| The contract spawned a frenzied production schedule. In mid-September, in the wake of an eighteen-day tour of the upper Midwest, Rides spent a few days shooting at various locations in the San Francisco Bay area. Brutsman and his skeleton crew worked the better part of two days at the Dominator Hot Rod Shop, on the outskirts of the Sacramento delta town of Brentwood, about 100 miles east of the city, and a third day at Roy Brizio’s Street Rods Inc. in South San Francisco.
On Location
Dominator occupies several large garages and a very wide driveway adjacent to the ranch home of shop owner Leonard Lopez. He’s deep in discussion with Brutsman and cameramen Britt Cyrus and Rob Styles about how best to light and shoot the underside of a stainless-steel ’33 Ford Roadster being built for Red Line Oil president Tim Kerrigan.
The huddle breaks, Lopez raises the lift a few more inches, and Styles readies himself to capture an under-the-chassis interview. Kerrigan, a silver-haired captain of industry, seems exceptionally confident on camera, knowing almost instinctively when to break and repeat a scene. Non-actors tend to stiffen up when the bright lights go on, but Kerrigan is an exception. He seems right at home, the result of the decade he spent in the television industry before making the life-altering decision to start Red Line Oil.
Twenty years later, that decision has proven to be the right one. Red Line is the top supplier of lubricants for high-performance vehicles worldwide, and Kerrigan has the resources to indulge his boyhood fantasies. When the rough-hewn roadster taking shape before our eyes makes its gleaming debut at the Detroit Autorama, one of the world’s premier auto exhibits, Kerrigan’s pride and joy will have consumed the better part of two years—seven months of that in the body shop alone—and well over a million dollars. | 
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