People often wonder what lasting effects the internet will have on the world. Well, here’s a car and a story that would never have happened without Google. Not so long ago, Stanislav Chavik was an anonymous welder and panel beater, spending long days in a little shop in the eastern Czech Republic customising motorcycles and hammering out Wartburg fenders and dreaming of life in the California sun. Today, Chavik wakes up every morning in the actual sunshine of Southern California and spends all day building exquisite hot rods for a line of cashed-up clientele who aren’t afraid of dropping a couple of hundred grand on a Hot-Rod Chavik USA custom build. ‘It is like God opened a gate,’ says Stanislav, who now calls himself Stanley. And it all started with a dilapidated 1939 Buick and an internet connection.
