I know, indeed, the evil of that I purpose; but my inclination gets the better of my judgment.” Euripides, as quoted in the opening of Gordon Jennings’ technical article in the July 1959 issue of Road and Track magazine, entitled “Let’s Not Hop It Up.”[1] Jennings cautioned against amateur modification of automobile engines. Fifty years later, we are blessed with The Business of Speed, by David Lucsko, a history of the automotive aftermarket performance industry. Lucsko’s book, the latest installment in the John Hopkins University Press History of Technology series, provides us with a massively researched scholarly history of this industry, which now generates more than $30 billion in annual revenue.
The Business of Speed: The Hot Rod Industry in America, 1915–1990 (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology)
Johns Hopkins University Press
368 pages
$58.00
Lucsko’s 65 pages of endnotes alone offer a treasure trove of historical information, and are more than enough to draw in the most pragmatic student of hot rodding history. Abiding personal interest in the automotive world propelled Lucsko to his current roles as an instructor of technological history at the University of Detroit Mercy and managing editor of Technology and Culture, the quarterly journal of the international Society for the History of Technology. We learn early on that the author, at least for much of his life, has pursued his automotive passion while seemingly heeding the message presented by the Euripides-quoting assistant technical editor Jennings a half century ago. This has not, however, dulled Lucsko’s fascination with the performance industry, its relationship to the mass-production automotive industry, some facets of the professional racing industry, and their roles in society.
We are given very specific examples of early aftermarket product developers, their products, and something of their approach to marketing and product development, but very little information on engineering and technical data. Numerous in-depth interviews with key 20th-century industry figures give insights into the part these men and their companies played in the history of this technology.
The roots and early history of SEMA—founded in 1963 as the Speed Equipment Manufacturers Association, later rebadged as the politically correct Specialty Equipment Manufacturers Association, then morphed to the Specialty Equipment Market Association—are excellently presented. Lucsko provides an overview of the aftermarket manufacturers’ interaction (via the sema tech crew) with federal and state governmental bodies during the initial decades (the mid-1960s into the 1970s) of modern development of vehicle safety and emission control standards.
In a smoothly paced, highly accessible narrative, Lucsko introduces Holly Hedrich, Don Prieto, and others who worked tirelessly to demonstrate to government regulators the value of performance-oriented products. Their task was not always easy. The early SEMA technical crew was faced with some in government demanding that all non-original equipment specification automotive components be permanently banned. At this point, numerous aftermarket performance companies such as Edelbrock had products in development and already on the roads of America that greatly improved performance AND reduced fuel consumption and pollutant emissions. In the early ’70s, I took a short drive in one of the SEMA test vehicles. With a minimum of bolt-on aftermarket parts, it achieved a 20 percent increase in horsepower in the useful engine speed range, a 15 percent improvement in fuel consumption, and significantly reduced emissions. Holly Hedrich, sitting beside me, was nearly shedding tears of frustration over the bureaucratic battles he and a select few enthusiasts were facing. Lucsko has succeeded in presenting this curious, little-known sequence of events.
The 1973 oil embargo did, at least, provoke greatly increased awareness of the need to pursue application of technology for improved fuel mileage. The history of government standards for pollution control and vehicle safety is significant for us all, and Lucsko, alas, fails to do justice to that subject, which bears directly on his narrative. The primary reason for the existence of the aftermarket performance industry is quite clear: mass production of millions of cars per year is by necessity an exercise in compromise. Think for a moment just of the historical design process for many an American production vehicle engine: “Packaging” was of higher priority than any significant degree of performance, the term “performance” here including vehicle fuel mileage and pollution control. In order to install said engine with minimal modification in literally dozens of different model cars, the intake system, including carburetor/fuel injection/intake manifolding, was designed not for low fuel consumption or high performance but above all to fit under a variety of hoods and into a highly diverse group of engine compartments.
Indeed, from the early days of the automotive industry, independent high performance and racing entrepreneurs have contributed greatly to the technology of our everyday cars and trucks, through oft-secret consulting contracts and through natural trickle-down or outright theft of design components. As a case in point, consider the contributions of one performance industry leader. Gale Banks, founder and owner of Banks Engineering in Azusa, California, and associated companies, was first contracted by General Motors as an outside engineering consultant in 1969. Since that time he has provided expertise to Ford and Chrysler Corporation as well as stints including teaching engineering seminars for gm. Perhaps the world’s leading expert on development of turbocharging applications (yes Audi, you heard us) for race, performance, and production vehicles, Banks has contributed directly to the development of numerous mass-produced designs, and some of the world’s finest aftermarket products to further enhance vehicle performance.
The SEMA boys did their duty, and the performance aftermarket has been a pivotal player in the research and development of technology for the mass-production automotive industry at a very significant level ever since. The 2005 president of the Society of Automotive Engineers, Ted Robertson, declared that two-thirds of all innovation in production vehicles is now provided by vehicle component suppliers.[2] This is particularly significant in that, before his retirement, Robertson was the chief engineer of GM.
The American automobile industry is currently under elevated scrutiny, for good reason. But despite the pleasures of unbridled rants such as Peter De Lorenzo’s often amusing, highly insightful The United States of Toyota,[3] we want something more judicious from historians. Lucsko wisely resists joining those who condemn the industry for not drawing many of the independent performance industry leaders fully into their corporate structures—that dog just won’t hunt. These men are a force of nature, and no corporate structure is big enough for half a dozen of them.
At the fiftieth annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology last October, President Steven Usselman gave an outstanding address entitled “The Historian of Technology and Her True Country,” inspired by his consideration of the short story– writer and novelist Flannery O’Connor.[4] Usselman suggested that, “like novelists, historians must immerse themselves in the manners and customs of a time and place, in hopes they might glimpse something of the larger mystery of human affairs.” Lucsko has done so with The Business of Speed, and we are in his debt.
Rick Wilson is a special ed teacher and a coach at a K-8 school in Northern California. His direct involvement in the automotive world dates to the 1960s. Thanks to the genius of Doug Robinson, he currently holds a share in a Bonneville land speed record (D/GR, 218.412 MPH). Current front-burner projects: ’53 Studebaker land speed fuel coupe; ’70 Lenham GT vintage sports car. Daily driver: highly modified late-model Mini-Cooper S.
1. Road and Track, Vol. 10, No. 11 (July 1959), pp. 20-1, 72-3.
2. Robert C. Post, The SAE Story: One Hundred Years of Mobility (Tehabi Books, 2005), p. 15.
3. Peter M. De Lorenzo, The United States of Toyota (Inkwater Press, 2007).
4. Steven W. Usselman, “The Historian of Technology and Her True Country,” Technology and Culture, Vol. 50, No. 1 (January 2009), p. 113.
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