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SIX: Bolt-on Power, 1955–1970
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
c h a p t e r s i x BOlT-ONPOWER, 1955–1970 In 1955, prior to the OEMs’ initial foray into the high-performance market, there were fewer than 200 speed equipment manufacturers in the United States. Fifteen years later, there were exactly 750, many of which were located outside of California.1 Writing in 1969, the publisher of Hot Rod, Ray Brock, reported, “Eighty percent of the nation’s population is east of the Rockies and that’s where we sell 80% of our magazines. The same with speed equipment manufacturers.”2 By the end of the 1960s, that is, most hot rodders lived back East, and that’s where Hot Rod sent most of its issues and the aftermarket most of its products. More than 75 percent of the speed shops, retail outlets, and mail order houses that dealt in performance-oriented products were based in the East too.3 However, although the geographic distribution of the retail end of the industry came to more closely match that of performance enthusiasts during the 1950s and 60s, the manufacturing end did not. To be sure, California’s share of the industry had declined steadily since the war, falling from more than 80 percent in 1948 to less than 50 by the end of the 1960s.4 But even in 1970, California’s dominance was undeniable: home to 46 percent of America’s speed equipment manufacturers, California trumped second -ranked Illinois by nearly 40 percent. In fact, against the shares of its six closest rivals combined, California still held a commanding advantage: Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania together accounted for only 31 percent.5 Moreover, if we narrow “California” down to the Los Angeles area alone, we find that in 1970, 38 percent of the entire American speed equipment industry was based in Southern California.6 By the end of the 1960s, in other 124 t h e b u s i n e s s o f s p e e d 124 t h e b u s i n e s s o f s p e e d words, performance enthusiasm and performance-parts retailing both had spread throughout the United States so thoroughly that their geographic distribution closely matched that of the overall population, but the same was simply not the case for those that manufactured high-performance products. Within Southern California, the industry did spread out during the late 1950s and the 1960s. In 1954, there were only a handful of companies in greater Los Angeles that were not within a twenty- to twenty-five-mile radius of the city’s center. By 1970, though, in addition to the 235 companies located in the immediate vicinity of L.A.—defined here, however loosely, as the area encompassing Los Angeles, southeastern Ventura, and western San Bernardino counties—there were 37 more in suburban Orange County and 12 in Riverside.7 Some of the more outlying firms were new, such as Revmaster and EMPI of Riverside and B.F. Meyers and Deano Dyno-Soars of central Orange County. Others were older, established firms whose leaders sought either to expand their manufacturing facilities by taking advantage of the cheaper industrial real estate then in abundance in more distant areas or simply to escape the crowded core. Weber, for example, an anchor on Whiteside Avenue in Los Angeles for nearly fifteen years, moved to Orange County in 1960 so that it could expand into larger quarters.8 During the 1960s, several others did the same. Stuart Hilborn, on the other hand, moved his Fuel Injection Engineering company from Los Angeles to secluded Laguna Beach in Southern Orange County in 1964 specifically to trade smoggy skies for ocean views without having to sacrifice the advantages—particularly in terms of shipping and receiving—that relative proximity to L.A. held.9 That these companies fled to outlying areas during the 1960s—or, more generally , that an ever-greater portion of the region’s speed equipment manufacturers, new and old, were based in Orange and Riverside Counties at the time—ought to come as no surprise. For in the 1950s and 60s, suburban towns that once served as bedroom communities for those who worked in downtown L.A. gradually morphed into large, decentralized “post-suburban” zones largely independent from the urban core itself.10 And as they did, these outlying areas attracted manufacturers like Fuel Injection Engineering and Weber. Whether located in downtown Los...