(car engine rumbles) (brakes squeak)
- My name's Ron Heiden, I own Heiden's Woodworking,
and I restore old wooden cars,
I do the woodwork for old wooden station wagons.
(gentle music)
The Woodie wagons were adopted by surfers
because of the cargo capacity of them.
People who had 'em just didn't want 'em anymore,
they were just a car that was a throwaway car years ago.
Nobody really saved their cars like they do now,
nobody traded the car in to get the next one.
And so these Woodie wagons, people just sort of park 'em
and the surfers go wow, this is huge,
I can sleep in the back, I can throw my board in the back.
Four guys can go in there and we can go to the beach,
everybody can chip in 25 cents
and we'll get four gallons of gas and we'll go to the beach.
- [Announcer] Down the steep and rocky road
to the pounding Pacific, at Palos Verdes, California,
what look like streamlined bread boards
are really surfboards, light and durable,
built to ride the waves like a water toboggan.
- I was in my 20s, early 20s,
and a guy had an old car
underneath a blue tarp forever.
Finally one day he pulled the cover off, the blue tarp,
and I looked at this thing and I said
what are you gonna do with that?
And it was a dilapidated old '47 Ford.
And he said he was going to restore it.
So that was my first recollection really of a wooden car.
People do restore these things
and it just progressed from there.
To build a wood body is a lot of thinking ahead of time,
I mean, it all has to fit when you're done,
you could build anything you want but it has to fit,
so I have a lot of wood stored that's wood for cars
all the way up to Ford cars from '32 all the way to '53.
I have Buicks up into the '50s,
and I have Chevrolets up into, almost the '50s, '48, '49.
And so I have all this old wood
and a lot of it's deteriorated.
There's dry rot in the corners, but it's great templates,
it gives me the palette to start
doing the work on the cars.
(gentle music)
(tools buzzing)
Me creating something is what I enjoy.
I'm putting something back into the world that was here,
I'm putting history back in, one at a time,
and I really enjoy that, and then to turn around
and see the smiles on the faces when people come back
to get their vehicle and to know that they're
just really happy or stoked about it,
that, it's just heartwarming, it makes you feel good
that you did something that was so pleasing to other people.
If a 16 year old Ron Heiden saw what I did
I think he'd be very pleased.
I sort of followed what I wanted to do
and I think I make a lot of people happy with what I do.
I don't think I'll ever retire
but I'm sure I'll always have my hand into doing Woodies,
or just helping people out that I've done cars for,
but I'm gonna travel while I can,
and paddleboard a little bit.
Just take it easy, you know, like everybody wants to do.
And hopefully we'll all get there someday.
(lock clicks)