Los Angeles, 10 AM, on the 5 Freeway heading from East Los Angeles towards Santa Fe Springs. The sun is high in the sky; we're driving against the light, full glare ahead, in smooth traffic, surrounded by a few Americans doing 75 mph. Our V8 van purrs, and so do we. The radio is playing good music, and we let ourselves be carried by the swaying of this big vehicle, sipping our almost-cold coffee. My head is full of images, and I still have the sounds of yesterday's roaring engines on the sand in my ears. We exit the highway and enter a charmless industrial area. Finding
Mooneyes is quite simple; the code is yellow, because at Mooneyes, everything has been Moon-colored since the creation of this legendary 1950s brand that adorns high-end Hot Rods worldwide. What is
Mooneyes?
First and foremost, it's the manufacturing and distribution of "performance" accessories and parts, but also the preparation of Hot Rods. Mooneyes is a legend in the Kustom Kulture scene... V8 engine parts, the famous Moon disc wheels, tanks, aluminum oil reservoirs, valve covers, intakes, shifters, mirrors, steering wheels, license plate frames, Mooneyes gauges and meters...
Indeed, everything is yellow: the buildings, the cars resting in the parking lot, and all the graphic elements derived from their famous logo with two simplistic, laughing eyes, recognizable "at a glance." We are not expected, but it doesn't matter because we are accompanied by
Charlie Lecach,
a journalist from Freeway, Moto Heroes, and Kustom, who knows the owner and will make the impossible happen for us.
We are, of course, allowed to hang around everywhere, and that's cool! The parking lot would have been enough, but I admit I greatly enjoyed taking my Nikon into the back rooms. Here, wheel discs are still manufactured by hand, which will be neatly packaged and sent all over the world, many to the US of course, but also to Japan. Further on, a big project is underway, a big V8, obviously. Here, a pre-war Harley Davidson awaits a resurrection! And then there are areas of the workshop that we are not allowed to photograph, but which hint at major preparations that will be unveiled at a large international show, so "no pictures please"!
With Fred Fosse, we chat with the guys in the workshop who give us a demo of parts manufacturing on a machine that must be... well, as old as me, apparently... I forget to take pictures because I remain focused on the memories of the guy whose name I've forgotten, but it doesn't matter because he has the look to be on Discovery Channel... You know what I mean.
We end up in the shop, a must-visit, where the boss,
Shige Suganuma, gives us stickers, and everyone feels like it's Christmas early... Sometimes man is foolish; he remains a child his whole life in front of an ice cream, a car, a beautiful woman, or... a sticker. Shige Suganuma is fast-paced; it's true he's preparing for the upcoming Yokohama show, but he still grants us a few minutes. I take the opportunity to discuss motorcycles, because Mooneyes doesn't just make supercharged cars; the Californian company offers
a pretty cool catalog of parts to customize your old-school chopper. Anyway, we end up buying T-shirts and hanging out in the parking lot, which is a spectacle in itself. Customers come and go with incredible cars under an azure sky with beautifully placed palm trees, giving this morning under the moon a postcard feel.
Text and photos: Laurent Scavone
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El Camino Mooneyes Hot Rod in California[/caption]
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Hot Rods and car preparations by Mooneyes. Visit to Mooneyes workshops in California, specialist in Hot Rods & Kustom Kulture[/caption]
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Hot Rods and car preparations by Mooneyes, visit to Mooneyes workshops in California, specialist in Hot Rod & Kustom Kulture[/caption]
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Mooneyes Hot Rod chopper, visit to Mooneyes workshops in California, Hot Rod specialist[/caption]
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Mooneyes Hot Rod wheel disc[/caption]
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Californian parking lot at Mooneyes headquarters[/caption]
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Beautiful Yellow Hot Rod in front of Mooneyes parking lot[/caption]
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Interior view of Mooneyes workshop 10820 Norwalk Blvd, Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670, USA[/caption]
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Preparation in progress, Hot Rod in Mooneyes workshops[/caption]
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Harley Davidson in Mooneyes workshops in California[/caption]
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Mooneyes workshops[/caption]
