Custom cars have defined the story of Dana Hinkle’s life. He grew up in the sunny lands of San Diego, California, reading through piles of his old man’s car magazines from the 1960’s and marvelling at all that chrome, the amazing paintwork and the amount of detail that goes into each build.
As he got older, he started building model cars and getting inspired by legends like Ed Roth, Gene Winfield, George Barris, Carl Casper, Darryl Starbird, Von Dutch and Larry Watson. It was then that he made a promise to himself that one day he would build a business and retire early, so that he could dedicate his time fully to building custom cars.
And that’s exactly what he did. After building that business and selling it all to retire at the age of 49, he settled into a blissful life of working on cars in his 2000 square foot garage. Man cave? Dana’s neighbour calls the garage ‘man’s town’.
Let’s go back to Dana’s first build, though, way back in 1997 – while he was still running his business, and working in a mere
