CHRIS RUNGE

[00:30] I'm Chris Runge and I'm a coachbuilder.

[00:36] This inspiration comes from all over the place. From nature, existing designs in automobiles, furniture, architecture, my brain is always going.

[00:52] Part of it is I think an attitude that you have to have towards life that you're just absorbing as much as you can all the time.

[01:05] When I was about 8 or 9 years old at the farm, we had a friend of my dad's bring in a Porsche 914 to store in the barn. So I would actually sneak out to the barn and pull the cover up on the car and climb in and pretend I was driving it. I wasn't supposed to touch it, but I just loved that car.

[01:24] I have been obsessed with transportation since I was able to talk.

[01:31] You know, if someone commissions a build, we kind of learn the story and then based on the story we develop an idea of what this vehicle should look like, and it also touches I think what it should feel like when you get in it.

[01:47] Once that process is done and we've landed on the body design, we start hammering out flat sheets of aluminum.

[01:59] We make templates very much how a tailor makes a custom tailored suit.

[02:08] We pull the patterns off of the skeleton that we've built or the buck, and figure out what's going to be the most efficient way to make each panel, and then fitting them to the buck, going back and forth to the different tools I have in the shop.

[02:22] There's a lot of ways to hammer a piece of metal into submission.

[02:29] As a kid I was interested in World War II aviation. The mechanicals and the technology that went into the warbirds.

[02:42] Part of the story is these guys who were taking the old aircraft parts and putting them into cars and building these hot rod motors and going out and setting records. The build styles that they used on the aircraft was going right into the bodywork and the construction of the cars.

[03:08] So they were making them as light and as fast as possible. These are dangerous cars and I love that. That's that same attitude of kind of that rebellion that goes into this, that death defying living right on the edge, you know. Let's go faster.

[03:32] The type of work that I'm doing wasn't exotic back in the 30s, 40s, 50s. It was just kind of a job back then.

[03:41] My fascination with post-World War II transportation and the craft, the artistry that goes into it, is really what has driven me to be able to do what I'm doing here.

[04:05] My son and I are here every day hammering out, designing, building, welding, fabricating.

[04:11] [Son] I don't know how he comes up with some of this stuff. I think it's really cool how he can start with nothing and just draw it out on paper and make it into something that you can actually drive down the road. You know, he starts shaping the metal and I lay out the tubes, it all starts to come together.

[04:41] [Chris] Depending on the build, it's about two to three years to handcraft a coupe from the ground up.

[04:48] Fit windshields, design interior, seats, all the mechanical tuning, suspension. Yeah, bring it all together in one package and then go out, test drive it, come back, make changes, till we have a well-operating, fun-to-drive machine.

[05:08] The driving experience to me emulates the feeling of skating and snowboarding. The freedom, and the spirit, but also the actual lateral Gs and the different experiences you have.

[05:21] Incredible power to weight ratio, you know 330 horsepower, about oh 1,700 pounds, maybe a hair more than that.

[05:30] These cars demand you to learn them and to know them and to understand what makes them do what they do. The man and machine connection.

[05:43] We leave the cars polished raw aluminum so you can see the entire story of the coachwork and the bodywork and the imperfections, the hammer marks, file marks, what all goes into it.

[05:57] I don't think it is even possible to build something in this manner without imparting a part of you with each car.

[06:10] There's so many technological advances that could take place in these trades. Without the computer stuff, like with old school craft, when you start to pursue perfection, in most cases you lose soul.

[06:27] When you pursue excellence, I found that the soul opens up in the work. And that pursuit of excellence to me, I really realized like the value in that.

[06:37] It's cool to see with this how it inspires other people. And if it can compel them to do something great, whatever they do, to me like that's really, really worth it.

[06:48] Life is so short, you've got to be able to have your soul get fed, you know, with what you're passionate about.