HANSEL ECHEVERRIA: FOUNDER, LEEN CUSTOMS
STORY | MICHAEL TEO VAN RUNKLE
PHOTOGRAPHY | MONEEB NAIN
Growing up on the streets of Los Angeles, Hansel Echeverria went by the tagging name “Leen.” In today’s car culture, that name means something far more—and his uniquely styled lapel pins have appeared at events as wide ranging as the Fast and Furious-inspired Fuel Fest to the classic Porsche gathering known as Rennsport.
The collectible pins, instantly identifiable thanks to a lightly cartoonified aesthetic, perfectly sum up the current car craze with a focus on customization, JDM icons, and motorsports. But Echeverria’s path from graffiti artist to auto industry mainstay took a more circuitous route than one would expect.
Before officially founding Leen Customs, Echeverria worked as a graphic designer, churning out repetitive projects for a creative agency. But, he ran a side hustle custom-designing outside the box items to fight off the stagnation of those repetitive corporate projects. That side hustle took on the name Leen Customs, even before a friend asked Echeverria for a mildly cartoonified sketch of his car to use for a batch of stickers. “The business was started pretty much as a project,” Echeverria readily admits, “It was never supposed to be what it is now.”
Those early planted seeds continued to bear fruit when Echeverria noticed many companies showing up to design conventions with lapel pins, though none using car designs specifically. “All these brands had some sort of lapel pin, whether it was a promotional item that they were giving away or they were selling them,” he says. “But then I noticed that there was nothing being catered to the automotive industry.”
The first pin that Echeverria designed in 2017 would prove perfect for car culture. He based the pin on a 2005 World Rallycross Subaru finished in quintessential blue with yellow decals over gold wheels. “Sure enough, that first pin surpassed my expectations,” he remembers. “People loved it… people wanted more. So, for me it was like, ‘Alright, dope. Let's go ahead and keep that going.’ So, it went basically from one pin to three, three to six, and the phenomenon just kept growing, and I just kept designing more and more different cars.”
The Subie helped to solidify an aesthetic that makes Leen pins immediately identifiable to this day. Echeverria’s stylized lines clearly resemble the cars themselves, but with a twist that he attributes, at least in part, to a Japanese toy called a Korakuen. Korakuen are little pullback cars that a less discerning eye might mistake for a Hot Wheels diecast. But for Leen Customs, Echeverria decided to dial up the characterization of each car with a more accessible approach. “I've always loved that miniature style,” he explains. “And I also wanted to make sure that it wasn't too cartoony, where at a point the person that loves the car but doesn't like the cartoon version. I wanted to find a happy medium for everybody to enjoy where it wasn't too cartoonified, but it also wasn't realistic, body line for body line.”
EXPANDING LEEN CUSTOMS
Recently, Echeverria hauled a shipping container up from Los Angeles to Rennsport Reunion 7, the world’s largest Porsche gathering held every four years (or so) at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. “The demographic there is different from other events that we do,” he explained. “This one was an older crowd; I would say definitely in their older years. And they were the ones spending, purchasing the pins. And what was cool about it: it was a lot of new customers, too, so they were hearing about our brand and coming out and supporting it.”
At Rennsport, customers constantly asked which pin Echeverria had designed specifically for the event, everybody wants that commemorative collectible in addition to the massive selection of evergreen designs that Leen Customs sells full time at shows or online. The potential collectability that Leen Customs can create by means of limited production runs also drives the popularity of pins among more dedicated enthusiasts.
“I personally feel that the excitement comes from the right partners, the right collabs,” he explained, “Right now, there's always something new, there's always something fresh in the automotive industry. Whether it's the new 2023 car model or a new brand that we've never worked with.”
This fall, to celebrate the addition of Las Vegas to the Formula 1 Grand Prix schedule, Leen Customs partnered with Alfa Romeo to produce a limited-edition race car pin. “For us, that's super huge because I never in a million years would've thought that we might be working with some team from F1,” Echeverria laughs. “We've been focusing a lot on licensing deals. So now we're fortunate to say that we're licensed with Nissan, Volkswagen, Honda, Acura, Subaru…”
Building the Hot Wheels of Lapel Pins
Eventually, Echeverria hopes that Leen Customs can expand enough to become the “Hot Wheels of lapel pins.” But that will require toeing a fine line, too.
“I don't want you to go to Target and be able to find one of our pins,” he said, “But I think Hot Wheels has done a perfect job of doing that because yes, you can buy a one or two-dollar Hot Wheels car at your regular chain store, but then they have their RLC [Red Line Club] program. It's their collectors’ program where you can buy a premium diecast for like $50.”
Car collectors, or would-be collectors perhaps lacking the budget to collect real cars, crave that sense of exclusivity. Which also helps to explain why Echeverria and Leen Customs made the leap to building their own custom car to bring to shows, a fully tricked-out four-door 1973 Nissan Skyline Hakosuka. At first, he intended the project to stay as a funky build, but everyone knows how that goes. “We talked to our dudes at Oishi Imports,” Echeverria recalls. “I told them, ‘Look, man, I wanna do something cool, something different, something unique. I don't really have a specific car I'm after, so if you have anything that pops up, you let me know and I'll say yes or no.’”
Eventually, while visiting Tokyo Auto Salon just before the COVID-19 pandemic, Oishi called up Echeverria and invited him to the “yard” where Japan’s unique form of used-car auctions take place. With a lead on a four-door Skyline, probably a short nose Hakosuka from the mid-1970s, Echeverria eventually took a leap of faith based on photos and videos rather than seeing the car in person. “It looked like the right car to start with,” he says. “It had patina, a little bit of rust… You know, maybe a lotta bit of rust. I honestly was gonna keep it just how it came, obviously, to do a little bit of work, suspension, lower it. But it did have this flavor to it.”
Most JDM enthusiasts fawn over the Nissan Skyline GT-R’s R32, R33, and R34 generations as popularized by Fast and Furious superstardom and legit motorsport history. But fewer know about the base entry-level models, which is exactly what Echeverria ended up importing from Japan. “When I got it, the people that didn't know about them, they liked the fact that it wasn't cut up,” he revealed. “It didn't have the overfenders, it had what they call the surfline on it. They were like, ‘Do not cut this car up. Keep it as stock as possible!’”
The success of Leen Customs seems to surprise Echeverria to an extent, while also providing further motivation to keep building the excitement surrounding his cute little lapel pins. Running Leen Customs as a business requires a huge time commitment, though. “We make it look easy,” he says. “Not only with all the stuff that we're releasing and dropping, but literally, this past month, we've had nothing but back-to-back events where we're hauling this container around. We were at Rennsport, at Formula Drift, the Japanese Classic Car Show (JCCS) show, all these major big events that have been going on across the nation, we're there. On top of that, we're fulfilling orders, doing online drops, we're doing live-streaming. We make it look easy, for sure, and it's not possible without the team that I have behind my back supporting all the crazy decisions that I have in mind.”
As the founder, designer, and CEO of Leen Customs, this former tagger has come a long way from spraying his graffiti on concrete walls around L.A. Echeverria believes that with the foundation fully laid and popularity only growing, the future for Leen Customs (and that Hako) looks solid. “Growing up, from not having anything to having pretty much anything I want now, it's definitely a huge accomplishment,” Echeverria explains as part of his own personal motivation. “There's so many iconic race cars, from Honda to Porsche, every manufacturer, that we haven't even touched. And I feel like that's exactly the direction we need to go to be able to create these designs, to be able to make some of these awesome collectible pins for people.”
