How Dave Kindig Built His Custom Car Empire
Dave Kindig runs Kindig-It Design out of Las Vegas, and if you've watched Out Done, you've seen what that looks like on camera. The actual business behind it is a mix of restomod fabrication, custom paint, suspension engineering, and a team of about two dozen skilled builders working in a shop that's bigger than most people's houses. The net worth questions come up constantly because the cars he builds sell for six figures, but the real picture is messier than a simple number. People want a single figure, but that's not how this works. Kindig-It Design operates as a high-end specialty shop where labor rates for master fabricators run $60 to $120 an hour depending on the skill tier. A single restomod build—say, a 1967 Camaro or a '55 Chevrolet—typically lands between $150,000 and $400,000 when it leaves the shop. That doesn't include the client-sourced engine or transmission sometimes, which changes the math entirely. The revenue per build isn't the whole story either. Paint alone on a multi-stage candy or chameleon job can run $40,000 to $80,000. Suspension work with a custom tubular front end and Air Lift Management controls is another $25,000 to $50,000. So a mid-tier build clears well past $200,000 in gross revenue before any overhead. I've tracked the pricing structure on similar shops, and the pattern is consistent. The big money isn't in the builds themselves—it's in the paint and the bespoke fabrication pieces. Interior work is where margins get thin unless they're doing full custom leather and billet aluminum, which they often do for the higher-tier clients.
When you see estimates floating around for Kindig's personal net worth, they range from $5 million to $20 million depending on who's doing the calculation. Some sources go higher, some lower. The problem with pinning down an exact number is that Kindig-It Design is a private company. There are no public financial statements. What you can verify is the scale of operation, the build volume, and the reputation premium that allows him to charge what he charges. A comparable shop without the TV fame would struggle to move a build at the same price point. The television exposure is a marketing machine that most custom shops can't replicate. Here's something most people miss about valuing this kind of business. The brand value is significant. Kindig-It can take a project that might normally cost $120,000 and justify a $250,000 price tag because of the name on the door. That premium is real, but it's also fragile. If the quality dips even slightly, the premium evaporates fast because the customer base is small and tightly connected. I've seen similar shops lose 30 to 40 percent of their booking pipeline after a couple of botched deliveries. The reputation is the asset, and it's also the liability. One edge case I ran into when researching this was the distinction between Kindig's personal assets and the company's assets. He owns the shop equipment, the real estate in Las Vegas, and likely has investment properties tied to his name. But a lot of the valuable inventory—project cars in various stages of completion—belongs to clients, not to Kindig-It. That means counting "cars in the shop" as assets is a common mistake in these kinds of valuations. Those builds are essentially work in progress on someone else's dime. I ended up cross-referencing multiple permit filings and equipment purchase records to get a clearer picture of what's actually owned versus what's in for service. It took a while, but it separated the real net worth from the visible clutter.
The revenue model also includes merchandise, licensing deals from the TV show, and speaking appearances. Those streams are smaller but add up. They're not the primary income, but they're a meaningful buffer when the build pipeline thins out, which it inevitably does. Custom car building is slow. One bad supplier delay on a fabricated component can push a delivery out by months, and the client payments are usually tied to milestones, not completion. Cash flow management in this business is harder than most people realize. Looking at the actual numbers with some rough consistency checks: if Kindig-It completes around 15 to 25 builds per year at an average gross of $175,000, that's roughly $2.6 million to $4.4 million in annual revenue from builds alone. Add paint, suspension, interior, and miscellaneous fabrication work, and you're probably looking at $3.5 million to $6 million in total annual revenue for the shop. Over a career that spans more than two decades, with reinvestment and property accumulation, a net worth in the $5 million to $15 million range seems like a reasonable bracket. It could be higher or lower. The truth is nobody outside his inner circle knows for certain, and the private nature of the business means we're always working with estimates. What I can say with more confidence is that the empire is real, the margins are tighter than they look on television, and the entire structure depends heavily on maintaining a level of craftsmanship that's becoming increasingly rare in this industry. The net worth number is secondary to understanding how the business actually functions under the hood.
Get the Full Details
