Read his own fascinating story how he started his process to understand the technique behind Metal Shaping

Lazze as a young boy“Cars and bikes have always fascinated me and at the age of eight, I saw a Hot Rod for the first time at a car show in the city of Ludvika, Sweden.

Since then I have been ‘sold’ on Hot Rods and of course American cars. As a child I also enjoyed building with Lego blocks, and believe it or not, but already then I decided that when I grow I will build cars. And in spite of taking many years I did achieve this! Of course I must also add the strong influence of the yellow deuce coupe in “American Graffiti” that John Milner drove….

It has been a long and winding road to get where I am.
"Building with Lego really inspired me". At my leisure since 12 years of age I have been playing with mopeds, motorcycles and cars and as soon as I got my drivers license I bought a 56 Fairlane Victoria two door Hard Top in boxes. This is where things started. The body needed some rust repair and very few parts, patch panels was on the market, and on those the quality wasn't good at all, I'll say it was half fabricated.

As soon as a piece of sheet metal was to be formed into a shape of three dimensions, it was difficult to do. The metal was hard to shape and in the beginning the results were not very good either. After a lot of practice it went reasonably well but the time it took was terrible. Most of the time I bent the sheet and then cut the sheet up and bent it, Weld and grind, but  it was lot's of work, Everybody that worked on cars and did some sheet metal repair, they know what problem I talking about ! And the worst thing was, I couldn't regret or adjust anything, if I did a mistake in the end of a panel, I must start over again and make another one next day.

So one day,  I asked myself , It must be another way to do it, it can't be that way that I must make dies and stamp everything I want to do?

In that time in Sweden, people that I meet, all of them had the same problem to shape a sheet of metal. To find parts to old cars was hard and to find an old Body , like a 33 VW Coupe was almost impossible and they couldn't make them either, it was a few people that could do some Metal Shaping, but I'll say it was a dieing art.

At age 16 I started ASEA’s, today's ABB-World Wide Electrical Company , 3 year long school of manufacturing, which was both a good training and a valuable one. I got to learn how to use the lathe, the milling machine, drill press and also sheet metalwork and welding. For a while I was a line worker but it didn’t fit me very well, and when I heard they were hiring at maintenance I immediately applied for the job. I spent one year as apprentice with the best repairmen and that was valuable. I worked on any kind of machines, but to work CNC machines was one of my favorite jobs.

After 16 years at ASEA (today known as ABB) time had come to start my own business.
A friend of mine had seen my talents and told me I should start a business of my own, the year was 1991.
I got hold of a workshop and in the middle of a deep recession in Sweden I started restoring antique cars, sport cars and a little bit work on Hot Rods as well. From the very beginning I refused to do rust repairs on ordinary cars. In the beginning there was not many customers but my restored Fairlane was good advertising and soon I was busy with a Mercedes 190SL, a Maserati Ghibli 71, Crown Victoria Skyliner 56, Volkswagen Cabriolet 55, Ford Sunliner 59 and more.

My interest in Hot Rods was growing and when I found a 34 Ford Fordor without frame in Norway at a reasonable price I bought it. Of course I wanted a 3W coupe, but this was a start. While doing a job on a 34 Coupe belonging to a friend of mine in Ludvika I started to think about converting the Fordor to a coupe, but how should this be done? Round shapes everywhere with pressings and everything, naaa... too difficult to do, with the knowledge I had then.
Here I can explain, our mind thinking in pictures, whatever we do or want, we thinking in pictures, and in this case I had a clear picture of what I wanted to achieve, and I know now (not in that time) that my mind was connected to my arms and hands and they did the work and created the 3D panels.Lazze with hot rod

“ When I started thinking on how this had been done I also started thinking about teaching this. I had been looking for products to manufacture and sell, like car parts, tools or something and out of coincidence this happened. In Street Rodder Magazine there was a story about “Street Rod University” Where do you go to learn this? And I asked myself,  where in Sweden was this taught?   There was no place to learn how to do sheet metal shaping! A new business idea was born.
                                                                                                            
After having spent about a year planning and preparing, a few friends were invited to the first training session in the end of 1994, in the same time it was an article in a Swedish magazine about the New Metal Shaping Education.