million years." He was a legendary figure in the hot rod world long before the TV show, but now there are millions of people outside the car hobby who also admire his work. Demand for a Boyd car is high. Where he once produced one car at a time at home during the day while doing machine work at Disneyland on the graveyard shift, his present shop in La Habra, California has some 70 talented employees working in a 50,000 square foot facility with in-house body and paint shop.
Boyd Coddington set a standard for his workmanship, creativity and thinking from which he's never deviated. Hot rod afficionados who saw some of those first cars he produced may not have recognized the stocky guy with the Hawaiian shirt at that time, but they noticed that all his cars shared the same look and level of detail. Smooth, integrated, no hiccups, nothing extraneous; they were surgery-room clean in form and function. Those high standards Boyd set for himself and the cars he produced led to lots of magazine coverage, which led to enough fame that wealthy customers from other states made the pilgrimage to Boyd's for a car that often made a statement akin to a one-off fine watch or Tiffany jewelry.
