SRM: You think there are still a lot of new ideas out there?
FOOSE: The ideas are easy; it's what you do with them that's difficult. If you stay with an era that's fine, but if you look at the '50s era cars and think about larger diameter wheels and the tires that are available allow us to do that. It's just a blending of eras. A few years ago they asked me what I thought we'd see in the future, and I said bubble tops again, and we are! It's that blending of all those eras that's neat. Each of those eras is cool, and blending from them is cool, too.
SRM: Well the major manufacturers have certainly tapped into a retro feel, but some people believe that's because they've run out of new ideas.
FOOSE: I don't see it that way at all. And I don't even see it as retro. It's not today's designers' fault that a designer in the past decided to go away from something that was very good, styling wise. I'm going to change directions here, but if you look at a Porsche or you look at a Corvette, you can find the design lineage throughout history. Take a Mustang for instance. In the '60s Mustangs had such great shapes, but a new designer comes in and they say you're in charge of the Mustang and he's going to say Okay, I'm going to do my thing. And he abandons something that is really good rather than evolving something that was already good. So my hat's off to J Mays and the guys at Ford who've said, you know this is good, how can we refine it? I don't see it as retro as I see it more of a refinement. And it's where do we go from here? You've got a retro model now, but what's the next phase of that car? That's how we go forward while refining what we've done. That's where, for me, it's going to be interesting. You know Mustang is out there now, and there's going to be a new Camaro, and a new challenger, and Mustang gets to evolve. They have an opportunity to get ahead of the curve. We'll see where they go.
SRM: What about street rodding in general? Do you see anything other than the rat rod trend?
FOOSE: Rat rods are there because they're accepted, it pulls from the '50s--it's that blending going into effect. And the other thing is that it's inexpensive, and compare that to the cost of building a full finished hot rod, but there is so much character in them. I love the character about those cars. I could see that some of these cars that are rat rods today--they'll evolve. Those guys will bring them with them. Those guys in the '50s, if they loved their car, brought them with them throughout their life. And later, when they can afford to paint it or do some finish metal work, you might see some of these rat rods evolving into full blown finished cars someday. Or guys will sell 'em and start something else. They might decide that they'd like to have some windows and be able to take now-my-wife and my kid. If I want to stay in the hot rod world they're going to have to finish their cars. So we never know where we're going to go from here.
SRM: At the last couple of Detroit Autorama's you've spent more time downstairs with the rat rods than with the glossy cars up stairs. Do you identify more with those cars than the glossy ones?
FOOSE: I identify with any type of car. I don't know if I spent more time downstairs, but I'll look at the finished cars as well. One thing that you will find when looking at an unfinished car--you imagination gets to run wild. When you're looking at something finished you're looking at "this is it." you look at a rat rod that is unpainted or unfinished and you can start imagining "wow, what if we did this or what if we did that". So when I'm looking at rat rods and seeing what different people have done I can actually get more ideas.
SRM: What about getting automotive ideas from non-automotive products? What has inspired you in that respect?
FOOSE: You can inspiration from anywhere. Probably the most inspirational place that I've ever been was the Henry Ford Museum. There's a ton of design there, but it also goes way back into the 1800s. And you look at some of the farm equipment or these giant locomotives and even the china department. When I was designing the wheels for Boyd and I'd gone through the china department at the Henry Ford Museum I probably pulled 15 to 20 different wheel designs out of there by looking at some of the designs right there on the plates. Looking at what some of these designers had done with these plates. Hey, that could be a spoke design.
SRM: So it can come from anywhere.
FOOSE: Not only that, you look at some of that old farm equipment and the gears that were on that stuff, it's so mechanical, and there were some beautiful wheel designs that were made as gears, and I pulled from that as well.
SRM: I know that in the last interview that I did with you in 1992 I asked where you would be . . .
FOOSE: (smiling) you asked if I would consider hot rodding as a career and I said "No"!
SRM: So for the few people who don't know who you are and they ask what it is that you do, do you tell them you draw cars?
FOOSE: I'm a designer. I design and develop products for myself and other companies, and I try to do that on a royalty basis. And I don't care if it has the Foose brand on it or not. We have both ends that are out there. I don't ever want to become someone's competition. So if we're building a car and we come up with a product that we think should be produced. I will look at that product and think if someone were to make it, who would I wish would make it? So that I know it is high quality. then I may contact that company and tell them I have an idea for them and I'd like to show you something that I'd like to see in production and, if it goes into production, I'd like a royalty off of it. I don't want to be someone's competition--I want to be their ally. If I can help them build there business, then that helps build our business.
SRM: How many wheel designs a year do you think that you draw?
FOOSE: Thousands.
SRM: How many make it into production?
FOOSE: About 30 to 50 a year. There are a lot of Foose wheels out there, but there are a few out there that I've done that my name is not on. What I want in the Foose line is more of a timeless wheel design. Something that you know that if you buy it, it will still be in style 10 years from now.
SRM: So where are you going to be in five years?
FOOSE: (smiling) Like I said before, if I knew what I would be doing in five years from now I'd be trying to do it now, but what I try and do is stay free enough with our time and flexible enough to take advantage enough of good opportunities. So as those good opportunities come along, we can take advantage of it. I think that with the licensing opportunities that we have in place now it allows us to make a living without having to be there every day and make sure the shop is full. So we've simplified what we're doing at the shop and, if a project comes along that we really want to jump on then we'll do it.
SRM: Time being what it is, if someone came to you with ideas on something to produce outside the automotive realm, you probably wouldn't have time for it. But if it is an interesting enough concept, what would you like to be able to design or work on? Something you've always wanted to but never had the chance?
FOOSE: I recently did the Motor City Hotel and Casino project in Detroit, which has been a blast. I did the look of it, from the conceptual sketches, the exterior of the 15-story building, and the casino. They had already done all of the basics of the design of this property, but they didn't like the facade and what the building was looking like. So they came to me and asked me to look at it. I approached it the same way that I would do a hot rod. This was an older building, built in 1916, and was a brick building and it had these towers that were really cool. The company they had was covering up the facade, abandoning this really cool building and, when I first saw it, I thought it would be like covering over a '32 Ford. Let's take this original design, and embrace it, and pull that through the whole building, because it is a historical building and it was so beautiful with some gorgeous brick work. So we carried that detail in the brick work throughout the whole building and did this stainless steel wave that rolls over it up on the roof. The original towers were 47 feet tall, but the tower of the hotel is 270 foot tall, so I scaled this tower and blew it up onto this building and did this double lazy S design in the roofline of the hotel as well as on the casino so it pulls the two buildings together.
SRM: Aircraft or furniture?
FOOSE: I'd love to do furniture, but right now we're talking to a yacht company. Since the American dollar is being devalued, it means that craftsmanship in America will be in more demand from those countries in Europe or wherever. What you'll find is where it used to be too expensive to build a yacht in America before; it'll be cheaper to build a yacht here. I think that will carry through with hot rods as well as art. Craftsmanship, people who can do things with their hands, will be in high demand.