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Bus Stop Tour
SO-CAL SPEED SHOP
The original So-Cal Speed Shop started with Alex Xydias who drove a ‘29
Ford roadster to high school in the late 1930’s. World War II
interrupted his dream to open a speed shop, but in 1946 on the day of
his discharge he borrowed some money and opened the So-Cal Speed Shop
in Burbank. The next year he bought a Sears prefab 2-car garage and
built bellytank lakesters to run at the dry lakes. Alex then moved on
to filming auto racing events at Pikes Peak, Indy and Sebring. The
speed shop business had changed over the years and Alex decided he
didn’t want to compete with the large companies that were taking over
the field. He closed So-Cal in 1961 and went on to work for Petersen
Publishing and organize SCORE, the off-road equipment trade show with
Mickey Thompson.
Pete Chapouris was another California kid who had the hot rod bug bad.
His father had been a hot rodder and Pete started out as a cruiser with
a ‘32 roadster and then a Model A coupe with a Chevy V8.
He went to work at Clayton Industries who made engine dynos and then
went to being as a welder at Blair’s Speed Shop. He built a chopped ‘34
coupe that was on the cover of Rod & Custom magazine and that brought
him into contact with Jim Jacobs and that lead to them forming Pete &
Jake’s Hot Rod Parts and they built a car for a TV movie called The
California Kid starring Martin Sheen.
They sold the business in 1987 and Alex retired from SEMA and Pete went
to work as Vice President of SEMA. That lasted until 1990 when Pete
opened another company to build premier hot rods which also restored a
number of hot rods that were featured in the concours at Pebble Beach.
Alex and Pete were both selected as two of the Top 100 Most Influential
People in the high performance industry and inducted into the Hot Rod
Magazine Hall of Fame in 1997.
Later that year Alex and Pete resurrected the famed So-Cal Speed Shop
name to start yet another chapter in the hot rod history.
BLAIR’S SPEED SHOP
In Southern California, Blair's Speed Shop was one of the most famous
and visible. Beginning in the mid 50's, Blair's emerged on the scene
and evolved into a respected source for high performance parts and
service that has survived and today continues to operate in Pasadena,
CA.
Blair's Speed Shop was famous for their involvement in drag racing. In
the early 60's the "Gasser Wars" were gaining popularity and the Willys
coupes that raced in this era are a big reason why. The Gasser Wars
featured straight axled, wheel standing, AA fuel 1940 Willys coupes.
Later they ran a Fiat and Camaro at the strips of Southern California
and are still know as being a “hardcore” race-car building shop rather
than a hot rod parts store.
Blair’s was much larger back in the 1950’s than the other shops that we
will stop at today. The other shops moved into mass marketing of
services and parts and Blair’s stuck with their original plan to be be
involved with drag racing.
GARY & CHERYL HUNTERS’ GARAGE
Gary is rather new to the Shelby world but he currently owns a 289 and
a 427 Cobra. His primary focus is brass-era cars and he has a number of
Pope Toledo and Pope Detroit cars along with other brass-era machines.
Beside being a SAAC member, Gary is heavily involved with the Horseless
Carriage Club and has been invited to present some of his cars at the
famous Pebble Beach Concours.
The garage itself is one of the nicest physical garages we’ll ever see
and we’ll all be impressed with it’s arrangement and amenities.
LYNN & SUSIE PARK’S GARAGE
Most of you know that Lynn Park is “Mr. Cobra” in Southern California,
but he’s into other cars as well. He has a street rod and a rail
dragster parked along side the Cobras and more memorabilia on the walls
than most of us have ever seen.
About 25 years ago Lynn expanded and rebuilt the garage and was one of
the first people to install a lift in a home garage. Back then, the
kind of lifts that we see advertised in all the magazines were not
available so he got an old time ram service station lift.
Lynn has been Cobra enthusiast since he was in college and has several
unrestored cars that are different than you might expect. One of them
was extensively modified by the prior owner, who obviously drove it
everyday, and Lynn decided to keep it the way it was rather than make
it just another restored car.
Lynn is also the owner of Trigo Wheels which he sells through another
building which also has memorabilia on just about every wall. We don’t
know how many Cobras will be at the garage today, but they occupy most
of the considerable space. Lynn probably won’t ask any of you to help
move his collection to SAAC-30, even if you do offer!
CARROLL SHELBY ENTERPRISES
Carroll Shelby Enterprises originally came to this present building
when Carroll Shelby started the Shelby Wheel Co. They manufactured
alloy wheels for both the aftermaket and original equipment car
companies.
When the Wheel Co. was shut down they brought the Goodyear Race Tire
distributorship to the building and have expanded it to include engine
building, dyno rooms and the Carroll Shelby Children’s Foundation
headquarters.
Three years ago they had stacks of aluminum 427 block castings (poured
by the Buddy Bar Casting Co. who also cast the valve covers and oil
pans for ‘65 Shelbys) waiting to be machined and they had several
engines on dynos. We don’t know what surprises await us except that the
chili will be interesting!
EDELBROCK
Vic Edelbrock, Sr. opened his 4-car general repair shop in Beverly
Hills in 1933 and started with his first hot rod project in 1938 with a
1932 Ford roadster. He wasn’t happy with the performance of the intake
manifold that he was using so he designed his own for the Ford
flathead-engined ‘32. It used two Stromberg 97 carburetors and he
produced about 100 of them, testing at Muroc Dry Lake which is now
Edwards Air Force base. As did most of his competitors of the day, he
drove his car to the dry lakes, removed the fenders & windshield, raced
and then re-installed the equipment and drove home. World War II
brought a close to racing and he turned to building aircraft parts.
After the war Vic designed his first aluminum heads for the Ford
flathead and went into midget racing-as many a six nights a week! His
engine was a Ford V8-60 and he ran it on nitro.
As his business grew Edelbrock expanded his business to flywheels,
pistons and cams and he sold parts from other manufacturers in his
catalog. He also expanded his racing to run at Bonneville.
In the mid ‘50s Vic began to run dyno tests on the then-new Chevrolet
V8 and was he first to obtain one horsepower-per-cubic-inch on a 283
Chevy and expanded his catalog to intake manifolds for Pontiac and
Chrysler engines.
Vic, Sr. died in 1962 and left the company to his son Vic, Jr. who was
then only 26 years old. Vic, Jr. had not been allowed to race and many
people expected that the the shoes would be too big for him to fill.
Not so. Vic, Jr. and the old employees held the fort and then went
forward to develop a company of over 600 employees.
Many of you know that Vic. Jr. today successfully vintage races several
cars and his daughters, Kristie and Camee both race ‘66 Shelby GT350s.
Unfortunately, they were committed to participating in the vintage
races in Portland, OR this week or they would be at SAAC-30.
MOON EQUIPMENT CO.
Dean Moon’s company is still in the same building as it was in the
1960’s when Carroll Shelby started running his Shelby School of High
Performance Driving in one of the rooms and later the West Coast
Distributorship of Goodyear Racing tires.
The first Cobra, CSX2000, was shipped here by AC Cars, Ltd. and
Shelby’s small crew installed the Ford 260 engine and Borg Warner
4-speed transmission. Testing was done on the area streets and the
performance was electrifying. It was tested in bare aluminum and later
was painted a pearl yellow and tested in Road & Track magazine. It was
then painted red and tested by another magazine. Each magazine got a
different color and that gave them the impression that Shelby had a
number of completed cars. There was just one.
Dean Moon was almost as good a promoter as Carroll Shelby and his
Mooneyes decals have appeared all around the world in different
languages and the yellow color was called Moon Yellow. This was not the
shade of yellow that the first Cobra was painted but Dean knew a good
thing when he saw it and that’s what he said it was painted!
Moon Equipment sponsored many drag, lakes and Bonneville cars including
cars named Mooneyes and Moonbeam.
Moon was a Weber dealer and early on sold a number of sets to Shelby.
Later on Shelby became the West Coast U.S. distributor and Moon became
his best customer. During the middle 1960’s Moon Equipment was ordering
40 sets of Webers a month from Shelby American!