Hipsters the world over. "He changed the world!" No... he was a marketing genius, not a tech genius. The guys who actually busted their humps developing all that trendy starts-with-a-lowercase-i stuff live in relative obscurity. Thomas Edison did pretty much the same thing... the one invention he could actually call his own was a flop. But damned if Mr. Edison isn't a legend and a full-blown American Hero, despite all the dirt that's been dug up on him. As far as taking credit for other's work? It's common in the auto industry. Harley Earl had a whole team of designers, but he always got credit for the design, even if all he did was tell one of his peons to change the mirrors. It did get a little tenuous at times with Barris, admittedly. But I'm willing to let much of that slide, as I honestly do not believe any one person did more to promote custom (or Kustom as the case may be) cars to the world than George Barris. Argue over his scruples all you like, but nobody had more passion about custom cars than he did.