Ringbrothers: “the most exciting thing is the next project”

No doubt you’ve heard about Ringbrothers by now. The Wisconsin based tuner started out as an auto body shop repairing panel damage in the early 1990s, but for the past two decades brothers Jim and Mike Ring have also been turning out incredible bespoke restomod builds.

Hopefully you’ve read all about Enyo and Recoil. If not, click these blue words right now. TG recently visited their hometown of Spring Green to drive two ludicrous creations. They didn’t disappoint. While there, we caught up with Jim and Mike to discuss first cars, family businesses and favourite builds…

TG: How long have you guys been in business?

Jim: We’ve had the shop here since 1993. Before that I was in another building down the road, and before that it was my mother’s garage. We’ve been doing this a long time.

Typically, we can only pull off one or two cars a year, but those are maybe a year and a half or two-year projects. We don’t do a lot of builds. We still run a full collision shop which is usually crazy busy and obviously we have the manufacturing side of things building and selling parts for other people’s restomod projects too.

Starting out I never would have imagined that I’d end up with 24 employees. S***, we grew up in a three-bed, one-bathroom house and there were seven kids in our family. If you were cold in Wisconsin your ma just threw another kid on top of ya. It was a different way of living.

We grew up seven miles from here in a small town called Plain. I learned how to dance waiting for the bathroom.

Jim, what was your first car?

A 1955 Chevy. I built that in my mum’s basement. It was a six-cylinder with a three-on-the-tree column shifter.

When I was rebuilding it, I was pulling it into the garage while sitting on a five-gallon pale because there were no seats in it. I let the clutch out and I fell off the pale. The car drove through my mum’s garage and hit her hot water heater dead centre. We didn’t have hot water for about three weeks after that.

What's it like working this closely with your family?

Jim: Family businesses are not easy. It’s tough sometimes but like with every business there are good days and bad days. At the end of the day, you’re still brothers and you try to get along no matter what the issue is. We’re the youngest of seven in our family. I’m the youngest, then it’s Mike and then we had four older sisters and then another brother.

Actually, where we grew up, we were one of the smaller families on the block. There was one family that had 22 kids, and none of them were twins.

Who’s the main driver behind the ideas?

Jim: We use a designer called Gary Ragle. He’s a big part of our design process. But there’s also a difference between something looking good on paper and in the metal, so there’s a lot of things that get made and then thrown in the dumpster and we start again because it just doesn’t look right.

It’s definitely a group effort. We have a lot of people here who have really good vision and I think it just comes together.

What has been your favourite build to date?

Mike: I like them all at the time we’re working on them. The Enyo was so fun to do. Recoil is a fun car too. We built that around 10 years ago. You look at some of the cars that we did 20 years ago, and you can see how far we’ve come.

Jim: You won't believe it, but if I could pick any car we ever built, it'd be that Chevelle (Recoil). Just because I love that car so much. It’s so much fun.

I think we’ve done nine K5 Chevrolet Blazers now. You do one and then everybody wants one. We’ve got a guy who wants to do a 1975 square body one with a hard top so that will be kinda refreshing. We’ve never done a Ford Bronco and honestly I’d rather do a Bronco now because I’m sick of doing Blazers.

Is there anything specific that you’d really like to build in the future?

Jim: Honestly, I think it's the European stuff now. I think we're pretty excited about the next car. The last car we did was a 1961 Rolls-Royce. That was a pain in the ass. They’re all British standard threads and it just sucked, but the guy we built it for loves the car. He bought a brand-new 2023 Rolls Royce Phantom and we know the guys at the airport here so they let us go on the runway. We lined the two cars up and he said he wanted to race the new one against the old one. He thought the new one would win it, but it wasn’t even close. Those Rolls-Royces are such nice cars though – it feels like you’re being held in your mother’s arms. Unbelievable – I could get used to that.

Mike: We’ve grown so much since the beginning. I think the most exciting thing to me is the next project that’s coming up. We’d like to take it to The Quail and access a different crowd. It’s not like we want to be Singer or anything like that – I wouldn’t have any employees if we just built the same thing over and over. We want to be a bit more boutique with something different each time.

What's the trickiest part of your builds?

Jim: Finishing them. Seriously, to start builds is one thing but to finish them and get them running and driving is a real process. The thought of having a car fully painted and all done and then you drive it the first ten miles and realise that the clutch is messed up and you have to tear the engine out – that's horrible. The final push is the toughest part to make them road worthy and properly drivable.

Mike: It’s just amazing how many people love this hobby and how many people spend a lot of money on this hobby. We’re lucky.

What do you see for the future of the industry?

Mike: With the technology being as good as it is now – and getting even better – this industry could be crazy cool if the young people have the drive to take it on.

Jim: I’m surprised we don’t see more scratch-built cars instead of taking something that somebody has already done and modifying it. A lot of people buying the cars can’t fathom something completely new and different though. For some reason the hot rod world has to be associated with something that they remember like a Camaro or a Mustang. Otherwise, it doesn’t mean anything to them, no matter what it is or how cool it is.

Mike: But it’s so hard to get over the emissions and the titling of a scratch-built car. Whereas if you’ve got a VIN, you can do these things and they will still allow it because the hot rod industry is so big. But you’re right, I don’t think that people can accept something new. I’d like to see that change.