Hot rods are among the deepest, strongest threads in the fabric of American culture. Anyone with a finger on the national pulse could have predicted that a high-definition television (HDTV) show on the topic would be an instant hit. Anyone, that is, except programming executives at Discovery HD, who last year tentatively accepted a pilot offered them by producer Bud Brutsman and director/editor Steve Bebee. As Brutsman tells it, Discovery had many doubts about the glossy show and its equally glossy subject, and voiced objections to both its content and style. Rides’ cinematic look was, according to top brass, "too big a departure" from the company's usual fare, Brutsman says. The Brentwood Communications International Inc. (BCII) partners worked long and hard creating the show's first episode and equally hard pitching it. It finally found a spot on The Learning Channel (TLC), where programmers struggled to see how it would fit it into the lineup. All involved had hoped to see its debut in April of 2003, following a long promotional effort. But in early February of that year, the Columbia space-shuttle disaster forced TLC to postpone a documentary on the space shuttle Challenger, NASA’s previous tragedy. Rides was unceremoniously inserted in its place. The unannounced broadcast didn't draw a huge audience, but TLC re-ran Rides in prime time the following Tuesday. The show’s first fifteen minutes scored a rating of only 0.8—not very encouraging—but its viewership doubled every quarter-hour, ending with a respectable 1.8. "Basically, we hooked a bunch of channel surfers," Brutsman says. They also hooked TLC and its parent, Discovery HD, which contracted with BCII to deliver a full season of episodes.

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.

It will all be worthwhile, Kerrigan says, should the car make it into the Great Eight, the final competitors for the Don Ridler Memorial Award. Autorama’s best custom car receives the award, which is named for a legendary promoter who made the show a big-time event. Brutsman and Kerrigan banter about developing a theme to the series called "The Road to Ridler." In the contest’s more than 50 years, only one builder has won more than once. The competition’s judging is so meticulous that a nearly invisible scratch in the paint or a tiny pucker in the upholstery can drop a car from the standings. Kerrigan has supreme confidence in Lopez, whose driveway is lined with his creations: fire-breathing roadsters and sleek coupes with impossibly short tops, huge engines and ultrawide tires. They look as if they’ve been lifted right off the set of American Graffiti. Dominator’s light-flooded garages are a beguiling blend of design studio and machine shop, so clean that you can eat right off the steel-plate worktables. In fact, we do exactly that as the Rides and Dominator teams break for lunch. Brutsman is calm but intense, a true believer, a hot-rodder to the core, and his enthusiasm for his subject proves infectious. Despite his twentieth straight day of shooting, he still gushes over Lopez’s work, and eagerly discusses the day to come. "This guy is a genius," he says. "But wait ’til you see Brizio’s." If Dominator is rural and laid-back, Roy Brizio’s Street Rods Inc. is urban and intense. Occupying a significant chunk of real estate in "The Industrial City" of South San Francisco, Brizio’s has dozens of hot rods in various stages of development, and dozens of finished ones in storage—most the property of wealthy businessmen or celebrities like guitarists Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.

Like Lopez, Brizio grew up around racing and high-performance custom cars. His dad, Andy—reverentially known as the Rodfather—was among the sport’s pioneers. Also like Lopez, Brizio discovered that he had more talent as a designer and engineer than he did as a competitive driver. Both men have leveraged that talent into lucrative businesses, catering to well-heeled enthusiasts who will spend whatever it takes to put a boss ride on the road. Hot rods aren't just an oddball hobby; they are big business for top-ranked custom shops. Quite unbidden, both Lopez and Brizio mention that they have backlogged orders sufficient to keep them busy for the next three years.

Brizio’s technicians sport uniforms of clean denims topped with gray T-shirts emblazoned with the shop logo. As Brutsman, Styles, Cyrus, sound technician Fred Runer and various assistants scramble for the best shot, Team Brizio assembles and disassembles a ’32 roadster. They lift and remove the car’s one-piece body (otherwise known as the shell) with the elegant choreography of a skilled sur gical squad. A massive gleaming chrome V-8 is gently lowered into the cradle of the hand-made frame.

Rob Styles swings his Sony HDW-F900 high-def camera in for a closeup of a back axle assembly—something that might not hook the ordinary citizen, but a compelling shot for Rides viewers. During a lull in the shoot (there are many in the course of a day), Cyrus mentions that the best HD cameramen are recent recruits from the film industry, primarily because they already know how to frame a widescreen shot. "There's tremendous resistance to learning HD among old-school TV cameramen," Cyrus says. "They feel they’ve mastered their craft and that the standard method shouldn't be tampered with." Many of them fear that new technology will eliminate their jobs, and that means enormous opportunity for anyone who is willing to learn, Cyrus adds.

Cyrus, who honed his skill in commercial films, says he believes that HD video is superior not only to legacy video, but also to film technology. "It's so easy once you get a feel for it," he explains. "If you need to do a color correction, you just pop a different board in the camera. What you see is what you get." Technical advancements should shorten time and expense for shooting and post-production, he believes.

One chore that may never diminish is culling the best shots from the miles of rough takes that compose every episode. Director/editor Steve Bebee can't be here, Brutsman explains. He’s 300 miles south in his studio in Ojai, Calif., editing the next episode. He views a mind-boggling 40 hours of footage for each one-hour show—all of it originated in the 24-frame-per-second progressive format and offline edited on 30-frame-per-second Beta SP. For online editing, Bebee uses a program called Final Cut Pro on a Pinnacle Editing board and sends the results to Prime Post in Universal City, Calif., for mastering. Speaking to us by cell phone, Bebee bemoans his absence from the shoot and says he tries to be on site during "crucial days," about 60% of total shooting time. Otherwise, he’s "always editing," leaving unanswered the question of when he finds time to sleep.