Is there a movie, television series or celebrity that George Barris hasn’t customized a car for?
That’s the question you have to ask when visiting his shop in North Hollywood, California. Every inch of the place is packed with photos and memorabilia from the countless stars he has known and the Hollywood vehicles he has built for them over the course of his 60-plus-year career.
A Pioneer in Performance
(Editor’s note: Shortly after our interview about Fred C. Offenhauser, Bill Smith passed away. His memories remain an invaluable addition to Offenhauser’s life story.)
You might not know that Fred C. Offenhauser had a pet pig named Olive Oil as a child and a poodle named Dolly as an adult. He made Sunday morning breakfast every week for his family. He loved his motor yacht and would cruise to Catalina or along the coast quite often.
Loyalist and Ambassador for the Industry
“Life doesn’t come with a remote…so get up and change it yourself!”
—Mornings with Menzler
Ask people who knew John Menzler to describe him, and “funny” will probably come up most often. But you’ll also hear “mentor,” “enthusiast” and “giver.” To his daughter, Kristi, the word is “hero.” Sadly, the automotive industry and the SEMA family lost Menzler in October of 2013.
A Leader in Good Times and Bad
Born and raised in the area around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Jim Cozzie began living out his dreams at a very early age.
“I pretty much knew when I was five or six years old that I was going to do something with cars and performance automobiles, because while everyone else was reading Dr. Seuss, I was reading Hot Rod,” he said.
Cozzie was 15 when his father passed away, so it was his uncle—an engineer for a company that made avionics for airplanes—who fueled his passion.
At the Forefront of the Future
Nile Cornelison grew up in Creston, Iowa, where his favorite class in high school was metalworking. Like most of us, tinkering on cars came early. His first vehicle was a 1954 Olds, which he was able to buy with money he made as a machinist at NAPA. Those late teen years also gave birth to a voracious appetite for racing cars, and he parlayed his love of the adrenaline rush to racing Top Fuel in the 1960s and 1970s.
“Is he the guy with the moustache?” If the name Dennis Gage is not instantly familiar to someone, his handlebar moustache certainly is.