BEIJING, June 16 -- In a business that's attracting older car buffs and creating new fans with the young, Don Boeke is among the masters.

    The longtime car customizer from Dayton, Ohio has reincarnated Porsches, Corvettes, Packards and Bentleys, repairing, painting and often pinstriping them. Today, he is getting increasing pleasure from taking his craft outside the garage.

Don Boeke displays "The Roach Coach" at his body shop on April 8. Built in the late 1970s, the auto designed by Ed Newton toured as a feature car across the United States and Europe.(Photo Source: Shanghai Daily) Photo Gallery>>>

    He customized golf clubs, attache cases and a refrigerator. He painted a Hobart Corp food mixer candy-apple blends of tangerine-lemon for a trade show. He daubed dolphins and sea urchins on the walls of a swimming pool.

    He has painted nose art on F-16 aircraft, one a skull with the word "Gravedigger."

    Boeke also has taken the car part of his customizing skills into the home.

    He took the body of a Porsche and made a couch with working taillights and turn signals. He turned a Porsche engine into a coffee table. He made a lamp from a Porsche transmission, with holders for beer, newspapers and a remote control. An ignition switch turns the light on.

    "It must have been instilled in me at birth because my interest in cars and bicycles has been since I was a child," the bearded 68-year-old said.

    Boeke's body shop sits amid rusting warehouses on the city's industrial east side. Tucked into one corner of the two-building shop is his art studio. A small loft apartment where Boeke lives has been carved out of another space.

    Those who follow the industry say there has been increased interest in pinstriping, graphics and custom bodywork in the past few years because it has been popularized on television and the Internet and embraced by a new generation.

    Bob Bond, publisher/editor of AutoArt Magazine based in Kansas City, Missouri, said pinstriping - applying very thin lines of paint to accent the contours of the object - has branched out from vehicles to auto-part sculptures to toilet seats.

    Darrell Mayabb, an automotive designer and illustrator, said Boeke is well known in the customizing industry and could have made an even bigger name for himself had he not rightly focused on raising his two children as a single parent and looking after his employees.

    Nickname

    "He is about the automobile," said Mayabb, of Arvada, Colorado. "And he has MS like me - Modification Sickness. He's got to modify it."

    Born in Egypt, Ohio - hence his nickname "The Egyptian" - Boeke was in high school in Dayton when he began pinstriping cars.

    "When I got home from school, there was always a couple there," he recalled. "I was doing it for US$10 or US$15 apiece. I thought I was getting rich."

    He spent some time in the Los Angeles, hoping to be discovered. But rocked by the high cost of living, Boeke returned to Dayton and in 1966 opened his body shop.

    The popularity of pinstriping was on the rise, and Boeke built his business customizing cars, motorcycles and boats. For years, he customized the city's fire trucks.

    Customizing non-car objects requires Boeke to create a design based on research and the client's needs. In customizing the swimming pool, for example, he needed to make sure the sea life was anatomically correct.

    Outside his studio, in the body shop, there have been as many as 88 vehicles at one time. Thirty of them are his own, but he rarely takes them out.

    "I'd rather work on them than drive them," he said.

    (Source: Shanghai Daily)