Doug Larson said, “Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.” People get these ideas and if they do it and they follow it through, they’ve achieved something that no one else has ever come up with.
-Andy Saunders
Andy Saunders created his first-ever custom car before he was old enough to hold a driver’s license. At just 15 years old in Poole on the South Coast of England, Saunders took to car customization like a Mustang with a full gas tank takes to an open road. He unearthed a preternatural ability to bring out-of-the-box, creative concepts to life and push the bounds of what a car can be.
Saunders, the son of a secondhand car dealer (with an interest in the slightly unusual), was raised in his dad’s forecourt, fixing up and selling secondhand cars. For over four decades, Saunders has produced some of the most innovative and imaginative automobile interpretations the industry has ever seen, from Picasso’s Citroën (see above) unveiled at the 2007 Goodwood Festival of Speed to the historic X-2000 to the world record-breaking Claustrophobia. Saunders’ designs and convention-busting point of view will have you trading in your silver Prius for a retro-fixer upper someone’s offloading on Craigs List. Or maybe that’s just me …
I spoke with the car magician a few weeks ago to learn more about his road to custom car supremacy. Our conversation is below (lightly edited for clarity and length).
How did you first get into the world of custom cars? When did you start tinkering with them and letting your imagination run wild?
When I was a kid in the 70s, the custom car scene in England was vast. I don’t know what about custom cars mesmerized me, but I just went, Wow, that’s my dream to have a custom car.
My first custom car came about when I was 15. At school, I had to do a 3,000-meter cross-country run, and long story short, I virtually collapsed. I couldn’t do it. I had palpitations, which went on for probably two and a half days; they just didn’t stop. I went to the hospital, and subsequently, I learned I was born with a hole in the heart.
I had to go in for specialist attention, and the chap said, “For you to have any life after the age of about 25, you’re going to have to have open-heart surgery.” I was so petrified and so were my parents. I had a year before the operation. My dad had a little forecourt where he sold secondhand cars, and he took in a black Escort with a white stripe down the side and a fiberglass flip front and said, “We’re going to build a custom car.” So that’s how the first one came about; it was for everyone to focus on outside of this impending doom, to give positivity.
Neither of us knew what we were doing, but we worked on it all the time and finished it very quickly. At the very first show it went to, it won runner-up custom over 350 other cars, and then we went to a show the following weekend, and it won again. The chap who gave out the prize said, “This young man really needs to have eyes kept on him, because he’s obviously got a lot of talent.”
It sounds like you were a sort of custom car prodigy. Were there any indications of your creative ability before then?
I was quite creative. But I didn’t realize how controlled I was by my dad. I wish I had gone to art school, but I didn’t because I loved working with my dad. I loved cars and working with my dad on his forecourt; at 15, I could spray cars better than the professional sprayer. I just worked with him all the time. I would come home from school and work with him until seven at night rather than do homework. My interest in creativity was funneled into work because that’s what I wanted to do.
I’ve worked most of my life, and I like work. Every car on my website, even the commissions I’ve done for the big companies, have all been done outside my daily job. For 41 years, I ran a service center and an MOT station, so I did all my cars in the evenings and weekends. I love work. It’s funny; I’m retired and can’t tell you how little time I’ve got. I have a new project in the garage, which has been there for six months, and I’ve managed to spend ten days on it. If I’d have been running the garage and running around, doing this, that, and the other, I’d have built it by now. I can’t work out what’s happened to time!
Where does your knack for funky and unique-looking cars come from?
Back in England in the 70s, we had companies like Jensen Interceptor and Gilburn; all these little, small-time companies were making cars. Occasionally, you saw them on the forecourts, which excited me. Car sales sites now are so boring. There’s the silver Audi, the black Range Rover, the black Audi, the silver Range Rover. There’s no choice! They look the same! They’re all ugly!
Some have described your custom cars as “controversial.” I’m curious: what aspect of your work has been controversial?
I seem to upset car clubs very easily. If I get hold of a car, they don’t want me fiddling with it. I bought a 1936 Hudson Roadster recently; it’s super, super rare, and it’s beautiful. The English Hudson Owners Club have got right on their stuffy, Victorian-thinking, high horse about me owning it. They even rallied around their members to see if they could get someone to buy it from me, rather than leave it in my hands. What is so ridiculous is that they don’t even know what I am planning for it, which funnily enough is just a “Show Car” restoration! I’m not chopping it out, it’s too rare to chop up.
What’s your workshop setup like? Are you working entirely alone? Do you have a trusted team of people to help you?
Every detail of design is mine, something I love doing so much, and every inch of body work I build myself using my trusty welder and angle grinder.
I used to carry out my own paint until the introduction of 2-Pack. The little double garage behind my house where I do all my work does not have these facilities, so for several years I’ve used John Bethell for all my straight paint, Mike Wareham for all metal flake, and the talented Scott Lloyd for my interiors. I literally have no idea how to use a sewing machine!
More recently, after meeting the talented artist Maxime Xavier (who became my wife in Vegas earlier this year), our latest cars are now being adorned with some of the wildest and most beautiful custom paint this country has ever seen. Last but not least is Matt Edley, an artisan sculptor. I enjoy his swoopy, avant-garde chrome trims, which I know have taken my cars to another level.
Do you have a favorite car you’ve worked on or a project you’re proudest of?
One is Claustrophobia. I bought that car when it was on its way to the scrapyard and paid ten pounds for it. I had this ridiculous idea, and I thought if it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, I haven’t lost anything.
Back in the ’60s, there was a man called Neville Trickett, and he made a car called the Mini Sprint. It was a mini that was roof-chopped about three inches, and then they cut it in half around the middle—called sectioning—and then lowered the body, but they only lowered it about two and a half inches because they still wanted it as a road usable car. I thought if I were to do the same to Claustrophobia but take out as much as I could get out of every car, I would have a stupidly low car.
As soon as I finished it, it went for a photo session for a magazine feature. They had me sit in it for the cover photo; I had my arm out the window, my head through the roof, and my fingers touching the ground. The title was: “Claustrophobia, the Lowest Car in the World.” The magazine made that up, but about three weeks later, I got a phone call from the Guinness Book of World Records office asking me to send them a picture with a measuring stick next to it, which I did. It was 34 and a half inches tall. Then they contacted me again and said, “We’re going to come down,” and they sent down the official chap. He said, “This is officially the lowest car in the world.”
When I was a little boy, I used to be absolutely fascinated by the Guinness Book of World Records. If there was one thing that I wanted to do, it was to be in the Guinness Book of World Records. I don’t know why that is. My gran used to buy me the new edition every Christmas, and I loved it. As if Claustrophobia getting in isn’t the best thing that could have ever happened, they do a smaller version called Guinness Book of World Records: Extraordinary Records, and on the front cover of that year’s edition, there’s Concord, George Michael, Bob Geldof, and Claustrophobia; it’s actually in the collage on the front cover of that book. Bloody hell!
Saunders has gone on to hold three Guinness Book of World Records titles.
What’s your favorite aspect of bringing a new (old) car to life?
I sometimes wonder if my workshop has become some time travel equipment. Because I would walk in on a Saturday morning, walk out later that weekend, and find out that I’ve been in there three months. On a large project, it’s nothing to do 12 hours of physical work without stopping. You lose time! You lose time, and it’s fabulous. There isn’t anything more exciting in my life. Nothing has ever been more exciting than when it’s just flowing, and you don’t know your name, you don’t know what time it is, you don’t know if you’re hungry or not, you’re just there, and you’re one with it. Passion and creation at this level is something so few will ever be lucky enough to experience.
Saunders’ book The Automotive Alchemist (2023) is available for purchase here.