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History
of the Adult Toy Factory
This
story begins about the time caveman invented the wheel.
Now those
of you who know Bob Nall can picture him in his caveman suit
working on
cars....right?
Well, maybe it wasn't really that far back in
time
but
when Bob was a young boy in Iowa
the "car bug" bit, and it bit really
hard. His father, Bob Sr. was a bodyman and Bob Jr. started his bodywork experience
helping his father in a slave labor position.
During the early years Bob Sr. kept a close eye on Junior.
He learned to hammer and dolly dents, tin areas for lead,
primer, blocksand
and paint.
With this type of experience on daily drivers,
it didn't take long until Bob began to apply his newly
learned trade on some cool cars.
Bob Sr.
hated customized vehicles and used to say
"when you modify a car, you
devalue it,"
and in those days he was probably right.
In high school Bob Jr. made his spending money making
minor accident repairs in
his spare time.
He worked at a Standard station from 4:00PM until midnight
seven days a week.
The owner of the station would allow Bob to do minor
bodywork at the station
after his regular duties were done and for a
small
percentage of the labor, of course.
He then started buying wrecked trade- in cars from
the Chevrolet dealership
where his Dad was the body shop foreman.
Bob would
fix them up and sell them. He had over fifty cars in his senior year but
never more than two at a time.
He actually bought and sold so many
that the State made him
acquire a dealer's license.
He customized a few of these and got yelled at a
bunch by his Dad.
The next time you see Bob, ask him to tell you the story
of the family vacation to California when he bought two chopped Barris '50
Mercurys.
That really got Bob Sr. going.
As the years went by, Bob's career went in various
directions but he always maintained his love for hot rods and managed to keep his hobby
alive.
In 1977 Bob moved to New Mexico, settled into Las Cruces
and got into the bar
business.
The bar made a good enough living but he sure got tired of the
drunks.
In 1980 he and a friend started the
Adult Toy Factory
At
first this was supposed to be part time therapy to get away from the
drunks.
His friend went on to bigger and better things in the teaching
world
and the hot rod business continued to grow. In
1980
Bob
met
Kathy
She was a loan
officer at a local bank and he thought that by dating her it might be easier to
borrow hot rod money. Well that didn't work so he married her.......
It
still didn't work By
1990 the business had grown enough that Kathy got involved.
She didn't
know much about cars when they met but over time she really picked up on the
hobby.
She now handles all the books, takes a lot of the mail order phone
calls,
and tries to keep Bob in line.
The
ATF facility has grown over the years.
In
1987 a 3,000 square foot building for the rod shop was built,
then another
3,000 square feet was added in 1997 for a parts showroom and additional shop
space.
Bob and Kathy's
Adult Toy Factory is now manufacturing some of their own parts
including a billet aluminum dash insert for 1948-50 Ford trucks
and a really
trick "one-way" fuel filter.
Watch this web site for info on more new
products in the near future
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