You might say Fred Roth was born with a steering wheel in his mouth. In the early 40's, at the age of four, he would stand next to his father on the front seat of their car as they were traveling down the road and rattle off the year and make of every oncoming car, no matter how fast they approached.

As a teenager in the fifties, Fred had a desperate desire to own a car with the fenders all the way back. His first choice, a ‘49 Ford Coupe, evaded him financially, and left him frustrated. One night while reading a Floyd Clymer driver’s report on the ‘51 Hudson in the latest Popular Mechanics, a spark was ignited that would change his whole life. Clymer pointed out how good Hudson dealerships were, how fast these cars would go, how less than 1% of the Hudson owners were unhappy with their purchase, how fast these cars would go and most important of all, how they dominated the stock car circuit, meaning they were really fast cars! Thirty-one Hudsons and 20 years later, Fred was ready to branch out in his collecting and decided to expand his love for automobiles to encompass different marques. Fred and his wife, Deanna, agreed that they wanted their modified collection to have a theme. Since he was a definite lover of American automobiles and since they already owned the very rare ‘54 Hudson Italia, Fred and his wife decided on a collection of American Sports cars from the fifties.

Since that time the Roths have collected most of the production sports cars of that era, such as the ‘55 Ford T-Bird and ‘55 Chevy Corvette along with lesser known marques, such as a ‘54 Nash Healey, ‘54 Kaiser Darrin, ‘52(Willys) Woodill Wildfire and a ‘52 Muntz Road Jet. Their final addition to the collection was a little known car called a Maverick Sportster, one of seven built in 1954 by Maverick Motors of Mountain view, CA.

The Roth’s are very proud that all the restoration work, including paint, and body, is done by Fred, Chris and Deanna at their home in Thousand Oaks. Their restorations have won many awards, the crowning achievement being their Muntz, which came in second only to the beautiful one off Bosley at Pebble Beach. All their restorations have won a best of show at one time or another, the most notable being the Muntz Jet at Palm Springs in 1997, the Hudson Italia at the 2000 Muckenthaler Motor show and the 55 Corvette. at the Red line Corvette show in 2002.

Collecting these unique cars led to extensive historical research on the topic of early American Sports Cars by both Chris and father Fred. Because of this, the Roths have become noted authorities on the subject and have set up this web site to share this knowledge with others.

FREDERICK J. ROTH
Copyright June 2003