Q&A: For love of a build

Steve Darnell admits a healthy amount of jealousy of the Baby Boomer era. They had the best cars, gas prices weren’t bad and a car was sometimes how people in the neighborhood knew you.

“No-one gives a (expletive) anymore,” said Darnell, star of the Discovery Channel’s “Vegas Rat Rods” series. “You drive a Prius. It’s transportation. Every generation that goes by, it’s going to get worse. The pride’s gone. A kid can’t work on them anymore.”

Darnell and his WelderUp crew work on countless vehicles now, and Darnell estimates he’s built 75 custom vehicles over his life; most enthusiasts usually take on two or three such projects for their entire life.

He and fellow WelderUp mechanic Merlon Johnson are currently working on a show on Darnelle’s YouTube channel called “Make it Run Again.” They fix a car, and then put it up for auction while they drive it to Las Vegas. The third episode wrapped in the last few days. “It’s still a lot of work, but it’s fun,” Darnell said. “And people can really interact as we drive.”

Q: What got you into builds?

A: I always loved them. My mom and dad both loved them. I always loved farm equipment, what people were doing in the 30s during the great depression. When I would see old equipment that would be turned into something, I remember it blowing my mind. It was kind of cool to see what people could do with nothing.

Q: What’s your favorite build?

A: There’s so many of them. Every one is a different expression f what I was thinking when I was building it. It’s hard to detect what I like better than the other.

The D-ROD will probably never go anywhere because it put me on the map, it brings a lot of attention and it’s a great vehicle.

Q: Is it like deciding which kid is your favorite?

A: I was going to say girlfriend. You like them all for some reason. What it comes down to is, every one of them, you love them a little bit different. Every one has their special thing you think is really cool about them. If I see them at a car show, it’s like I fall back in love with them.

Q: Is there a build you wish you could take credit for?

A: There’s so many cool cars out there I like. The one that tripped me out when I was a kid, there was a movie on TV in the 80s. “Hollywood Nights.” Tony Danza and Michelle Pfeiffer were the actors in it. He had a supercharged ’57 Chevy two door sedan. I thought it was so cool.

Q: What’s the hardest part about a build that nobody thinks about?

A: We build them pretty fast. We have to for TV. It’s the amount of labor that goes into it. I get anxiety because I’m so involved in the build. I’m not a guy who snaps his fingers and says, “Go get all this (expletive) done and call me when it’s done.” The hardest part is when you get halfway done with it and you’re burned out. So I would say the halfway point. It doesn’t look right. You’ve fabricated a bunch of parts that aren’t on the car yet. It’s not there yet. At 75% done, you can start seeing it come together.

Q: How do you visualize a build? Is it like how some artists see the statue through the marble and they just have to scrape the excess?

A: That’s exactly it. I’ll get a theme in my head. One of my favorite cars that I built was a clown-themed car. I know that sounds stupid. It was called the freak show. I researched freak shows every night and I slept with clown music. I was having crazy dreams. I was weirded out for two weeks. That’s some of the funnest stuff about what I do … living it while I’m building. Every two or three weeks, I’d almost change who I was for building. I don’t know if it’s like being an actor. They have to put themselves in that place and be that person for a while. When I build these cars, I have to think about the grunginess of it. You have to live it for a while.