The footage shows Tallant's son and Co-Owner Dan Tallant revving the Cadillac up and burning rubber in the shop's parking lot. The Youtube video was a great success, David Tallant said. Within three weeks the video had been viewed over 30,000 times, was the 42nd most-talked-about video, and was the 75th most favored, he said.

"We have had four calls this week alone inquiring about having work done, and all of them were $60,000 jobs where the customer wanted to convert a Cadillac like in the video," he said.

The Youtube video, which is linked to Tallant's Web site, www.tallantsauto.com, has attracted people nationwide from Oregon to New York, he said.

Using Youtube to showcase custom builds and promote business is a new endeavor at Tallant's, but Tallant said he had been  using the Internet and multimedia technology to provide customers with documentation and keep them updated on the work progress.

"If we are working on a guy's car in Chicago, where he can't come see his car, he can go to our Web site, look at current projects, and see where we are at on his car," he said. "It is updated about once a week. It makes them feel good to see that the job is being done right." 

 
Tallant added that for every long-term project, he also compiles digital documentation of the work performed on a customer's vehicle. 

 
"We take digital pictures of the vehicle and also make a video," he said. "When the car is done, the customer has a digital file of photos along with the video so he can show his buddies, or if he ever has to sell his car, he could show potential buyers everything that was done to the car."

For Tallant, custom cars have always been a way of life, starting when he was 16 and got his first car, he said. 

 
"I couldn't stand to drive anything normal," he said. "When everybody else was driving grandma's car, I was driving a hot rod. I just always liked something different, something weird, something loud."

In 1980, after working many years as a pipe fitter and welder, Tallant said he decided to turn his hobby of working on cars into a career. Since opening, he said he has moved twice into larger buildings, brought his son on as co-owner, and most recently hired Dan Tallant's wife, Susan, to manage the office.

"My son at about 10 years old started helping me in the shop in the evenings," he said. "When he turned 15, we bought him a car, and he started his apprenticeship, and it is a good thing, too, because book knowledge is not his thing, but mechanically he can do anything."

Tallant said his son's talent comes in handy because 60-70 percent of business is custom work. He said they order most of their parts from Arrow Speed Warehouse in Kansas City but oftentimes have to custom-build a lot of their parts. The remaining 30-40 percent of business is traditional collision body work, he said.

 
Tallant said he and his son also designed and constructed their newest shop. The building, which took 10 months to construct, includes a 5,000-square-foot work area and a second-floor mezzanine for brake lathes, air compressors, mills, and parts for cars being worked on. A hoist elevator was built in for lifting heavier equipment and engines. He added that he also has a second 5,000-square-foot building for storing customers' cars.

"The mezzanine allows us to get 10 cars into the shop to work on comfortably," he said. "In our old shop, in the same 5,000 square feet, we were maybe getting five cars in because of distribution of space and how things were laid out." 

 
Tallant said he will do anything imaginable to a car including custom painting flames or designs, to raising or lowering a car, to putting in a monster motor.

"Nothing is ever the same in the custom business," he said.  "Even the air in the tires is different."

Because everything is so unique in the custom business, Tallant said it tends to bring more headaches than collision body work, but he added that insurance work is not void of problems.

"We don't turn any insurance worker away," he said. "But you have to make a pact with the devil to survive, and I'm not real big on dealing with the devil. We have to deal with him on a daily basis, but I don't have to be in bed with him." 

 
Tallant cited a recent occurrence when an insurance company made an estimate on a damaged 2003 van for $2,900. After an evaluation of the vehicle, he said the van required an extra $2,900 to complete the job, so a supplement was prepared and given to the insurance company.  He said the supplement was approved, and he did the job.

"They come in and make an estimate and hand it to you and you question whether they are looking at the same car," he said.

"If you are willing to do it for nothing, they'll take it, so it never hurts to ask. Every time you don't ask for it is one more time you're not going to get it."

Although the custom work may be more frustrating at times than the insurance work, Tallant said that when a custom job is completed, it still makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

"When we work on a car for months on end, getting all these thousands and thousands of parts and pieces to gel to make a car run and finally get a chance to turn the key over and here that motor start and actually make it around the block, it still makes me think what Henry Ford must have felt like the first time he drove around the block with his first car," he said.