Tom Schauppner’s roots into hot rodding dig way back to the mid ’60s when he was a self-described 15-year-old hellraiser. “Starting out in Huntington Park, we eventually moved to Newport Beach, California, in 1961. Just about every teenager in my neighborhood had a hot rod of some sort. My buddy, Tom Hargraves, got me into cars. He had a ’57 Chevy and I’d help him wrench on it until I got a cool hot rod of my own—a ’55 Chevy I bought without telling my parents,” Tom reveals. “The deal was short-lived, though, as my parents weren’t big on me having a car like that at the time, so my dad made me sell it back the next day.”
Not one to give up easily, Tom bought a ’56 Chevy from a friend not too long after, only this time he rented a garage a few miles away in Costa Mesa to work
