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A man's home is his castle, however in the case of Rich Evans, his castle is his home. Evans and wife Patricia have created a magnificent medieval motif for their 13,000 square foot Huntington Beach Bodyworks, a custom auto shop, located just south of Los Angeles, California.
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| Huntington Beach Bodyworks displays a medieval motif on its 13,000 sq ft facility. |
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The 30,000 sq ft lot provides extensive storage capacity.
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| HB Bodyworks modified a PT Cruiser into a cool roadster for a wheelchair-bound client. |
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At a glance
Huntington Beach Bodyworks
18108 Redondo Circle
Huntington Beach, California 92648
(714) 842-9907
Owners: Rich and Patricia Evans
Established: 1992
Annual Sales: $1.2 million
Size: 13,000 sq ft on 30,000 sq ft lot
Employees: 2 painters, 3 body men, 2 buff and detail, 1 mechanic, 1 artist, 1 secretary
Paint Department: 1 Cross-draft, 1 Down-draft, 3 Prep Stations, 1 Mixing Room
Paint: PPG
Frame Racks: Chief EZ Liner
Alignment Racks: Hunter
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Imagine a Chevy pick-up turned into a Hummer limousine. Envisage a wheelchair-friendly DeLorean-type PT Cruiser. Tattoos on cars. A unique red, white and blue patriotic painted semi. This is just a sampling of the creativity bursting forth from Rich Evans' shop.
Evans comes by his involvement in cars honestly. His father was a mechanic at Midas Muffler in 1965 in Pasadena. In 1988, he purchased his own shop in Auburn and now owns a shop in Sacramento. Evans grew up in that shop fabricating brakes, doing mechanical work and building hotrods with his dad.
When Evans was 13, his dad purchased a '69 Chevy Nova on which Evans could develop his body work skills, and by age 15, he attempted to rebuild his first car. A buddy of Evans' dad, Dave Popkins, owned a body shop in Sacramento where they worked on the project. Popkins did the hard stuff, letting Evans handle what he could. Observing Evans's talent for creative body work, Popkins recommended he consider making a career of working with cars.
Evans and his dad always had a project car. Even though no project was ever really finished in their opinion, a "completed" car would be sold off and a new project begun. Evans learned good, solid values from his father. He was told, "If you are going to do something, be the best you can be at it. If you don't have anything to do, act like you are working."
"Looking busy" turned out not to be a problem for Evans. He was always finishing projects as fast as they were put in front of him and searching for more.
His interest was further aroused as he became involved in auto body repair by working with his grandfather, who lived in North Hollywood at the time. His grandfather was a race car driver, mechanic and shop owner. He worked on a project where two cars were split in half, then welded together middle-to-middle so one couldn't tell which way the car was going. "Every designer was really talented back in that day, and my grandfather was right back up there in it," says Evans. He is currently rebuilding a '58 pick up for his 94 year-old grandfather, calling it "Vern's 58."
Through his grandfather, William, Evans became acquainted with the work of his ultimate role-models, Sam and George Barris of Barris Kustoms Industries. William Evans met the Barris Brothers in Compton in the 1940s and they have maintained a friendship ever since. (Sam Barris passed away in 1967.)
The infamous "Hirohata Merc" was born in the Barris shop in Lynwood, California, in 1952. The two-door Mercury was cut up and reformed according to plans resting in Sam's head, then displayed at the 1952 Motorama when completed. Thereafter the Barris brothers produced such Hollywood movie cars as the futuristic Batmobile, Knight Rider's "Kitt" car, John Travolta's Greased Lightnin' from the movie Grease, and so many more. These custom-designed, futuristic-looking cars later inspired Evans to move into the design of one-off, extraordinary custom car design.
Life begins at 16
At age 16, Evans helped run a body shop for Dave Popkins, who worked for a Toyota dealership during the week and operated the shop on weekends.
At age 17, he worked at Harbor Body works on Placentia in Huntington Beach as a body man helper. From there, he jumped around to four or five different body shops as a helper, gathering all the best techniques from different body men, thereby developing his own expertise. At OVH Autobody, owned by Richard Wolfenstein, Evans graduated from being a helper to doing his own jobs. "Whatever they put in front of me, I did," according to Evans.
He continued to work with Wolfenstein at Freeway Autobody, where he worked on a commission basis, bringing jobs into the shop, then later doing the same at California Auto Collision.
Moving on once again, to University Olds this time, he worked for Don Lynn as a metal man. When Evans, age 18, applied for this position, he was told he was only a kid and couldn't possibly have the knowledge required. To prove himself, he offered to work for a week free to show he could do the job. Well, prove himself he did and climbed the ladder at University Olds. Actually, climbed it right up and out!
About this time, Evans became good friends with Mike Chandler, who also worked at University Olds. Chandler left there to work at Quality Craft, a shop specializing in repairing Porsches and other high-end cars. Rich eventually joined his friend there, thinking it would be a great place to learn about working on high-quality autos.
After working at a few other shops, including Anaheim Hills Auto Body, Evans ended up at Fountain Valley Body Works, where he worked for Dave March for close to a year. All of this and he was just 20 years old!
Couldn't Evans hold a job? Well, the problem was that none of these shops could keep him busy enough. Evans explained, "I just got tired of having to constantly ask for more work. I started thinking about having a shop of my own one day where I could create a working environment that was fun and productive; where the people who worked with me couldn't wait to get going in the morning."
Evans teamed up once again with Mike Chandler, now working at Toyota of Orange. Frustration set in big time, however, and Rich, a really good-looking guy, went to Hollywood to try acting and modeling. He found this work profoundly unfulfilling and returned to his roots - fixing cars.
Evans lucked out in 1991, at which time he went to work at Sierra Showcase. His boss, Mr. Misques, allowed him to do side jobs at the facility, because, once again, he couldn't keep Evans busy. He just kept eating up the work. It got to the point where Evans was bringing in these side jobs every day of the week to keep himself busy, all along working at his home garage on the weekends.
On his own at last
In August, 1992, Evans took the big step of opening his own shop called Huntington Beach Bodyworks out of his garage. Business came knocking on his door. There were a lot of Porsche 356 restorations. He even did a restoration for David Letterman and his reputation as a meticulous and creative artist was growing. Evans worked on every aspect of collision repair and restoration. No aspect of the work was out of bounds for him.
The time came to move out of the garage and into a rented 1400 square-foot shop. As business grew, Evans expanded into another 1300 square-foot space right next door. By the time, he left this location on Slater Avenue, there were three separate units totaling 3900 square feet.
Growth gets out of hand
In 1994, Evans moved his business into a 5000-square-foot facility off Talbert Street. While the plan was to remain at this location for about four years, it was bursting at the seams by the time the business moved in. Working for Evans now were four body men, two painters, two detail men, two preppers, and, of course, Evans, who worked at any task where he was needed.
As with many upstart businesses, this one grew too fast and by 1995 was in financial trouble. With the help of his wife, Patricia, Evans set out to turn things around. He needed to conserve his resources, so he laid off his crew and worked for about six months with only one employee. In eight months he dug himself out of the hole he was in, restoring his pride and reputation.
Evans reassessed his goals and determined just what kind of business he wanted to have in the future. He did collision work primarily to support the growing artistic side of his nature. With a more professional outlook, Evans hired a new crew and moved the business forward.
A New Start
Fate stepped in once again when Evans met a couple of guys from New Zealand who worked for him for a short time. Through them he met an airbrush artist named Terry Stevens, also from New Zealand. Once they collaborated on a project, Evans says "The chemistry was unstoppable!"
Evans had already been designing graphics and flames for cars, but the airbrush part of it let him go further into what he wanted to do - heavy graphic art on vehicles. The airbrush technique made him a more well-rounded artist and began opening doors for him to offer people incomparable designs on their cars. "To catch the public eye, you need to have something that everybody wants," Evans states.
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