For Teddy Kimer Jr., it's always been about art. From his line of pinup girl paintings to Zoso, his show-winning custom motorcycle, he has an eye for elegance and curves.
By COLETTE BANCROFT
Published June 26, 2003
[Times photos: Michael Rondou]
Teddy Kimer Jr. shows off Zoso, the custom bike that took 21&Mac218;2 years to build and has been named America’s Most Beautiful Motorcycle. It can be yours, for a little over $250,000.
Simple, elegant lines are found everywhere on custom cycles, including the front brake caliper.
Close up of the rear wheel sprocket.
The workshop at Teddies Hotbikes and Components usually is humming with several products. At left, Teddy Kimer Jr. works on the frame of a bike that will house the Hi-Performance Big Inch V-twin engine in the foreground. At right, Kimer’s right-hand man, Mark Kraus, and apprentice fabricator Charlie Styron tackle a separate project.
ST. PETERSBURG - Around to one side of a nondescript building on 28th Street N, in its own white-glove-clean stall, is the bike. Its name is Zoso, after the album Led Zeppelin IV, known as Zoso for the enigmatic, runelike writing on its sleeve.
This Zoso began as a Harley-Davidson, but now, aside from its tires, engine and transmission, it's a handcrafted "rolling sculpture."
Its aluminum body, all swoops and swells, is painted a glossy gold that looks like stop-action honey. Thirty-nine art nouveau-style murals flow around its fenders and tanks.
And the chrome. It arcs like a blade, it slithers like a snake and, oh, does it shine.
Teddy Kimer Jr., who owns and runs Teddies Hotbikes and Components, spent 21/2 years and more than $250,000 to fuse a Harley with 19th century French art, pinup girl curves and a touch of Hot Wheels.
In January, not long after Kimer finished it, Zoso was named America's Most Beautiful Motorcycle at the 2003 Grand National Roadster Show in San Mateo, Calif.
The Grand National, in its 54th year, is the granddaddy of custom and hot rod shows. The competition is fierce, as Kimer knew from having entered another of his motorcycles several years ago.
He didn't win then, but he learned what the judges liked. "I set out to make one of the most wicked bikes on the planet. I wanted to win the Grand National, and I knew what it would take," he says.
"So I built a thermonuclear weapon to kill a mosquito."
Dirt bikes and pinups
Though he spends his days surrounded by motorcycles, Kimer, 42, doesn't look like anyone's image of a grizzled biker. He's trim, well-groomed and articulate, with no major tattoos, or at least none that show beyond the sleeves of his neat blue polo shirt. He earned a degree in management from the University of South Florida.
Kimer lights up when he talks about sons Corey, 9, and Max, 6, and his wife, Jacquelin. He has spent most of his life working with his parents and calls his mother, Rosemarie, a "major force" in the business.
Kimer grew up in the world of chromed pipes and kandy paint. His father, Teddy Kimer Sr., built custom cars for 30 years and started the business that evolved into Teddies Hotrods and later into Teddies Hotbikes.
So reshaping and tinkering with vehicles has always been a passion for the son: "I can't leave anything alone."
The family moved from New York's Long Island to New Port Richey in 1975. Teddy Jr. built model cars, then go-carts. "For my 13th birthday I got a dirt bike," he says, "and pretty soon I was customizing bikes for other kids."
He went to the University of Florida planning to become an architect but left to work with his father. He was also a painter, and when he met Jacquelin Smith, who had studied design at UF, she encouraged him to pursue art.
"When my wife and I were first married, we went into the art show scene. She said, "You should do that,' and I said, "You should manage me.' I was in Mainsail, lots of shows. I did that for 10 years," he says.
Kimer created a series of prints, the Tin Heads, that are quirky depictions of robots. But his most successful artworks were the Teddy Girls, watercolors of classic 1940s-style pinup girls.
"I always loved painting women," he says. When he and his wife met Reed Austin, a retired Playboy assistant art director, Austin showed them 11 original paintings by renowned pinup artist George Petty.
"That was a turning point for me," Kimer says of the lush, hyperrealistic style and sexy subjects of the works known as Petty Girls.
Those wispily dressed women seemed racy in Petty's heyday in the '30s and '40s, but these days, given the graceless raunch all over the Internet, they look downright wholesome. (And their streamlined curves and candy colors look a lot like those of custom cars and motorcycles.)
"I wanted to paint today's women with pinup flair," Kimer says. Austin hooked him up with a friend of Alberto Vargas, the other titan of pinup art, and the friend gave Kimer lessons.
Soon, pinup enthusiasts were snapping up Teddy Girls paintings, posters, post cards and trading cards.
But Kimer's attention kept turning to art on wheels. He built and showed a Teddy Girl Dream Car, a coral and ivory '63 ragtop Volkswagen. One of his first custom motorcycles was Plush, the Teddy Girl Dream Bike.
He still loves painting, he says, and will return to it some day. Now, though, "I have no time to paint. I have too many motorcycles to build."
"A paper-based reality show'
Kimer shifted from four wheels to two about seven years ago.
"I had customized all kinds of cars, trucks, VWs, '50s customs, street rods. After 25 years, I was tired of it. Dad was hinting around about retiring," he says.
Then a client asked him to customize a Harley, and he decided to invest in the bike business. "My Uncle Richard in Miami fronted me the money. Mom and Dad gave me a spot in the shop, and Dad worked double hard on cars to give me time to do it," he says.
Part of his interest in motorcycles came from a desire to create entirely handcrafted vehicles.
"I wanted to do motorcycles that were turnkey, completely sculptured, completely designed," Kimer says.
"A lot of the cars we customized over the years were rust buckets. Instead of restorations, they were really resurrections. I can remember my dad lying on his back cutting out the floor of a car, with rust and junk all over him. I didn't want to do that."
Seven years later, Teddies Hotbikes customizes between 100 and 150 bikes a year. Alterations, or limited customization jobs, cost from $500 to $10,000; totally customized bikes run from $35,000 to $100,000.
"A lot of the time, I'm playing bartender," Kimer says. "These people can be like kids in a candy store: They come in here and see what we can do, and they want everything. It's my job to cut them off."
Kimer's mother works several days a week as general manager, and his sister, Cara Kimer-Ludvik, handles Internet sales of custom parts. (Jacquelin also runs an online business, selling, among other things, Teddy Girls art.)
Right-hand man Mark Kraus and apprentice fabricator Charlie Styron work with Kimer to create the custom bikes.
Kimer says, "We have contractors, doctors, lawyers. We have lots of women customers, and they are so cool. They know around here we're not going to say "hey, broad' or "hey, little lady.' They know what they want, and they love their motorcycles."
Kimer does little advertising. "Reputation is everything for us."
But a custom bike shop does need one kind of advertising: custom bikes. Customers' motorcycles serve that function to a degree, but they are always collaborations.
The custom builder's independent design is a signature. Kimer had built several bikes, but he wanted to rock the world of custom motorcycles. About three years ago, Zoso was conceived.
Kimer says that the scary part was selling his mother on the project. "She's little, she's lovable, she's smiling, but she packs a wallop." But she supported him wholeheartedly: "My mom has vision."
Within three weeks, he completed the original drawings for the bike, then moved on to computer-assisted design, invaluable for its precision.
"I had to come up with a scope and stick to it," he says. "For two years I never picked up a bike magazine, because I didn't want to be influenced."
The project was hardly top secret, though. Full Throttle magazine published a series of articles while the bike was being built. "We really did it in the public eye. It was a paper-based reality show," Kimer says.
About two years ago, reality got serious. "Dad had a heart attack about four months before we were supposed to debut the bike. I took over the business a year before schedule."
Teddy Sr. is fine now, his son says. "He's retired. He rides his Harley."
But the scramble meant that Zoso would take 21/2 years to complete instead of the scheduled 19 months. "So I wrote a letter to Full Throttle readers saying, "I hope you'll be patient,' " Kimer says.
There was no way to speed up the process, he says.
For each part of the body, "we build this wooden frame, a buck, then 30 to 40 pieces of aluminum are hammered over it. When the shape is done, the wood goes away. That's why the cost is so incredible."
Each piece of chrome on the bike is shaped "like a topographical map. Nothing on this bike is symmetrical. Everything is contoured," Kimer says.
"The machinery required for the milling is very high tech, very expensive."
The bike's elegant murals, which look like sinuous stained glass, were painted by artist Chris Cruz of DeLand.
Kimer knew that he wanted the designs to be based on the art of L'Ecole de Nancy, a 19th century French artistic movement that was a precursor of art nouveau and art deco.
"So I brought (Cruz) a whole volume of reference material. I'm a very specific person. I know what I want. And he got it right away," Kimer says.
The murals twine all over the bike's body, even into places not easily seen. The scoop behind the front tire, which channels away water on a wet road, has an art deco chrome grille on its underside.
Inside, on the inner surface of the scoop, visible only with a mirror, is a blue sky with clouds.
"Here's my wallet'
Kimer's thermonuclear weapon has won awards at shows all over the United States and will be shipped to the Essen Motor Show in Germany in the fall. He has been caught up in a media whirl, including an appearance on the Discovery Channel's American Chopper.
Kimer was interviewed at a show but didn't realize that he had been featured on American Chopper until he met a Louisiana state trooper during a road trip.
The trooper talked about seeing Kimer on TV and said, "My wife won't let me get a bike. Would you put in a good word for me? Because she said you weren't one of those biker types. You were on the Discovery Channel. And I really want to get a Harley."
After Zoso comes back from Germany next year, Kimer says, "I'll be riding it to Biff Burger."
The bike has only 250 miles on it, but it's fully roadworthy, as are all his bikes. "They're princesses, but they're street ridden. They're real motorcycles," he says.
Zoso is for sale for a quarter-million bucks and change. "That's not a value; that's actually a price to construct," Kimer says. "I have every bit of paperwork to show this cost $256,000 to build."
But he's in no hurry to sell. "Unless Jay Leno wants to buy it," he says. "My wife keeps threatening to send pictures to Leno," who is an avid collector of custom and vintage motorcycles and cars.
Kimer wants to focus on customizing other people's bikes. "I want the business to stay small and well-managed and tight. If we can build (Zoso) out of this building with this team, we can do anything."
And he enjoys the process. "I have a great job. Grown men come in here, and they get this look on their face," he says. "I see that same light come on in their eyes I see in my kids'. They just say, "Here's my wallet, Teddy. Now, what are we going to do?' "
His sons' Hot Wheels cars are scattered on Kimer's desk, and their photos dot his office walls.
Max just won the peewee division in motocross at Sunshine Speedway, and Corey took first place in the kids custom class at the Full Throttle show in Tampa for his first customizing job, the Sonic Speed Scooter.
"If I have spare time," their father says, "I want to spend it with my family."
Kimer has no plans to build another bike like Zoso.
"If you're really lucky, you get to do something like this once in your life," he says.
"In some ways, it was 21/2 years of hell. Money and time - there's never enough of either one. But I would not change a thing."
When he's not swanning around on Zoso for the cameras, he drives an '88 Chevy pickup. "The paint's peeling off. It needs seat covers. But it's great for the motocross bikes."
