00:02 ANDY: To me customisation is art.
00:08 COMM: Andy Saunders is an artist, and his
cars are his canvas.
The car customiser is renowned for his outlandish creations.
With each of his 52 vehicles outdoing the last.
00:20 ANDY: Well these are magazine features on
a lot of the cars that I've done.
Some of these are really famous now like that was Mini Ha Ha, I done that as my third or
fourth car.
00:30 ANDY: Indecision and Run aground the speedboat,
they're both owned by a big car collector in London, Claustrophobia is now in Tokyo
in a museum.
00:40 COMM: His work has resulted in several entries
into the Guinness Book Of World Records, and he believes car customisation is art, he has
exhibited in galleries and even tried to enter the Turner Prize.
00:54 COMM: Andy from Poole customised his first
car before he was even old enough to hold a UK driving license.
01:00 ANDY: My first customisation was a MK1 Escort
called Bird Puller, built by me and my dad.
Bird Puller was actually a bit of a bird puller, but not until I was seventeen because when
I was sixteen and we used to go to the car shows it was driven by my mum.
01:13 COMM: And he's dedicated his life to his artwork
ever since.
01:17 COMM: Andy developed a reputation for himself
as a revolutionary in car design.
And his flair for the weird and wonderful has won him countless high profile commissions.
01:27 ANDY: Hyundai launched the cheapest car in
the world to have air conditioning and they came to me and asked me if I would build them
an ice cream van to kind of promote the air conditioning factor.
And I had two commissions from them within three weeks.
01:41 COMM: Andy dedicates endless hours to perfect
his world record breaking creations.
But he can knock a car together in no time at all if needs be.
01:51 ANDY: Over the last three or four years I've
been taken on stage at big car events and had to build cars in ridiculous times.
Such as Flat Out for instance was the lowest car in the world and it was built in three
days at Beaulieu.
02:06 COMM: Andy even entered his work for the prestigious
Turner Prize.
But unfortunately not everyone sees his work as art.
02:14 ANDY: I'd seen a picture in the newspaper
of an out of focus polaroid of Concorde taking off and it was going to be entered for the
Turner Prize and I thought what a load of rubbish, so I went to the local art centre
and said this is what I do, how do I go about organising an exhibition.
I received 76 nominations from the public for that exhibition.
At the end of it there was no response at all from the Tate, the Turner or anyone else.
02:40 ANDY: It's an art form, it should be recognised
as such.
After that exhibition I had a man in Ireland, he actually wanted two or three of my cars.
One of them being Picasso's Citroen.
It was completely re-worked to look like a Citroen 2CV that was asymmetric.
I've had many artists come up and say although it's not out kind of art, it can only be described
as art.
03:05 COMM: When he isn't cruising around in one
of his spectacular vehicles, Andy can be found hard at work in his garage.
03:13 ANDY: This is my newest project, this is a
pre-war Hudson, which is actually a restoration, the car was so rust free, all of this up in
here, all of this, there's no welding been done at all, we didn't have to do any welding,
it was just perfect.
This car is a 1958 Fiat Nuova Jolly.
What I started with was the remnants of a Jolly and I built this over a period of a
couple of years on Saturdays.
They made approximately 540 of them.
I've got no idea what the top speed of this is, I've had it up to about 50 kilometres
and to be honest with you that's more than enough.
03:49 COMM: Andy has achieved remarkable success
through his hobby.
03:53 ANDY: There's nothing on cars that I haven't
done or can't achieve if the budget is there then it's possible.
I'm not getting bored of it but my creativity is spreading to other things.
A lot of current enthusiasts that haven't done it think anyone can do this, they can't.
No one has got the determination to see each project through.
04:10 COMM: But he admits his passion can take over
his life.
04:13 ANDY: When you've got this much devotion for
anything it does affect your personal life.
It is like a drug addiction, everything is completely out of my peripheral view except
the completion of that car.