LOS ANGELES — Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, the outlaw genius whose fantastic car creations and anti-hero Rat Fink character helped define the California hot-rod culture of the 1950s and '60s, has died. He was 69.
Roth died Wednesday at his studio in Manti, Utah, said Joe Bennett, a dispatcher with the Sanpete County Sheriff's Department. The cause of death was not immediately given.
A generation of teenage rebels across the country found a hero in Roth, whose chrome and fiberglass creations stirred awe at car shows. Male teenagers also adopted his airbrushed anti-hero, the bug-eyed, menacing Rat Fink, who became a cultural counterpoint to Mickey Mouse.
While Roth worked on custom cars in his Lakewood garage-studio, youths across the country broke out the airplane glue to work on intricate scale plastic models of his "Outlaw" roadster, bubble-topped "Beatnik Bandit," or futuristic "Mysterion."
As a designer, Roth was considered a genius and visionary, not only for his radical designs, but also for his pioneering use of fiberglass in car bodies.
He was described by author Tom Wolfe in his 1964 essay on the California hot-rod phenomenon, "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby," as the "most colorful, the most intellectual and the most capricious" of the car customizers.
"He's the Salvador Dali of the movement — a surrealist in his designs, a showman by temperament, a prankster," Wolfe wrote.
Roth created Rat Fink and a host of other wild monster characters to help pay the bills and finance his car-design work.
"Rat Fink was probably the most famous of his monsters that he created," said David Chodosh, 40, a friend and business associate. "He made Rat Fink to create some cash flow so he could support his car-building habit."
Chodosh, a Manhattan Beach resident, said that in recent years he helped Roth license some of his Rat Fink artwork and Roth's characters have enjoyed a bit of a renaissance among punk, alternative and hard rock bands.
Roth began a transition into semiretired domesticity in 1974 when he converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and abruptly abandoned his rebel lifestyle.
He left Los Angeles, taking up residence in Manti, a small farming community about 120 miles south of Salt Lake City. He continued to work on car designs, however.
"My fanaticism with cars has just destroyed my personal life," he told the Associated Press in a 1997 interview. "It's an obsession, an addiction. Everyday I pray to God, 'Release me from my calling!' "
Chodosh said Roth was still working on new designs at the time of his death and was hoping to tour a new car in 2002.
"The guy over the years has epitomized cool," Chodosh said. "Even now, in so many ways, he is still the Boss Fink."
Roth is survived by his wife, Ilene, and several children from two previous marriages.