A MASTER mechanic has become the unofficial king of rat rods in New Zealand, after building a series of incredible rat rod masterpieces in his home garage. David Jeffery, of Rolleston, has always had a passion for cars, but started making his own creations seven years ago, when he produced the award winning ‘BellaRat’. Named after his daughter, Isabella, the vehicle took a year to build and wowed the crowds at the 2012 Beach Hop – an annual New Zealand festival and car show where BellaRat scooped the overall prize for top car. David has since single-handedly produced five other incredible cars, including a converted Semi Truck, appropriately called ‘SemiRat’ which would lead David to yet more award success at Beach Hop 2016, where it too won the top prize. He now specializes in building rat rods - the spectacular custom cars that mix old and new parts and often emulate the hot rods of the 1930s, 40s and 50s.
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MotorTranscript
00:00Building cars is just fun to create as you go.
00:03You don't know how it's going to look until you're finished.
00:05And it's the end product that you hope to achieve.
00:21I don't like to copy what other people have.
00:24I like to build cars that stand out from the others.
00:29My name is David Jeffery and I build Rat Rods.
00:32Car enthusiast David has always had a love of cars.
00:35And for the past seven years he's taken that passion
00:38and turned it to creating some incredible and unique vehicles.
00:51I like Rat Rods because they're different to what you see in all the magazines.
00:55You see the standard 32 Roadster and they're just different colours
00:59or it depends on how much money you put into them, how they look.
01:03And yeah, they're just fun to drive.
01:10The original Rat Rod, built by David, was named Bella Rat.
01:13My daughter's name is Isabella and we call her Bella for short.
01:17So Bella and Rat.
01:19Bella Rat took about four months to complete.
01:22She's a small block Chevy.
01:24It works so she can move when you need it to.
01:27She runs into the zoomies so you can make it loud or quiet at the time,
01:31depending on your mood.
01:33Put the old shotgun shells on there as an airbag system.
01:36So as you can see it's sort of made up of just lots of different parts
01:39but together they sort of make up a car.
01:41Even got the luxuries of a stereo system and a sunroof.
01:45The cost of Bella Rat was probably around the $12,000 for individual parts.
01:51We've been offered some good money for Bella Rat
01:53but it's a personal car and I want to keep that.
01:56David's wife Suzanne has been a fan of his work since the beginning,
02:00often helping him by pitching in on projects.
02:02I think I'm really proud of what he creates.
02:05It's amazing what he does in the garage.
02:07It's not something that he just works in the garage
02:10and then switches off and then comes inside.
02:14We built Bella Rat first.
02:16We built the diesel one since then.
02:18Still trying to get that through the system.
02:20And the Rolls Royce we've just finished in the last few days.
02:26My favourite would be Semi Rat because it was done as a family car.
02:30It tows beautifully.
02:32It's got a big long semi-trailer that normally goes behind it.
02:36Cars are always finished in some aspect
02:39but most people think they're not finished because they're not painted.
02:42I like the bare steel because it shows its history.
02:45It might be 100 years old.
02:47Why cover that up?
02:49Yes, he has won a few awards.
02:52He has won Beach Hop 2012.
02:55We won Beach Hop 2016 with Semi Rat.
03:03I'm very proud of David.
03:04I think he's achieved a lot building these cars
03:08and he still continues to achieve a lot.
03:11Winning the awards is a big achievement.
03:15Demand for Rat Rods seems to be growing
03:18against the wishes of our transport industry.
03:21But people like something different.
03:23They like to stand out.
03:24Most people want to stand out somewhere or another.