Top Notch Kustoms

As one of seven kids, Ignacio “Notch” Gonzalez was passionate about working on cars from an early age, with fond memories of building car and transportation toy models—so much so that straight out of high school, Gonzalez got a job at a body shop. For years, he bounced back and forth between body shops, but became disillusioned working on newer-model cars. On the side, he would work on older cars, particularly American muscle cars and dragsters with his friends, which led to a job at a classic car body shop. But working for an inconsistent boss proved to be, well, inconsistent, so Gonzalez made the jump and opened his own classic car body shop, Top Notch Kustoms. Now, a decade later, Gonzalez can look back at the rough road it took to get to this position while still being eager about the future of his business. But his creative outlet isn’t limited to vehicles; Gonzalez also has a burgeoning side career as a bar designer, with his handiwork— particularly in tiki bar design—entertaining the inebriated at bars all around the Bay. As for the future, Gonzalez hopes to expand his bar-building business while keeping his body shop up and running.

“I’ve always been into building things, so when I got into tiki bars, I realized I could create my own little private Hawaii in the back of my auto body shop. Like getting lost in detailing a car, the bar-design work I do is really escapism. The idea of being able to close my doors to the outside world and hide in my created world inside really inspired me. And like with cars, the more bars I visited, the more I wanted to create more and more bar stuff, as much as I could really. I even built a mobile 18-foot tiki bar that can be plopped down at any event for people to have fun. With both cars and bars, it’s creating something out of nothing that appeals to me.”

Written by Tad Malone