Let’s face it, you don’t know anything about Hot Rods, Lowriders, or Kustom Kulture. It’s not your fault, it's your friend’s fault—they got you into cars because of video games like Gran Turismo, Need for Speed Underground, or Automodelista. It’s no wonder why iconic JDM sports cars like the Nissan 240SX, Honda NSX, Mazda RX-7, and Toyota Supra have been skyrocketing in price in recent years. It’s because we remember playing these cars, dreaming about them, and allowing them to fuel our car enthusiasm. We didn’t just see these cars in video games, but in movies like the Fast and the Furious franchise or even in the animated Initial D series I.

Perhaps the reason why we don’t see a similar enthusiasm for early Kustom Kulture within the same crowd is simply because of the lack of coverage. It has taken a backseat to popularized E30 Tik Tok videos and drift missiles staged in music videos. Ross Ruiz, however, is one of the very few documentarians with a social media presence that has dedicated his life to researching and unarchiving the early aughts of the Southern Californian texture of 1940s-1960s custom car culture. It was by chance that Nolan and I ran into him at the Grand National Roadster Show last month.

As you guys know, Nolan has this 1952 Chrysler Imperial. He has the oldest car in the Donut lot and it's been sitting a little longer than expected—and then some. Inspired to get this car back on the road, we decided to go to one of the largest pre 70s car shows to really get a sense for how people were achieving their aesthetic and performance goals. After about 20 minutes of staring at a beautiful bagged ‘39 Cadillac, I noticed a friend of mine off in the corner, Ross Ruiz, about to snap some polaroids of a bagged blue Chevy. Ross (32), invited Donut into his studio where we snapped photos of our upcoming Dice collection and learned about the history of fuzzy dice through a series of Motorama books, Rod & Custom magazines, and scanned image printouts he had laid out on his counter. We wanted to collaborate with Ross on a joint photo series to contextualize our Dice collection with the guy who knows everything about it. Ross’ work is a quilt of automotive storytelling that is adorned by big names like Bill Hines, Tom Kelly, Gene Witfield, Ron Aguirre, and Larry Watso —all of whom he has made connections with in some type of way. He was the guy to help find and locate the first car ever to have hydraulics, a then white ‘54 Ford Kustom that was built by James “Jim” Logue here in Los Angeles. He found the first Impala with hydraulics, a blue ‘59 with teardrop shaped rear lamps built by Bill Hines and commissioned by Japanese American owner, Tats Gotanda. Donut has talked about lowrider history before on Past Gas, but Ross describes that both of these aforementioned vehicles predated the modern lowrider that we know and love today. Before Dayton wheels became the wheel of choice for modern lowriders, a 1954 Buick Skylark wheel would be applied as a sort of F-U to the ever so popular sombreros and wheel covers that adorned most cars of the late 50s.