Description 'Big Daddy' Ed Roth (March 4, 1932 April 4, 2001) was an artist and cartoonist who created the hot-rod icon Rat Fink and other extreme characters. As a custom car builder, Roth was a key figure in Southern California's Kustom Kulture and hot-rod movement of the 1960s. Roth is best known for his grotesque caricatures typified by Rat Fink depicting imaginative, out-sized monstrosities driving representations of the hot rods that he and his contemporaries built.