Chip tuning (CP 1/2009)

Celebrity automotive designer Chip Foose from California is developing an exclusive line of special paints for R-M^®, the automotive refinishing brand of BASF Coatings.

Chip Foose: His company specializes in illustration, graphics, ideation model making, surfacing, and the complete construction of automobiles.		Foose first began learning about cars in his father’s garage at the age of seven. He painted his first car, a Porsche 356, at the age of twelve. Upon graduating from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, he began turning his passion for cars into a career. In 1998 he and his wife Lynne founded Foose Design, an automotive and product design development company, whose inimitably distinctive style of “foosifizing” was popularized on the American TV show Overhaulin.
Foose and his team restored and customized a different classic car on every episode of the show, methodically turning old cars into works of art by re-doing everything from the body to the interior to the paint job. Foose has used R-M finish products ever since first going to business. “Back then, I talked with a lot of people who knew all about finishes, like finishing specialists and dealers. They all swore by R-M,” he says. His dad was an R-M user too: “I must have repainted my bicycle a hundred times,” Foose recalls his first forays into vehicle customization. His unique, trademark designs have made him a tuning celebrity and winner of multiple awards.

Up to a higher level

Chip Foose, 44, continually experiments with new ideas and trends, which is why BASF Coatings proved an ideal partner. “Both BASF Coatings and I are all about taking color up to the next level,” he says.

Foose and R-M have thus teamed up to develop new shades for even more electrifying custom finishes, like a special limited-edition series of finishes recently released for R-M’s relatively new premium product line CARIZZMA, now also available as an environmentally friendly waterborne basecoat. The series name: “Foose.”

www.chipfoose.com