Hot rod designer John Buttera dies at 68.

[TruckDriver]

I figured some of you might be interested in this.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nascar/news?slug=ap-obit-buttera&prov=ap&type=lgns

LOS ANGELES (AP)—"Lil' John" Buttera, an innovative creator of hot rods, dragsters and Indy cars who was praised as much for his artistic designs as his engineering, has died. He was 68.

Buttera died March 2 at Los Alamitos Medical Center of complications from brain cancer, his son, Chris, said Tuesday.

"You couldn't help but admire him," Don Prudhomme, who drove winning Buttera cars, told the Los Angeles Times. "He was the best. Not only was he an innovator, he just did things that other chassis builders didn't do."

Among other things, Buttera pioneered the use of custom parts made from aluminum blocks called billets.

In the 1970s, his use of billets for suspension, wheels and other components made for lighter hot rods and sparked a craze for the technology.

Clients at his shop in Cerritos included racing stars such as Don Schumacher and Shirley Muldowney. He built Schumacher's 1970 U.S. Nationals-winning Funny Car.

Buttera also built a car that competed in the 1982 Indianapolis 500.

"The first time I saw my car come out of Turn Four at Indianapolis ... I had goose bumps all over me. I couldn't talk; I was crying," Buttera told the Orange County Register in 1995.

The car finished in 27th place.

Buttera-built cars also appeared at the 1984 and 1987 Indy races but were sidelined by a crash and mechanical problems.

Buttera entered his own car in the 1987 Indy race. It qualified eighth and received the Clint Brawner Mechanical Excellence Award.

Buttera was born on July 22, 1939 in Kenosha, Wis. His father worked at an American Motors factory, building Ramblers, Chris Buttera said.

Buttera was drag racing in Wisconsin when famed racer Mickey Thompson persuaded him to come to California in 1968. He fit in well with the burgeoning Southern California car culture.

Over the decades, his innovative designs were applied to a range of wheeled vehicles, from drag-racing funny cars to motorcycles. For about the past decade he had worked for Harley-Davidson on designs for their motorcycles, his son said.

"He was a genius. He could do anything," his son said. "He liked designing. He'd sit in front of his computer all night long and draw pictures," then get a piece of metal and cut out the part.

In recent years, Buttera built hot rods out of his garage in Los Alamitos.

He was a longtime friend of fellow hot rod designer Boyd Coddington, who died four days before him.

In addition to his son, Buttera is survived by a daughter, Leigh, and two grandchildren.

[Magnumcharger]

Holy shit!
I really thought L'il John Buttera was the best of his kind. That is a terrible loss.
He truly was an innovator in the Hot Rod field.
If it weren't for him, there would have never been a Boyd Coddington, or all of the neat billet wheels that are so commonplace these days.

"Hot rodding and racing lost one of its luminaries Sunday, March 2nd, when "Lil John" Buttera passed away at the age of 67.
writer: Jim Hill

Hot rodding and racing lost one of its luminaries this past weekend when John Buttera passed away from complications of a brain tumor. "Lil John," as he was known to the industry, was 67 at the time of his passing.

Buttera loved the California lifestyle, especially racing and rodding aspects of being in the Golden State, but unlike many of its pioneers, he was not a native. Buttera came to "The Coast" in 1969 with a reputation and tremendous skills already intact when he abandoned the snow and ice of Wisconsin for SoCal's balmy beaches. It was in Kenosha, Wisconsin that Buttera built a reputation for designing, fabricating and welding highly crafted dragster chassis as the "B" part of R&B Chassis. R&B built many of the upper Midwest's best cars, and his skills as a high-end craftsman made it possible for him to smoothly transition his way into the ranks of "chassis masters" on the SoCal scene.
His initial works were in building more front-engine dragsters, but he soon branched into Funny Cars and then Pro Stocks, each one bearing notably innovative design and flawless craftsmanship. Soon 'Lil John Race Cars' became a hallmark among many of the top drag racers of the 70's. Among his very well known customers were Don ?Snake? Prudhomme and Don "Stardust" Schumacher. It was also Buttera who designed and built the very successful and unique Barry Setzer owned, Bruce Walker driven, small-block Chevy powered Pro Stock Vega of the early 70's, one of the most successful Pro cars run on the West Coast.

Buttera was gifted not only as a fabricator and welder but also as a machinist. All of his works were adorned with examples of his rampantly intuitive creativity. He may very well have been the "father of billet components" in racing and street rodding, as his love of taking a chunk of aluminum and machining it into something uniquely functional were legend. Buttera caught the street rod bug in the 70's, and created several top-flight rods. These were not only rolling examples of his talent, but high mileage rides that he was quick to jump into and drive hundreds of miles purely for the pleasure of enjoying driving a car that was his own creation.

A true hot rodder and lover of anything that had wheels and went fast, Buttera proved that even a little guy without huge corporate sponsorships could, with plenty of hard work, ingenuity and dedication, build a race car capable of qualifying for and running in the 1987 Indy 500. Buttera?s dream began with a cast-off Dan Gurney Eagle chassis tub which Buttera re-engineered, redesigned and rebuilt, ending up with a virtual masterpiece that had even veteran Indy campaigners admiring what one optimist from the hot rodding culture could produce. Buttera's car didn't win Indy, but it qualified eighth, a third row position that was substantially ahead of a field filled with cars and crews backed by at least ten times the cash resources Buttera had in his jeans. It was the same optimistic "Hey, we can do that deal!", never stymied attitude that earmarked Buttera's craft and his life.

'Lil John Buttera, master metalsmith and passionate hot rodding icon, is survived by his son Chris and daughter Leigh, son-in-law Ronnie Capps, granddaughter Katie and grandson Max.

[Magnumcharger]

Obviously, nobody knew about this guy. Too bad.

[Daytona R/T SE]

Obviously, nobody knew about this guy. Too bad.

I knew about him, His cars were all over the pages of Street Rodder back in the '70's. I built many model kits years ago that had Lil' John's name on them.  He's one of the reasons I'm addicted to cars to this day.

[greenpigs]

I used to read about him in Hot Rod back in the mid 80's then he kind of disappeared.

[TeeWJay426]

I remember him well... like greenpigs said, he was big in the 70's and 80's then disappeared from the automotive scene.... the only customizer names people seem to remember these days are Coddington & Foose. Pretty coincidental he passed away so close to Boyd, since he had a big influence on Boyd's style. RIP, Lil' John.

[LeeBoy]

Didn't Boyd go to Johns shop on an episode of American Hot Rod a year or two ago to buy a car from him? I can't remember for sure.

[Magnumcharger]

Funny thing about John, he wasn't the kind of guy who craved the limelight. He was more of a behind the scenes kinda guy. His protoges however, like Boyd, took the things that they learned from John, and made a fortune with it.
Back in 1979, Hotrod magazine did quite a bit of exposure of John. I don't think he liked it much.

[70Sbird]

I remember that article!
I also remember reading about him and that Lil John made almost all of his parts from scratch.
If he needed something he would just grab a hunk of aluminum or steel and turn it into a functional work of art!
RIP

[superduperbee]

I remember him from all the magazines back in the day, he was Big Time like Foose is now. I use to build models of his cars back in the 70s & 80s too. 
                                                                                                                                                                                               RIP  Ray