Passion for hot rods began at young age

POST FALLS – Darrel Peterson learned the particulars of his business at a rather young age compared to most small-business owners.

At 14 years old and not even a licensed driver, the Bonners Ferry youth decided that he’d take it upon himself to rebuild an engine for his 1970 Ford half-ton truck. That and many other labors of love eventually went into a more useful and lucrative endeavor when Peterson opened his own custom hot rod business, Gunner Productions: Innovative Street Rod Design, in Post Falls.

“I’ve been doing it my whole life, ever since I was a little kid,” said Peterson, while standing at a counter surrounded by classic cars in varying stages of construction in his 4,000-square-foot shop. “I’ve just had a love for it, you know?”

Now 32, Peterson, along with a three-man crew, builds custom metal works for clients from Montana to Northern California, with some more intense jobs taking more than two years from start to finish. At any given time, the Gunner Productions’ crew can be found working on upward of 20 vehicles ranging from classic Corvettes to a new Dodge Charger and everything in between. Since they don’t do renovations, Peterson and company have free reign to make and modify plans to capture the customer’s personality in whatever project they dream up.

“It’s kind of a melting pot between the two,” the business owner said, referring to the production crew-customer relationship. “It’s not restoration work. It’s all custom work … It all started out small and turned into a build-the-whole-car thing.”

That thing started when Alan Smith, a fellow small-business owner of Blastmaster Sandblasting in Hayden, started referring some of his clients to the upstart custom metal-works shop. And even though there are several similar custom shops in North Idaho, referrals have kept Gunner Production’s slammed with business since.

“The people I’ve referred to him have thought he’s great, and some have even become repeat customers,” said Smith, whose own business takes rusted vehicles and returns them to their former glory.

For Peterson, it’s been nearly eight years since he threw his hat in the entrepreneurial ring with Gunner Productions. That decision, however, wasn’t made with any sort of long-term business plan. “I’m not business-minded,” he said. “I just wanted to do the things I wanted to do. It had nothing to do with starting my own business.”

And what he’s wanted to do hasn’t really changed since Peterson was a kid, when he found a fascinating playground in the inner workings of an engine. While the hobby came easy to the precocious teen, it wasn’t one taught or passed down to him by anyone in his family. “Nobody in my immediate family was interested in cars at all,” he said. Even though he’s always been mechanically inclined, Peterson added: “Trust me, I make lots of mistakes.”

So after spending time in a few other fields after high school, including assembling a machine that makes popular pre-made waffles, Peterson decided to switch gears and start fixing up cars for himself. Through the years since Gunner Productions’ inception, the full-service shop has finished several hundred partially-customized cars and trucks and built about six vehicles from scratch. Peterson’s also moved the business once and has gone through a few employees.

And though he still loves tinkering with an engine or assembling a metal frame from concept design to solid structure, he admits that the fun can get usurped in the business of running a small business. “That part of it is really awesome, but it can get mudded up in the business end of things.”

Like the time three years ago Peterson had set a deadline for a custom job and then had to work 24 hours straight to get it done.

“I try to avoid that at all costs,” Peterson said. “I feel that it stifles our creative abilities.”

As for the 1970 pickup he got running as a teen, it not only made it through four years of high school, the big-block engine is now getting a second lease on life – this time as the heart of Peterson’s own custom 1929 Model A Roadster that is halfway done. That’s just the sort of work the business owner’s loved since his youth and looked forward to since opening the Post Falls shop years ago.

“If you don’t love it, you won’t have a passion for it,” Peterson said. “You better love what you are doing because you are going to have to persevere through some hard times.”