Music: {allcanada} Custom truck to be auctioned with some celebrity help

Thursday, October 31, 2013

{allcanada} Custom truck to be auctioned with some celebrity help

A health scare in Tom Foster's family helped create a unique fundraiser - and a vintage-inspired vehicle rare to the automotive industry.

With help from Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed, the Snakebit F-100 will be auctioned off next year to support the Children's Hospital Foundation.

Foster bought a 1956 Ford F-100 to refurbish it for a fundraiser as part of the 55th anniversary of the family business, Industrial Machine & Manufacturing, in 2011. Several months later, his newborn daughter Sophia spent 14 days in hospital getting tested for a potentially life-threatening disease.

"It was very traumatic," Foster said on Wednesday during the launch of the Wheels of Dreams project.

The tests revealed Sophia had an easily treated infection, but during the hospital stay Forster learned from health care workers and his own experience that Saskatchewan needs a children's hospital.

He decided to find people to help turn his company's promotional fundraiser into something bigger. The Ford Dealers of Saskatchewan got involved, and the project is now bigger than he imagined.

"It's a way to give back to the people who took care of my daughter," Foster said.

Over the next several years, with lots of help, the truck Foster bought on Ebay.com was redesigned and refurbished. Snakebit F-100 is a melding of two classics: The body of the 1956 truck and the guts of a Shelby Cobra Mustang. It's set to be offered for sale at the prestigious Barrett-Jackson classic car auction in Scottsdale, AZ in January.

Gene Simmons, of KISS fame, and his wife Shannon Tweed, a former Saskatoon resident, will be at the trade show next week and in Arizona to help promote the car, said Vaughn Wyant, president and CEO of Vaughn Wyant Automotive Group, which includes Jubilee Ford.

Organizers asked media to refrain from publishing pictures of the vehicle until its official unveiling next week in Las Vegas.

"Ford is telling us it's the first one like it they've seen," said Bruce Williams, a freelance illustrator and car designer who helped develop the concept. "We used as many Ford racing components as possible. Everything on the truck is handmade."

Foster started with the goal of raising $55,000, but now he hopes to raise more than $500,000.

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