He [Larry Shinoda] grew up in Southern California, the hotbed of hot-roding. And he created his Chopstick Special, which was a really, for it’s time, a very fast car. And he actually won the first top-fuel dragster race in Kansas that was held in Kansas, and he was the first titleholder. And it was really neat because I was reading those things in Hot Rod Magazine and things like that growing up. And it was very, you know, it was kind of a neat thing for a Japanese American to see that happening.

I don’t know how old he was at the time, but I remember seeing the photos and it was a, you know, it was a typical teenage look for that period, you know, in the ‘50s. And the Chopstick Special was really a, I think it started out as a streetcar but he had gone through and just heavily modified it. He had our doing in conversion to the flathead engine and it was, I mean, it was maxed out for the time. It was pretty hi-tech, especially for him, you know, basically doing it in his own garage. So it was kind of really, he had a lot of time and energy in it for sure, besides, you know, the money that he spent on it.