CARtoons, c/d?

There's a fun essay (reprinted from The Comics Journal, I think) on CARtoon in Neil Hagerty's excellent book (there's also brilliant essay on the TV show Wings) Public Places, and there's the Ding Dong Daddy episode in Showcase Teen Titans, and now:

Los Angeles collectors scoop up Von Dutch, Ed (Big Daddy) Roth items
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A cache of artwork and memorabilia by Von Dutch and Ed (Big Daddy) Roth, icons of the so-called Kustom Kulture pop art style, was a hit with collectors at an auction.
Such pop culture items as a sign featuring the late Dutch’s trademark flying eyeball prompted spirited bidding during Saturday’s RM Auctions’ Brucker Collection sale at the Petersen Automotive Museum. The sign fetched $149,500 US.
Dutch’s painting Good-Bye Cruel World, created long before the Von Dutch brand became an overused clothing label, sold for $110,000. It shows a man turning the crank on a meat grinder that is consuming his own body.
“The name Von Dutch has become an international icon, but the man behind the name is one of the most influential and enigmatic artists of the 20th century,” said Rob Myers of RM Auctions.
More than 500 items were on the auction block and some sold for 10 times as much as had been expected.
One of the most coveted items — Von Dutch’s Personal Paint and Pin-Striping Box — fetched $310,500. Dutch’s personally engraved tools also raked in big bucks, including a body hammer ($4,600), Binks spray gun ($10,350), and custom letter opener ($3,670).
Also triggering a bidding frenzy Saturday was the late Roth’s iconic Rat Fink sketches, including the Rat Fink’s Revenge drawing. It brought in $9,775.
Roth was well-known in hot-rodding circles for Rat Fink and other motor-crazed monsters as well as fanciful hot rods such as the Beatnik Bandit or the Druid Princess.
Juxtapoz magazine founder Robert Williams’ painting In the Land of Retinal Delights, completed by Williams in 1968 and considered the epitome of the imagination of the Kustom Kulture movement, sold for $184,000.
The art was dubbed Kustom Kulture during a Laguna Beach art show and became popular in the 1960s.
There was also a great deal of interest in the items owned by actor Steve McQueen, including his Dutch-engraved airplane hangar locks that were bid up to $12,650 by the time the hammer fell.
“The creative legacy of Dutch and the other artists represented during the sale continue to cast a long shadow over today’s pop culture world,” Myers said.