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Reality TV auto customizer Danny Koker back with more cars than ever
Job 1 of new season is adding hemp to the late Bob Marley’s Mercedes

By: Bill Brioux Special to the Toronto Star, Published on Sun Aug 25 2013


LAS VEGAS, NEVADA—The show is called Counting Cars, so you’d think Danny Koker would know exactly how many automobiles he owns.
Koker and several reporters are standing in one of his four auto pavilions at his custom car emporium, Count’s Kustoms. There are around 30 vintage hot rods, restored vehicles and another dozen choppers and motorcycles crammed under this roof.
Koker proudly shows them all off like they’re his children. The trouble is he keeps adding to his collection.
Koker and company return Monday, Aug. 26 at 10 p.m. on History in the second season premiere of Counting Cars, one of three shows spun off the original Vegas-based History reality series, Pawn Stars (back for another season Tuesday, Aug. 27 at 9). Another spinoff, American Restoration, returns Wednesday, Aug. 28 at 8 p.m..

On Monday’s episode, Koker picks up an assignment from Jamaican musician Ziggy Marley: restore his famous father Bob Marley’s 1980 Mercedes coupe. The son has one request: add plenty of “hemp materials” to the interior.
Koker, who with his bandanna, tattoos and shades looks more like a rock star than an auto mechanic, says he can dig it.
This isn’t the first custom car job Koker has done for a famous musician and it won’t be the last. Ozzy Osbourne, Vince Neil and others have had custom hot rods and choppers turned out by The Count.
“I just finished a truck for (heavy metal rocker) Rob Zombie,” he says. “It’s really dark, evil and crazy. He loved it.”
Koker, 45, got his nickname from hosting a local TV series called Saturday Fright. For a decade, he dressed up in a cape and introduced B-movie monster flicks.
“My character was an Elvis-loving vampire who lived in Las Vegas,” he says. “After a while, people just called me ‘The Count.’”
Some might say the experience left Koker a little batty. Among his most prized hot rods is a 1967 Cadillac funeral car converted into a hot rod hearse. “You can seat nine people in there with a flip down screen: a real party car,” he says. There’s a matching ’67 Cadillac factory flower car Koker tricked out to carry and display a chopper.
“I’m looking for a ’67 Caddie limo now; I want the whole matched set. I’m weird that way.”
Weirder still is the reason Koker has a coffin in his office. It’s where he takes his midday nap. “You come to my office and my boots are next to the coffin, don’t come knockin’,” he says. “It’s the best sleep you’ll ever get, I promise you. It’s awesome.”
Koker dabbled in restoration and customizing back when he was a horror movie host, but decided about 12 years ago to make his hobby his vocation. “Ironically, it led me back to TV,” he says.
As on Pawn Stars and the other Vegas-based History shows, the key to Counting Cars is casting. Koker knows playing up his rock star swagger is good for business. Like Pawn Star Chumlee, Koker’s shop has dozens of T-shirts, jackets, hats and key chains with his likeness as well as members of his custom car posse, including air brush artist “Horny” Mike. That would be the dude who likes to add 3D horns to everything.
Koker’s love of cars and knowledge of hot rod and chopper culture, however, is genuine. He speaks in hushed tones about the custom car pioneers, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, revered detailer Von Dutch and Batmobile trailblazer George Barris.
“I’m just following in the footsteps of the heroes,” he says, lamenting the time he let Roth’s famed “Outlaw” hot rod get away at an auction. “It was a mess,” he remembers. Still, it sold that day “as is” for $130,000 (all figures U.S.).
Barris, he says, gets knocked for only tweaking a spectacular mid-’50s Lincoln concept car, the Futura, into the Batmobile, but Koker says give the man his due. “George scalloped the fins like bat wings and did his little custom punches to it,” he says, noting that replicas of the famous TV car from the ‘60s now sell for $125,000.
Ask Koker and his friend and general manager Kevin Mack about their first cars and they both turn into 15-year-olds. That’s when both bought their first sets of wheels. Mack’s was a 1974 Volkswagen Super Beetle. “Had the thing pinstriped beautifully,” he recalls. Mack still dreams about the car.
Koker’s first car was a 1979 Z28 Camaro. “I still have it,” he says. “It’s the first car I ever customized and, God willing, I’ll never sell it.”
The Count likely won’t have to sell it for money: that Mercedes he tricked out for Ziggy Marley fetched $60,000. That’s a lot of hemp!
Counting Cars episode promo with Ziggy Marley - YouTube

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