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
00:00 Building cars is just fun to create as you go.
00:03 You don't know how it's going to look until you're finished.
00:05 And it's the end product that you hope to achieve.
00:08 I don't like to copy what other people have.
00:24 I like to build cars that stand out from the others.
00:29 My name's David Jeffrey and I build Rat Rods.
00:32 Car enthusiast David has always had a love of cars.
00:35 And for the past seven years, he's taken that passion
00:38 and turned it to creating some incredible and unique vehicles.
00:42 I like Rat Rods because they're different to what you see in all the magazines.
00:55 You see the standard 32 roads do it, and they're just different colours
00:58 or it depends on how much money you put into them, how they look.
01:03 And, yeah, they're just fun to drive.
01:05 The original Rat Rod, built by David, was named Bella Rat.
01:13 My daughter's name is Isabella, and we call her Bella for short, so Bella and Rat.
01:19 Bella Rat took about four months to complete.
01:22 She's a small block Chevy. It works, so she can move when you need it to.
01:27 She runs into the zoomies, so you can make it loud or quiet at the time, depending on your mood.
01:32 Put the old shotgun shells on there as an airbag system.
01:36 So as you can see, it's sort of made up of just lots of different parts,
01:39 but together they sort of make up a car.
01:41 Even got the luxuries of a stereo system and a sunroof.
01:45 The cost of Bella Rat was probably around the $12,000 for individual parts.
01:51 We've been offered some good money for Bella Rat, but it's a personal car and I want to keep that.
01:56 David's wife, Suzanne, has been a fan of his work since the beginning,
02:00 often helping him by pitching in on projects.
02:02 I think I'm really proud of what he creates. It's amazing what he does in the garage.
02:07 It's not, you know, it's not something that he just works in the garage and then switches off and then comes inside.
02:12 We built Bella Rat first. We've built the diesel one since then.
02:18 Still trying to get that through the system.
02:20 And Rolls-Royce we've just finished in the last few days.
02:26 My favourite would be Semi Rat because it was done as a family car.
02:31 It tows beautifully. It's got a big long semi-trailer that normally goes behind it.
02:36 Cars are always finished in some aspect, but most people think they're not finished because they're not painted.
02:43 I like the bare steel because it shows its history. It might be 100 years old. Why cover that up?
02:49 Yes, he has won a few awards. He has won Beach Hop 2012.
02:55 We won Beach Hop 2016 with Semi Rat.
03:01 I'm very proud of David. I think he's achieved a lot building these cars, and he still continues to achieve a lot.
03:11 Winning the awards is a big achievement.
03:15 Demand for a rat rod, it seems to be growing against the wishes of our transport industry,
03:20 but people like something different. They like to stand out.
03:24 Most people want to stand out in some way or another.
03:29 [Music]