Galpin Ford was started in San Fernando in 1946 by a gentleman named Frank Galpin. My father, Bert Boeckmann, was living in Glendale and going to USC. He wanted to earn some money and started selling cars at Galpin Ford in 1953. So next year's going to be his 50th Anniversary.

My dad started off in sales and very quickly became assistant manager then sales manager. In 1964, we moved to the present location just East of the 405 at the Roscoe exit in the heart of the valley.

Frank Galpin was looking at retiring. He wanted to keep my dad, who had actually made the business a real success, so he offered to keep selling my dad a portion of the dealership through his earnings. For my dad, if you can imagine, it was a little like chasing his own tail — the better job he did, the more expensive the stock got. Frank Galpin was pretty smart. My dad was majority owner in 1964 when we moved to this location, but wound up becoming 100% full owner in 1968.

Karl Boeckmann, my dad's brother, has been with Galpin for 35 years. My brother Brad and I, we both grew up here and between us did every job imaginable. The only thing I can't do is turn a wrench — unfortunately. That's the one area I wish I did do. But I was lucky — I got here after the guard dogs. My brother got to start off cleaning up after the guard dogs.

I started off in rental cars and did everything from customer relations, a little service writing, wholesaling, sales for several years, I did F&I management, sales management, then I really started working with my dad and brother more directly. Now I'm vice-president so I oversee just about everything that goes on here. My brother, father, and I are involved in literally everything that happens here at Galpin. I specifically handle all our advertising, marketing and promotions, and oversee the internet department. I do all the Galpinizing — the customizing.

My mom, Jane, is also involved. She publishes Valley magazine. I also work with my cousin Steve McCord and my nephew Brandon Boeckmann in the Galpinizing, the design and production of custom cars and trucks. It's a family affair. I've always loved it. This business is absolutely wonderful if you love people and cars. I've always enjoyed dealing with both. It's actually more of a people business than a car business, believe it or not. I've always had a passion for automobiles and serving customers.

THE MIGHTY 1970s

Beau: I remember we had a lot of unusual vehicles we did here, really crazy surfer vans — I remember we had a Gucci Thunderbird on the showroom floor. And we had a Pinto with a fish tank in the back of it. Back then things were a little freer — we did wild things, wild paint jobs and wild customization. I should say, Galpinization. And I grew up with that as the norm. When I got in this position here at Galpin that's what I wanted to get back into because that's the kind of stuff I grew up with.

Five-O: You've got to bring back the auto aquarium.

Beau: There's a couple laws now that might prevent that.

THE EVEL ONE

Beau: I just talked to Evel a couple days ago. He's still pursuing events for his ultimate event that will contain his comeback jump. I think Evel sees this as a multiple day or week-long event culminating in the jump — like a festival. The Evel Knievel Experience at Primm, Nevada also opens its doors this spring. Gaming and special motion simulator rides that put you inside Evel's boots on his biggest jumps. It's a big year for Evel. We're proud to be working with him.

ORIGIN OF THE EVEL KNIEVEL
GALPINIZED FORD F-150 "GLADIATOR"

Beau: I was actually hanging out one night watching TV. And I had been working on a series of Galpinized vehicles, especially trucks, coming up with some different ideas and concepts on what we were doing to set ourselves apart — Galpinizing has been part of what we're doing since the '60s. We were looking to do a whole series of new Galpinized vehicles for 2002.

I was sitting home one night watching the E! True Hollywood Story on Evel Knievel. Like a lot of us, I was a big Evel Knievel fan growing up and always thought his jumpsuit was really cool. That's when I came up with the idea — why don't we do an Evel Knievel edition F-150 and do the interior and exterior like Evel's jumpsuit?

I thought, jeez, maybe we can even get Evel Knievel involved. I hadn't heard anything in a little while and I wanted to check and see how he was doing. I actually built the truck first in the design we had come up with. A friend of a friend actually knew Evel. He said, Beau, this truck's absolutely gorgeous! Why don't I see if I can get some pictures sent to Evel?

Evel absolutely loved it. He called back and we ended up making a deal with Evel to put his name officially on the truck and do the appearance at Galpin Ford, where he came out and signed autographs for over 3,500 people that came out for it.

And he was awesome. He didn't stop signing the whole time and he wouldn't leave until everybody got an autograph. And he announced his comeback and the news that he was planning his ultimate jump. It was a great day for us. Now we have our Evel Knievel edition Gladiator truck and it's quite an honor.

That was in June 2002. It was early 2002 when we made the call. It went pretty quickly.

We built a prototype white truck with the exact paint scheme and interior. We made the new truck the official model, made some additions to it, really got all the details down on it. That's when we dyed the dashes blue, added the chrome door handles, made up the badging for it.

This truck, Evel wanted it done, this is the only one done in the blue — he wanted it like his suit that he jumped in at Wembley Stadium in London for over 100,000 people. He wanted to see it in blue with gold trim. This is the only one done this way.

INFLUENCE & TRADITION

Beau: The entire conversion van business grew out of Galpin. A friend of my brother's had this van done up and wanted to take it surfing. He said, if you put in a little sink, did a little carpet over here, and maybe like a bench, I'd buy it. So that's where the whole surfer van craze came out of, that spawned the whole conversion van craze.

We did all kinds of crazy things to vans. From "Madame Frenchy's," a van that actually had a whole French painting and fireplace on it, to every color scheme you could imagine. This was back in the late '60s, early '70s, so you can imagine what that was like.

We were also among the first to do customizing of four-wheel drive trucks. We only sold a couple 4WD vehicles a year, people weren't really using them. So we ended up lifting them, putting on big wheels and tires, mounting light bars, everything like that, and we popularized that whole movement.

Even when Ford stopped making Mustang convertibles, we did our own convertible. The president of Ford came out and saw our car and said, wait a minute — we don't build that anymore. He sent it back to Detroit and that's when they started making Mustang convertibles again.

BLACK WIDOW

Beau: We sold those. I try to keep it to very limited editions. Like the Black Widow truck, we basically make one a year. We've made two because we wanted to keep them very exclusive.

I made a custom billet spider web grill in the front and did a hood that has brake lights and an hourglass logo so that it actually lights up for that menacing look. Did custom wheels that look like spider legs. Since my truck came out a wheel manufacturer is making now a spider web wheel that we'll have on the next one in 2003. But on the seats, we took the whole interior apart. Instead of having a gray interior, we did it black. And then the hourglass logos on all the seats. Came out really cool. Red carbon fiber dash.

TRIBAL FOCUS

Beau: That's one for the younger crowd. I got with my nephew on that. That's where we did a tribal paint job black on top, and either yellow, red or white below. The white one is blue on top with blue tinted windows. Did a whole custom front and rear end, custom wheels, spoilers, did custom leather interior with "Tribal Focus" on there, and did an awesome stereo system with a kick-ass box that takes up the whole back end.

NAVIGATOR

Beau: We try to do whatever we think is hot right now. We got a whole Navigator I did that was all lowered to 22 inch wheels, everything done in black, with 3 TVs, a back up camera, Sony Playstation II, navigation system, a whole rolling stereo/ entertainment system. It's pretty choice.

TAILGATE PARTY TRUCK

Beau: I got that idea from a similar deal that was done at the SEMA (Specialty Equipment Manufacturing Association) show. I said, hey, we can do something like that. We call it the TGPT. Basically it looks like a standard truck. Inside is done different with carbon fiber dash, carbon fiber leather, nice DVD & entertainment system inside, but then you open up the lift gate in the back and down flips a 13-inch TV with speakers. You can play a game on TV or put a DVD in. And then you pull out the whole back section and it's a BBQ grill, a sink, two beer taps, a little briefcase that has a blender inside so you can plug in the blender and make margaritas — it's a whole rolling party ready to go.

SEMA has inspired a lot of what I've done, not because of what I've seen there but because of what I haven't seen there. I haven't really seen true creativity and whole packages being done very well. So I thought, hey, we could do something that's a little different, a little more creative here at Galpin. That's what we're famous for anyway. We got a great team of very creative guys, the best painters, the best upholsterers, and the best guys to work on these vehicles.

T-BIRD

Beau: When the Thunderbird came out, we did one in Dusk Rose, which is like a pink color; we used the actual 1957 color Dusk Rose on the car. What's kind of fun is we're able to do just like the factory and dye the dash and do a matching leather interior in Dusk Rose. I sent out and had whitewall tires made for it. So we had a total '50s look and feel to it, at the same time it matched the factory and exactly what they were doing but in a completely different paint scheme.

NEXT SEASON
"My Craziest Idea Yet:
Low Rider Grand Marquis"

Beau: We'll see how this one goes off, but I'm actually building a Low Rider Grand Marquis. It has a wild interior and paint job to match and it will actually lower and raise. It's not on hydraulics or anything, because I couldn't have that under warranty.

We also just had the Thunder Truck, which I supercharged the V10 and did a sport interior on it.

We also just completed the '50s Edition Truck, which we took all the badging off the old F100s, made the front end grill look like the old 1950s truck, did the interior in a tuck and roll, painted dash to match, then actually built a whole custom wood bed just like the '50s. When you open up the bed, it's all a beautiful wood bed in there. It's kind of different. Complete with fuzzy dice.

WHAT INSPIRES YOUR IDEAS?

Beau: Anything I can find. I try to think of new ideas, get our creative group together and work on what the next idea's going to be. We're inspired by having the calendar we do every year. We want to have something for every month that's going to be completely Galpinized. That's what's gets us doing these really big ones. Then of course we do tons of other packages that aren't so elaborate, some simple wheels and tires to special paints, special interiors, not so outrageous as the others.

It's a huge phenomenon right now anyway. The public comes to the dealership, they buy the truck, then they go out and spend thousands customizing it. We can tie our customers in closer with us and create something unique for our customers if we do it ourselves. Especially in Los Angeles. Everyone wants something unique. You try to create something completely different from what you can find outside.

We can do anything a customer wants. It's up to their imaginations. We'll build anything they can think of or they can dream of, quite frankly. We'll do that for an individual customer or we create our own packages so people will see it and say, that's so slick, that's just what I want.

Sounds good to us, Beau. In fact, the Five-O bullpen took the liberty of drawing up a few custom-concept cars of our own. Get back to us with some quotes at your leisure. Can't wait to get behind the wheel of these babies, how about you?

Viva Knievel. Five-O out.