From LA to El Paso: Fiestas around the world

After five days of travelling from Los Angeles, the Ford Fiesta World Expedition has just reached El Paso, Texas, writes Brian Byrne. It is the first part of a trip that will take the participants to Sydney via Ireland, mainland Europe, China, and SE Asia.

Since leaving Tinseltown on Friday, the pair of Mexican-built Fiestas have stopped off at a stunt-driving school in Hollywood, visited Jay Leno's legendary motor car collection (above), and cooked eggs on their cars' bodywork in Death Valley.

The journalist drivers doing the North American leg have also stopped off to see a wedding in Las Vegas, taken in a drive-in movie in one of the dwindling number of such establishments, stared into the Grand Canyon, and most recently visited several famous makers of cowboy boots in El Paso. Their report filed from there is as follows:

We’re in El Paso, the cowboy boot capital of America. So of course we couldn’t pass up the chance to see how they’re made and maybe try a few pairs on.

First stop was the Lucchese Boot Company, one of the oldest outfits around, which has been running for 127 years. These guys have made boots for everyone from Johnny Cash to John Wayne and boy is it an intricate process. We took a tour of the factory, where the leather – everything from ostrich to elephant – is painstakingly selected, cut and handsewn together by master craftsmen who have been doing the job for generations. Small wonder a pair of custom-made boots can run well into the thousands, and takes almost two months to make. Favourites were the Kansas state boots – part of a series of 50 made about 27 years ago featuring every state. But at $8,000, somewhat beyond the budget.


Tres Outlaws boot company is an altogether more modest affair, operating out of a small building with a handful of employees and producing about 15 pairs of boots a week. Still, they count Arnold Schwarzenegger amongst their customers, and their boots can also cost several thousand dollars, so it can’t be all bad.

Nevena Christi and her husband Marty Snortum have only been running Rocketbuster Boots for the past 20 years, but they’ve already made an impact on the cowboy boot scene by creating the largest pair of cowboy boots in the world, which have held the Guinness record since 1999. Marty, a photographer by trade, swapped his 1953 Cadillac hearse, a shooting location, for the company in 1980 and hasn’t looked back. All their vintage-style boots are handmade and again, they have a pretty sterling range of customers, from Roy Rogers to Whoopi Goldberg. 

“We’ve made so many crazy boots,” laughs Nevena. “We’ve done portraits of people’s dogs, every kind of imaginable crazy pinup girl, musical instruments, a cowboy Adam and Eve, Japanese fish, tons of tattoo art – it just never ceases to amaze me what people think of and want on their boots.”

The Expedition begins its European leg from Shannon in early September.