You may be lucky enough to have met or come to know Alan Johnson & Bill Riedel. Their work … pure masterpieces. Alan Johnson is the guy that top collectors turn to when they are looking for period authentic restorations. Bill Riedel, Sr., a living legend … still working or is it playing at the young age of 80 years old.

Alan Johnson, the man behind the brush, known as “A.J.” in the world of Pinstriping. Alan was asked what influenced him to start painting on vehicles. He tells the story of a car show that he attended with his father in the New York Coliseum and saw a green car that had just been striped. Alan was only table height then and could see a pallet with a Pinstriping brush and a white can of 1-Shot. What Alan didn’t see was Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, the master himself, the person that had striped the green car. Alan was mystified by his palette, the can of paint with the arrow and bulls-eye on it and the exotic brush he was using.

Alan grew up in Red Bank, New Jersey and started striping at the age of twelve years old, he became known early on as the “The kid from Red Bank that painted”. Once Alan found a brush that worked he started pinstriping anything he could find to paint on. Who could have known that some thirty years later, Ed would be sending people to have their cars striped by Alan Johnson at a car show.

Alan Johnson and Bill Riedel, the two artists that laid the final touches on the Kopper Kart Klone.
This project seemed harmonious in quest by both the builders and the artists. Each reached outside the box, going further then you thought you could. Each with passion and extraordinary drive and skill. The famous George Barris Kustom, the Kopper Kart, lives on in the re-creation of the Kopper Kart Klone. The long road to Detroit now behind them and is forever etched in history.