Ed "Big Daddy" Roth (March 4, 1932 – April 4, 2001) was an American artist, cartoonist, illustrator, pinstriper and custom car designer and builder who created the hot rod icon Rat Fink and other characters.

He studied engineering at a Los Angeles college, then served in the United States Air Force, and by the early '50s, was experimenting with fibreglass modelling.

[2] Roth is best known for his grotesque caricatures—typified by Rat Fink—depicting imaginary, out-sized monsters driving representations of the hot rods that he and his contemporaries built.

Inspired by Roth and Barris Kustoms (whose shirts were airbrushed by Dean Jeffries), Detroit native Stanley Miller, a.k.a.

Other hot rods include the Beatnik Bandit (1961), the twin Ford engined Mysterion (1963), the Orbitron (1964), and the Road Agent (1965), among others.

[3] Roth built many trikes for himself and others, including Candy Wagon, California Cruiser, Secret Weapon, Rubber Ducky and The Great Speckled Bird.

In 1968 Mattel introduced Hot Wheels and Roth’s Beatnik Bandit was one of the first 16 die-cast toy cars produced by the company.

[10] In December 1977, Robert and Suzanne Williams, along with Skip Barrett, organized the first Rat Fink Reunion to celebrate the legacy of Roth.

Rat Fink Reunions are still held to this day at the site of Roth's final residence in Manti, Utah and near Los Angeles.

In 1993, a major exhibition was held at the Julie Rico Gallery in Santa Monica shortly after the Laguna Museum show "Kustom Kulture".

The L.A. Times placed Roth's Rat Fink on the cover of the Culture section December 20, 1993, with a full article about the entire exhibition.

Artist Jean Jacques Bastarache collaborated with Ed Big Daddy Roth for this exhibition creating paintings called Master Finks.

The paintings in all can be seen in the book titled Rat Fink: The Art of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth published by Last Gasp in 1993.

At the time of his death in 2001, he was working on a hot-rod project involving a compact car planned as a departure from the dominant tuner performance modification style.

[18] Roth had his shop, that he started in early 1959, at 4616 Slauson Avenue in Maywood, California (about 8 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles).

During the mid 1960s, Roth associated with various outlaw motorcycle clubs who congregated at his shop as a lot of bikers were then living in Lynwood and Maywood.

Musicians, police officers, FBI agents and various people involved in Hollywood would visit as well, providing an environment for one of Ed Roth's most creative periods, and an important time in Kustom Kulture.

[12] Roth did not own a bike at the time, so he bought a brand-new Harley-Davidson Sportster and then proceeded to paint its gas tank a flat black color.

Roth challenged the head biker to a one-on-one fist fight to settle matters in the middle of the shop.