King Of Customs

Bodie Stroud has built a hot-rod empire out of a simple idea…

it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

- Mike Guy 

The back lot at Bodie Stroud Industries (BSI) may look like a junkyard, but each junker is potentially worth millions. Surrounded by tall fencing, it’s cluttered with cars that are torn in half, parts broken beyond recognition, and stacks of bumpers. A 352 Ford V8 engine dangles from a chain hoist, a motor without a home. The junk, the cars, the tools, and even the workers, there are eight of them today, wearing respirators and gloves, sanding, shaping, tearing, bending, spraying, and turning wrenches, are covered in dust from the concrete factories that pervade this very industrial, very hellish corridor.

To look at the plain exterior of BSI and its grim surroundings, you might never guess that Johnny Knoxville was here not long ago to pick up his 1970 Cadillac Coupe de Ville (which Bodie Stroud himself had transformed from a busted-up rust knuckle, to a gleaming, state-of-the art missile of style). Johnny Depp dropped off his beloved 1951 Ford Mercury to be similarly resurrected. “From the outside, I like to keep it looking like a junkyard,” Stroud says, “I think it gives me street cred in this neighbourhood.”