Ridler Award the Pinnacle of Iowa Man's Custom Car Interior Career

Winning a Ridler Award is the pinnacle of many hot rod and custom car owners’ passion, but what about the men and women who work tirelessly to produce these award-winning classics? What does a Ridler Award mean to them? Well, thanks to Cedar Valley Business Monthly Online, we found out and the location of the man behind a piece of this year’s Ridler winner may just surprise you.

When you think of car culture, the standard is to think of the East and West coasts. However, car culture is around in every state and for Joel Mattix of Evansdale, Iowa, this culture meant a Ridler Award under his belt this year.

We recently showcased this year’s Ridler Award winner- a 1940 Ford Coupe owned by Ron and Deb Cizek and nicknamed “Checkered Past.” But what most people don’t hear about at the show or in the car’s award coverage is what it meant to be part of such a fantastic project for the people who teamed up to build the award-winning car.

For Mattix, it’s the high point of his career, he told Cedar Valley Business Monthly Online. Mattix, who owns Boss Custom Interiors of Evansdale designed the unique interior of the Ford.

Every bit of the two-toned leather interior, complete with distressed leather seat inserts, Classic Instruments gauges and Mercedes Cognac Wool carpeting, was all Mattix’s doing. Surprisingly, Checkered Past’s interior only took Mattix two to three weeks, where as most of his project take a couple months.

Image: Brandon Pollock/ Cedar Valley Business Monthly Online

Mattix, who has been involved in the world of automotive details and interiors since he was 14 does such exquisite work that he is usually booked up to two and a half years in advance – something that even some of the biggest names on the coasts can’t say.

While Checkered Past will go on to show at several other car shows in the next year or so, Mattix is off to his next project. And when he only works on one car at a time, time is money. Who knows, the next project may very well be another Ridler winner!