- The Business of Speed: The Hot Rod Industry in America, 1915–1990
The Business of Speed explores how a distinct set of “enthusiast-entrepreneurs” modified the innermost technical qualities of mass-produced automobiles in search of performance, pride, and profit. David Lucsko traces the technology, geography, and personalities of an industry based entirely on user modifications, technological enthusiasm, and small flexible firms; an industry that faced early and endemic technological uncertainty and, by mid-century, increasing regulatory challenges. He provides rich empirical material for readers interested in business history or the history of technology.
Lucsko’s first three chapters outline the formation and development of the industry before World War II. High-performance automotive parts first appeared around 1915 and soon dozens of firms, loosely concentrated in the Midwest, were offering improved ignitions, crankshafts, pistons, carburetors, and valves, components that enabled enthusiasts to make already spunky Model Ts even faster. In the 1930s and 1940s the geographic center of the hot rod industry moved to the West Coast where time trials on desert dry lakes fostered a “technologically iterative” environment in which small, [End Page 715] nimble firms responded quickly to the needs of racers, who in turn exploited each new product to claim bragging rights.
Chapters 4–6 follow the maturation of the industry in the postwar decades. Here Lucsko draws on Phil Scranton’s concept of “networked specialists” to argue that the Los Angeles–area aircraft industry, with its associated skilled labor and auxiliary firms, plus Southern California’s unique clustering of enthusiasts, manufacturers, and end users, nurtured dynamic, small firms that used general-purpose tools to create small batches of low-volume, low-demand parts. This enabled the industry to manage market uncertainty and respond to the rapid technological changes of various high-performance and racing markets, helping it to grow even as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) sought to capture the performance market with so-called muscle cars.
In his final four chapters Lucsko makes his most original and important contribution to business history and the history of technology. While safety and environmental regulations may have killed the factory muscle car in the 1970s, he shows that they did not have the same effect on hot rodding. Rather, the hot rodding industry posted record sales right through the 1970s and 1980s, with only a slight dip in the early 1990s followed again by continued growth. Central to Lucsko’s analysis are the actions of the Speed Equipment Manufacturers Association (SEMA, which astutely changed its first name to “Specialty”). SEMA was formally organized in 1963 to address concerns of the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) about the safety of aftermarket racing parts. To meet NHRA’s concerns, it formed a technical committee and developed an industry self-certification procedure, which provided the model on which SEMA would base its later interactions with state and federal regulators.
While editorials in enthusiast magazines such as Hot Rod excoriated regulations and regulators, Lucsko argues that SEMA leaders acknowledged their industry’s responsibility for safety and environmental issues and set out to prove that aftermarket modifications could actually make cars run cleaner and more efficiently. The organization’s experience with industry self-certification meant it could offer regulators inexpensive and expedient means to meet policy ends. By Lucsko’s account, SEMA’s cooperative and forward-looking strategy saved hot rodding and arguably provides a model for comparative studies of technological and niche-market responses to changing regulatory environments. One drawback of this part of the book is that the narrative adheres too closely to SEMA and industry sources. Uncovering these sources represents a big part of Lucsko’s contribution, but the result flirts with imbalance at times. Delving more deeply into the sources and studies of the regulatory agencies or the consumer and environmental critics of the industry might open new questions about this pivotal period for American automotive performance enthusiasts.
Lucsko reads the slight dip in performance parts sales in 1991 as marking [End Page 716] a transition from domestic...