Alex Stoner had been following Ringbrothers’ work for a few years. A lifelong Mustang lover (Stoner’s first car was the 1967 lime green Fastback his grandmother bought brand-new and passed along to him when he turned 16), the Chandler, Arizona-based Stoner and his partner Jayne Roorda were in the middle of a 1966 Fastback project that wasn’t going well, so they decided to make a call to Spring Green, Wisconsin, to see if Ringbrothers could help. The team’s award-winning “Silver Streak” and “Reactor” Mustangs had caught Stoner’s eye in the past.

“I just thought it would be fun to call the Ringbrothers, knowing that their level of expertise was probably more than we would ever expect to have, but they said … it would be fine if we wanted to bring [the car] up there,” Stoner said. “We trailered it up there and they looked at it and said that they couldn’t take it on because it would be too cost-prohibitive. The work that was done prior that we had paid for was just a waste.”

The 1966 Fastback was put back on the trailer and sent home with Stoner and Roorda, who eventually pieced the vehicle out.

Disappointed but not dissuaded, Stoner and Roorda told Ringbrothers they’d still be interested in having a project built at the shop, but they needed a vehicle.

“There just happened to be a car that they had bought for themselves to work on someday that was just sitting in their shop,” Stoner said. “It was an old 1970 Mustang, [which] I always had a thing for, so we bought it from them and they started working on it.”

Project Evolution

When Stoner and Roorda began the 1970 Mustang project, they were looking for a vehicle with great handling and performance.

“Initially [the goal] was to [have] a great performance daily driver, but the gentlemen at Ringbrothers are amazing to work with and just very creative, and you kind of catch the bug when you’re with them,” Stoner said. “They’re very enthusiastic and they have a passion for what they do, and every time they came up with an idea on the creative side, we just kept saying yes. Next thing you know, we have this wonderful, super car that is just beyond our wildest dreams.”

The team at Ringbrothers began with sketches for the project, but those plans quickly changed, as they often do with projects built at the shop.

“These cars kind of evolve,” said Jim Ring, who co-owns the shop with his older brother Mike. “You get ideas, obviously, but until it’s on the car, it may not be proportionate or look right, so you tend to keep standing back on these car. It can take sometimes two, three times to get it right, or at least until you feel it’s right and looks proportionate.”

Stoner and Roorda made five trips from Arizona to Wisconsin during the course of the build, which took between 3,600 and 3,700 man hours to complete. When they couldn’t check on the progress in person, Ringbrothers kept them updated with phone calls and photographs.

“It’s difficult [to do a project for somebody in another state],” Jim said. “You’ve got to be willing to take a lot of pictures and explain what’s going on and run the ideas by them. If they’re paying the bill, they need to be kept aware of what direction you’re taking their car.”

Backed by 18 years worth of impressive muscle car builds, Ringbrothers’ customers do give the shop a fair amount of leeway when it comes to their projects.

“Mike and I have a good reputation and I think people trust in us,” Jim said. “People ask us how involved the owners get with these cars, and some [do] more than others, but, for the most part, we try to steer them in the direction we want to take the car. Like the guy with the ‘Reactor,’ the only thing he wanted to pick was the color, and we vetoed that.”

 Beyond the Norm

If a customer wants their vehicle to look like something they saw at a car show or in a magazine, that concept may get vetoed. Ringbrothers will make those decisions on customer vehicles because the shop wants its projects to look different from what else is being done in the industry.

“Mike and I really try hard to be leaders in our industry and not followers, so if there’s something that’s been done, we try not to do it again, or change it to try to better it,” Jim said. “We really try hard to look at our cars as factory prototypes and not so much hot rods.

“If you ever look at prototype cars, they’re at a different level, just really techy and interesting, and that’s what we strive for in our cars,” he continued. “Not so much the hot rod theme [but] less shiny parts and more matted and muted colors. [We] just try to keep it toned down but, yet, high-tech, cutting-edge looking.”

Ringbrothers take cues from clean,  simple European performance vehicles.

“You look at Porsche, you look at Mercedes, how really simple those cars look, especially when you sit inside, there’s no cup holders and gadgets everywhere, they’re really sleek and really tight,” Jim said. “They look like they’re more for function and not for comfort. There’s inspiration [to be] gained [from] these types of cars because those guys are a step ahead of us all the time.”

That style ethos is evident in “Dragon,” which made its debut at the 2010 SEMA Show, where it won the Mothers Shine Award. The vehicle also earned  Ringbrothers the inaugural Golden Builder Award at the 2011 Hotrod & Restoration Trade Show, where “Dragon” was also displayed.

“The vehicle had incredible attention to detail, it was unbelievable,” a Golden Builder Award judge said of “Dragon.” “Every vent, knob, bezel was so subtle but extreme. There was nothing on this car that wasn’t perfected.”

Stoner agrees.

“The 1970 year Mustang is just an incredible Ford product, it was over-the-top when they built the car,” he said. “The Ringbrothers have a way of building a car [to where] it looks like it rolled [out] of the Ford showroom as a production car, and that’s kind of what we were looking for, something that wasn’t over-the-top, yet every time you looked at it you could find something unique about it.”

A Team Effort

Jim and Mike Ring are able to execute these unique builds with the help of their five staff members, two of whom work in the shop with the brothers.

“We’ve got a good system here because of our diversification,” Jim said of the Ringbrothers team. “We’ve got Sean [Hildebrandt] in metal fabrication, who does a great job with it, Chad [Haggerty] who’s an awesome painter, we’ve got Mike, who is probably one of the best body guys in the business, and I typically take care of the assembly, the wiring and help with a lot of the ideas.

“We’ve just got a good group of people and we can talk amongst each other, we can come in and say, without hurting feelings, ‘I hate that, you’ve got to change it,’ and we laugh about it and move on. I don’t think there’s a lot of ego involved here,” he said.

While each has a specialty, everyone pitches in where needed on projects.

“I think it all blends together, there’s no one person that does one thing here,” Jim said. “Obviously, being as small as we are, we all have to do it.”

With the help of  Staci Sprecher, Tammy Walsh and Travis Fry in the front office, Jim and Mike Ring are able to promote a business that has grown to include parts manufacturing through social media sites (the shop is active on Facebook, Twitter and forums) and by attending as many as 12 industry events around the country each year. The Ringbrothers team attends these events with help from sponsors.

“We do all of these events with help from our sponsors Royal Purple, Flowmaster, BASF and Snap-on Tools. Without all of that help, we couldn’t do what we do,” Jim said. “We actually get in front of people with our products and with our cars, and I think it helps tremendously when they can actually walk up and touch something, I don’t think you can ever pull that off on a website.

“I’ve heard a million times, ‘I’ve seen that car on the Internet but it looked 100 times better in person,’ and I think it does because you really can’t capture all of the three-dimensional details [online] like you can walking around it, so it’s important to be in front of people,” he said.

Long Journey Home

Ringbrothers is currently taking “Dragon” to shows around the country, completing its tour with stops at this year’s  SEMA Show in Las Vegas, where Stoner and Roorda will be on hand to pass the Mothers Shine Award on to the 2011 winner, and the Goodguys’ 14th Southwest Nationals in Scottsdale, Arizona.

After that, Stoner and Roorda will finally take possession of “Dragon,” more than two years after the build began. Stoner plans to “polish it a lot” and take the car out for weekend drives.

Roorda has her own plans for “Dragon.”

“Jayne is looking forward to getting behind the wheel and doing burnouts,” Stoner said.

 Ringbrothers:

Address:   E4824 Hwy. 14, Spring Green, Wisconsin 53588

Phone:   (608) 588-7399

Owners:   Jim & Mike Ring

Services Offered:   Custom car builder and parts manufacturer

Number of Employees: 7

Number of Current Projects:  2

Current Project Cars Include:  1965 Mustang and 1970 Camaro

Website:  www.ringbrothers.com

Approximate Shop Size:  8,600 square feet

Years in Business:  18

Photos by Robert McGaffin & Yuda Chen

Tags: Award Winners, Best of 2011, Cool Cars, Golden Builder Award, Mustangs, Restorer Profile, Ringbrothers, West Coast Rod Shops