Passion: If a person can be described in a single word, it would be hard to find one more apt for Barry Meguiar, president and third-generation leader of the car care products company that bears his family name. Becoming the leader of this small family business with a dozen employees and transforming it over four decades into a global company offering up 100’s of products in 120 countries, Meguiar has worked unceasingly to popularize the specialty automotive market, and he’s done it with an unyielding passion—for his products, for his profession, for his industry and, most of all, for his customers, the millions of “car guys” whose cause he has championed tirelessly.

 

“I was born into the business that my grandfather started in 1901,” Meguiar recalled. By the time he was in college, he became the company’s accounting department, keeping the books for a family-scale enterprise with annual gross sales of roughly $600,000.

 

The longer he worked for the company, however, Meguiar saw a bigger and brighter future for it—if he could convince his fellow family members.

 

“My family had nothing but disdain for the retail market,” he explained, “being wholly committed to only making professional polishes for car dealers and body shops. But because of the performance of our products, most custom painters across the United States started using them and giving them to the owners of every car that they painted. Our products started showing up in car shows all over the country. So one day I called the family members together and said, ‘Whether we like it or not, we’re in the retail business.’ This was in 1969.”

 

One of Meguiar’s inspirations occurred a few years earlier, when Noel Carpenter, publisher of the monthly trade journal Hot Rod Industry News, hosted an industry-only trade show that would later be acquired by Petersen Publishing Company and rebranded as the SEMA Show.

 

“I attended the very first SEMA show with our old packaging in the ballroom at the Disneyland Hotel back in 1963,” he said. “There were only a handful of exhibitors there, and Noel created this trade show for the high-performance industry. I got to watch the beginnings of the industry, and I’m one of the few left from those days still standing. It’s been quite a ride.”

 

Still, the early precursors to the SEMA Show had little initial effect on Meguiar’s business.

 

“The first shows didn’t impact our business much because our professional products weren’t available in retail stores,” he explained. “So when I went to car shows across the country, I was attacked by car guys asking, ‘What’s wrong with you guys? Why do I have to go to my paint shop to get your products instead of my auto parts store?’ Against the will of our family there was this pent-up demand for Meguiar’s going retail, and I saw that as a big opportunity. Selling the family on that idea was my toughest ever sales job.

 

For the next four years, Meguiar devoted his life to “flying a lot, traveling to auto shows, demonstrating our products and learning as I went along. I was a young guy back then, and all I knew was how to buff a car. I didn’t know anything about retail or packaging or marketing or anything like that.”

 

Meguiar’s approach to marketing was simple and direct: Approach every attendee and demonstrate the product, then give away a bottle free of charge, asking attendees to display Meguiar’s signs if they liked the results. Soon, Meguiar’s signs began popping up prominently at auto shows across the country.

 

While the product’s public profile grew gradually through hands-on demonstrations and word of mouth, retailers were still lukewarm to stocking the Meguiar’s product line.

 

“They thought it appealed to too small a market share,” Meguiar said. “They didn’t care about car guys. Then I’d explain to retailers that ‘car guys’ were different from their average customers. Whereas the average consumer might wax his car only once or twice a year, our people—who were a unique, separate part of the marketplace—they might be waxing their cars every week, 50 times a year. Not because they felt obligated but because they wanted to. That’s their joy, and their passion.” (That word again.)

 

“Eventually,” Meguiar continued, “I was able to get the product into some speed shops, then into some chains, and finally to the point where I could get onto the shelves of major retailers—and everywhere Meguiar’s products got on shelves, they not only sold but grew their automotive department. And the retailers came back at us like, ‘Wow, you really are bringing in new customers!’ I knew I was being a pioneer for every SEMA member who wanted to go retail.

 

The process of using a small family branded product line for professionals as a launching pad for going into the retail market place took four years, and the turning point took place at the SEMA Show in 1973.

 

“That’s when we introduced our new face for retail with the scripted logo, which I developed during that four-year period and that gave the product a whole new identity,” Meguiar said.

 

For many years, Meguiar’s exhibited both at the SEMA Show and the APAA Show in Chicago which transitioned into the AAPEX Show in Las Vegas. “The AAPEX show was important because that’s where the big buyers, the heavy hitters—the Walmarts, the auto chains, what have you—were focused. But there was no passion at AAPEX,” Meguiar said. “So one day I put a TV camera on our booth at the SEMA Show to show the buyers at AAPEX how cool the SEMA Show was. As we captured their interest, we drove them over to SEMA to experience SEMA for themselves and they were hooked. That was a game changer! Up to that point, most major retailers didn’t even know SEMA existed.”

 

“When we finally decided to show only at SEMA—this was sometime in the late ’90s, I believe—we brought even more people over from AAPEX, since they couldn’t find us at the Sands anymore.”

 

Asked why he decided to settle exclusively on the SEMA Show after years of exhibiting at both venues, Meguiar was emphatic: “The passion. SEMA is a passion show, and we’re a passion company with a passion brand. The business guys attended AAPEX, but the ‘car guys’ attend SEMA, and they are our world.”

 

Into the ’90s and ’00s, Meguiar expanded his industry outreach as SEMA’s brand ambassador par excellence.

 

“I felt like we needed to get more exposure for SEMA to car guys nationally and globally,” he said. “We needed to do broadcasting, and I had a radio show (“Car Crazy”), so we set up a live radio show at SEMA, broadcasting from the GM, Ford and Chrysler booths and finally a designated space provided by SEMA. Then we decided to go into TV, so SEMA offered to build a stage for us. We started broadcasting live from the Show as “SEMA TV” around 15 years ago. On average, I’ve done 100 interviews every year over the four days of the Show. To my knowledge, no one has ever broadcast live interviews for four days at a trade show, viewed live on monitors throughout the show and on a JumboTron as well as being shown in more than 90,000 hotel rooms. On top of that, we’ve done two “Car Crazy” TV shows from SEMA every year that have aired globally to millions of car guys...generating great PR for SEMA.”

 

A lifetime devoted to the specialty automotive market and to the “car guys” who sustain it have yielded Meguiar countless accolades over the years, among them being presented a Petersen Museum Icon of the Year award; being appointed grand marshal of such events as America’s Concours d’Elegance at St. Johns, the Copperstate 1000 and the Woodward Dream Cruise; and receiving lifetime achievement awards at the Route 66, Autorama and Grand National Roadster shows.

 

He’s also an avid collector, and in 2015, his 1901 Duryea (a tribute to the year his grandfather started the family business) was the oldest car on the lawn at the Pebble Beach Concours. (However, he credits his first car—a ’57 Chevy Bel Air—as his “pride and joy.”) He’s also been named Alumnus of the Year by Point Loma Nazarene University and Layman of the Year by the General Council of the Assemblies of God.

 

Reflecting upon his induction into the SEMA Hall of Fame, Meguiar waxed grateful: “SEMA has been such a big part of my life. It’s part of my family. Throughout all the years, I’ve promoted SEMA as much as I’ve promoted my own products. To do all that, and now this, it’s the cherry on top of the cake. All of my heroes are in the SEMA Hall of Fame, and it’s humbling to be associated with them. I’m greatly honored, I really am.”

Of all the members of the automotive specialty-equipment industry who have influenced the growth of SEMA since the turn of the millennium, few have left a greater impression, and done so with more dedication, than outgoing SEMA Board Chairman Doug Evans. From his work on behalf of the SEMA Action Network to the SEMA Businesswomen’s Network and the SEMA Launch Pad, to name only a few, there’s scarcely been an initiative within SEMA during the past two decades that Evans hasn’t worked to promote. His tireless efforts to expand SEMA’s partner outreach and his advocacy on behalf of motorized recreation have earned him the admiration of the specialty automotive market worldwide.

Evans, a Chicago native, made a connection with cars at an early age and in a hands-on fashion. A boyhood devotee of Hot Rod magazine, he happened to have an older brother “who was a terrible driver. Every couple of years he’d wreck a car, and we’d have it up on stands in the backyard trying to put it back together. That’s how I started working on cars, and by the time I was 18, I was doing full-on rebuilds and paint jobs. Basically, I learned as I went along and from whatever I could learn from the pages of Hot Rod.”

In the late ’70s, having graduated from college and completed a stint in the U.S. Marines, Evans was ready to “spend some of the money I’d saved in the military on a cross-country motorcycle tour,” but with the economy faring poorly at the time, he reconsidered and soon landed a position as a media planner at Young & Rubicam—the nation’s largest advertising agency at the time.

“That was my first exposure to the agency side of the automotive business,” he said, noting that the experience suggested a more lucrative career path down the road. “When I discovered that the sales guys at the magazines who were pitching us for advertising dollars were making four times more money than I was, I thought it might be a good idea to get into that side of the business.”

Eventually his thoughts turned to Hot Rod, and the company that published it.

As it happened, Petersen Publishing Company had recently launched a new publishing division that included Hot Rod and which was in need of sales personnel, and Evans soon found himself working for the magazine he’d read so faithfully in his youth. He recalled the ’80s at Petersen Publishing Company fondly.

“It was a glorious time to be in the publishing industry,” he said. “The energy level at the place was so high, every day was like a new adventure. The business was growing by leaps and bounds each year, and it was a tremendous honor to work with people like Bob Petersen and [fellow 2017 inductee] GiGi Carleton. Sometimes I just couldn’t believe that I had the good fortune to be working for the same magazine I’d read so many years ago.”

After departing for stints at Condé Nast, Hachette and The Promotion Company (now Family Events) in the ’90s, he returned to the fold at the old Petersen company, which had been sold in his absence and has been known by several names in the years since (E-Map USA, Primedia, Source Interlink Media and, most recently, The Enthusiast Network).

During his last tour of duty, this time as executive vice president and group publisher, he oversaw comprehensive redesigns of some of the most iconic brands in the enthusiast-publishing industry, including Hot Rod, Car Craft, Four Wheeler, and Street Rodder—in all, three dozen titles. In addition, he oversaw the marketing and promotion of some 95 annual specialty projects and events such as the Hot Rod Power Tour and the Amsoil Engine Masters Challenge. He also played a key role in overseeing the transfer of the company’s massive photo archive—dating back to the first issue of Hot Rod in 1948—to the Petersen Automotive Museum, where it could be preserved and made available for research and to the public.

After departing the publishing company, Evans served as executive vice president and chief operating officer at Luken Communications, a national multicast TV network provider with a roster of properties that includes the enthusiast Rev’n network. He is now the director of business development of events at Bonnier Corporation, where he contributes to the company’s entire portfolio of branded enthusiast events, including the popular Family Events series (4-Wheel Jamboree Nationals, Monster Truck Nationals, Off-Road Expo and more).

Evans’ roots at SEMA go back over three decades, and he still vividly recalls his first SEMA Show in 1984.

“It filled up the entire central hall [of the Las Vegas Convention Center], and I was just blown away by the place and by the idea that such a show could even be put together,” he said. “More than anything, I remember thinking to myself how amazing it was that I was actually getting paid to do this!”

Evans has been awarded myriad honors and accolades for all his contributions to the industry. He is a member of the Automotive Restoration Market Organization (ARMO) Hall of Fame, and he served three terms on ARMO’s select committee. He was named SEMA’s Person of the Year for 2009 and Mentor of the Year by the SEMA Businesswomen’s Network in 2012. He has served three terms on the SEMA Board of Directors. He has served one term as chair-elect and one term as chairman.

Evans has led a number of SEMA outreach initiatives over the years. He was an early champion of the SEMA Political Action Committee (PAC) and has served as chairman of the PAC for 15 years. An activist dating back to his term as student-body president at Valparaiso University, his alma mater, Evans played a key role in the creation of the SEMA Action Network, the online advocacy initiative that keeps millions of auto enthusiasts informed on a daily basis about public policy initiatives that could affect their pastimes and livelihoods.

He has worked extensively with government agencies to preserve access to motorized recreation, most notably on the reclamation of the Bonneville Salt Flats as chairman of the Save the Salt Coalition, and he has been active in expanding SEMA’s youth outreach via programs such as SEMA’s Car Camp and the SEMA Career Fair.

When asked about his induction into the Hall of Fame, Evans was gracious and understated.

“Frankly, I was shocked when the announcement was made,” he said. “To be included alongside people of the caliber of GiGi Carleton and Barry Meguiar, it’s just unbelievable. And looking down the list of names on the Hall of Fame roster going back to the ’60s, I’m struck by just how many people on there are people I followed when I was a kid reading Hot Rod. It’s just an incredible honor—words don’t do it justice.”

While his term as Board chairman has drawn to a close, Evans has no plans to cease working day-to-day on ongoing SEMA initiatives.

“I’m still very much interested in the political and advocacy side of our business,” he said, “and I plan to continue my work with the SEMA PAC, working with government officials on policy matters that affect our members and on anything else where SEMA feels that I could make a positive contribution. Working with SEMA has been one of the joys of my life, and I very much look forward to continuing my relationship with the organization.”

 

 

“I was only doing my job.” That’s how 2017 Hall of Fame inductee GiGi Carleton described her 50-plus years of working for Petersen Publishing Company and, more recently, the Margie and Robert E. Petersen Foundation. But as the late Robert Petersen's executive assistant and special events coordinator and in later years party planner for trade show exhibitors and advertisers, she played a pivotal role in the marketing and promotion of motorsports across the United States, and her dedication and perseverance were instrumental in organizing and successfully launching the inaugural SEMA Show 50 years ago.

A native of Los Angeles, Carleton graduated from Immaculate Heart High School in Hollywood. Her father had recently passed away and with her mother supporting two younger siblings, she took a position working in the radio and TV division of a local advertising agency. Shortly thereafter, she moved to a company that offered an early version of pay TV known as subscription television. That company folded for lack of demand, but Carleton received a phone call shortly thereafter that would change the course of her life.

“I got a call from a person whom I had worked with in the advertising field who knew that I was good with detail, and he gave my name to a fellow called Patrick O’Rourke, who was working for Robert Petersen on a consultant basis and who needed some help putting on the Motor Trend/NASCAR 500 stock car race at Riverside International Raceway. It was a six-week contract position.”

“Here’s the thing,” she recalled: “At the time I didn’t even know what a stock car was. What’s NASCAR? What’s a stock car? I had no idea what Patrick was talking about! Patrick told me, ‘That’s okay, you’ll learn, and I know you’re good with details.’”

Eventually, the six-week contract turned into an offer of a full-time job in the special events department at Petersen Publishing Company.

“I went to work for six weeks,” Carleton noted, “and I never left.”

She served the Petersens in various executive capacities until Margie Petersen’s death in 2014, and she remains the president of the Margie and Robert E. Petersen Foundation.

Life in the early days at Petersen Publishing, with its legendary headquarters at 8490 Sunset Boulevard, could be fast and frantic, and event planning took place at a breakneck pace.

“Mr. Petersen was always coming up with ideas for new events,” Carleton remembered, “He’d say to Patrick, ‘I want this new event six weeks from now or two months from now,’ when normally you’d need six months to organize something like what he had in mind. Mind you, this was just Patrick and me doing this—we were the entire special events division! I don’t know how we managed to do it all, but we did put in a lot of 12-hour days.”

As she gained experience in special events, Carleton’s role in the company began to expand. Due to her background in radio and TV, she was also a production assistant for Robert E. Petersen Productions. Petersen appointed her executive secretary in 1967 and assistant to the chairman of the board some 10 years later.

Carleton’s roster of events was diverse and wide-ranging. Besides helping to organize the aforementioned Motor Trend race at Riverside, she worked on the Hot Rod East-West drag-race series, the 1965 Motorama car show at the Pan-Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles, and on a mezzanine-level exhibit at the New York Auto Show at the old New York Colosseum.

After Petersen acquired the performance-industry trade journal Hot Rod Industry News in the mid-’60s, she was assigned to assist Alex Xydias for an event to build awareness of the publication: the inaugural Speed Equipment Manufacturer’s Association show. It was an industry-only trade exhibition held at Dodger Stadium in 1967, which is better known today simply as the SEMA Show. Fifty years on, Carleton still vividly remembered the event, which took place outdoors on the stadium’s club-level concourse.

“It was in January, and it was freezing cold that day,” she said. “There were 99 booths. The manufacturers came from all over the United States—some locally, some from as far away as the Midwest—and everyone stayed at the old Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard. No one was sure how well a show like this would turn out, because no one had ever done anything like it before. And it was a huge success! We couldn’t believe it!”

Looking back, she surmised that “it was one of those things where the timing was right, the economy was good, people had money—and many of the exhibitors wrote so many orders at the first show that they could hardly wait for the second one,” which was relocated the following year to the recently opened Anaheim Convention Center.

When Carleton heard that she had been nominated to the SEMA Hall of Fame, she said that she was totally flabbergasted.

“I was thrilled to death, and I consider it a huge honor to be included with all of those people in the Hall of Fame, whether they have passed on or are still with us,” she said. “A lot of [the inductees] I’ve known for many years, so it’s really a thrill. Looking back on it, though, I was only doing my job!”

Carleton still maintains an active schedule. She continues to manage the Petersen estate, and her work for the Petersen Foundation keeps her “busier than I can tell you.” Among the foundation’s most noted acts of philanthropy in recent years have been a gift of $8.5 million to Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and an overall $250 million gift to the Petersen Automotive Museum, which included all the Petersen collection of cars, building and founding costs, which she is still involved from time to time with consultant duties.

Her advice was particularly sought during the controversial remodel of the museum in 2015, and Carleton thinks that Bob Petersen would have likely approved of its final iconic design.

“If he were here, I’m sure he’d say something like, ‘You’ve got to change with the times. You can’t stay stuck in the mud and not be afraid to try new things.’ That’s the kind of person Mr. Petersen was.”

 

 

Dedicated Mentor and Association Ambassador

A native of Phoenix, Arizona, Chris Thomson’s first introduction to racing was at age nine, when he began to hang around a speed shop owned by a schoolmate’s parents, Everett and Thelma Goosic. From his home, Thomson could hear when they’d fire up a car. He’d jump on his bike and pedal over as fast as he could to watch the tuning. The first time he was invited to join the Goosics at a race, he was hooked, and the same family gave Thomson his first job as a teenager, working in their warehouse at Arizona Performance Equipment.

Thomson later worked at Service Center Speed Shop in Sheldon Konblett’s chain. The store he managed had a parking lot with enough space to host weekly car shows. The shop sponsored a few local drag racers, who would park in front of the shop on off weekends. Thomson’s knack for marketing became evident as the little shows drew crowds, and the neighboring businesses were also thrilled with the foot traffic.

Thomson later went on to open his own speed shop, Performance Plus. He was in business for eight years, during which he made many industry connections whom he still values today.

Chris Thomson

“I loved dealing with the consumers,” Thomson reflected. “No matter where I was, the consumers were fun. You're always involved in everybody's project. They're always excited about what they're doing. You get to build a lot of cars without spending a lot of your own money.”

After closing Performance Plus, Thomson transitioned to the manufacturing side of the industry, working for Mr. Gasket Exhaust.

“It turned out that my background in the retail side really helped a lot when it came to product development, product ideas and marketing,” he said. “So I moved from administrative assistant to a product manager for the exhaust division and eventually became the marketing manager. And I enjoyed that immensely.”

When the company was bought, Thomson became one of the first employees at FlowTech Exhaust, which was founded by another Mr. Gasket alumnus, Gary Biggs. Biggs quickly became a mentor to Thomson, making sure he was involved in the management of the company.

Thomson navigated several acquisitions throughout his career, as he held sales positions at Holley when it bought FlowTech, and at Airaid when it was acquired by K&N. Eventually, Thomson took a similar position with Baer Brake Systems, and he has recently become national account manager for TMG Performance Products.

Chris Thomson

In each season of his career, Thomson can identify one or two individuals who invested in him and the lessons they taught him. The person he credits most for encouraging his SEMA involvement was John Menzler. The two first met when Menzler was a sales rep for Thomson at Performance Plus, and it was later Menzler who nominated Thomson for the Motorsports Parts Manufacturers Council (MPMC) select committee.

Thomson served three consecutive terms on the committee and contributed to the development of industry resources such as the MPMC Business Guidelines Manual, which outlines best practices for managing a successful manufacturing operation. He was also instrumental in establishing the MPMC Hall of Fame.

Each of the projects Thomson worked on prepared him for his six years of later service on the SEMA Board of Directors. He has been a leader in numerous SEMA committees and special task forces, contributed to panel discussions for SEMA Town Hall meetings, and been honored with awards from several councils and networks. He champions legislative efforts related to the specialty-equipment market and supports the SEMA Political Action Committee.

“There were a lot of people who opened doors for me along the way, and that's probably one of the reasons why I wanted to serve SEMA—because people paid it forward to me,” he said.

Apart from SEMA service, Thomson is known as a mentor to young professionals. He’s earned a reputation as a facilitator of collaboration among industry members. He is also a longtime advocate of the Custom Automotive Network and was twice recognized as its Person of the Year.

A great day for Thomson is one he gets to spend at the drag strip. Not only is the excitement of the racing a blast, but it’s also about camaraderie and community—accomplishing something with people you enjoy, win or lose, Thomson said. He has owned several racecars over the years, and he enjoys tuning them for his drivers. His first was an NHRA Competition Eliminator C/Dragster that established the NHRA record for the class. Today, he owns a nostalgia blown alcohol-altered car.

Reflecting on his career, what stands out to Thomson is that he found success doing something he loved.

“I never had to work for a living,” he said. “I had a career that I enjoyed—it was never a job. I sell things that people don't need. How about that? I’m in a multi-billion-dollar industry, and nobody needs a thing we do.”

When he received the phone call about his SEMA Hall of Fame induction, Thomson said he was speechless.

“The true joy of the moment came when I called my wife Kathie,” he recalled. “She and my daughters, Kristin and Emily, have always been my greatest supporters and fans. I look at the Hall of Fame list, and I'm blown away. I have some friends who are on there. I just pinch myself because I can't see my name next to them at the same level.”

 

 

Establishing Race-Winning Standards

By Tony Thacker, Courtesy of American Hot Rod Foundation

There is a good reason Ed Pink is known as The Old Master: The man’s command over automotive engineering is legendary and in a league of its own. Engines and high performance have been in his blood right from the start. He didn’t have his first car 24 hours before he had the engine out and apart.

When he was about 16, Pink met Lou Baney. They became instant friends, and Pink eventually went to work for Baney after school during the week and on Saturdays. At the time, Baney had a Golden Eagle gas station, a garage and a speed shop called Hot Rod Heaven. Pink was Baney’s only employee, and he did whatever Baney said; after all, he was on a huge learning curve.

A lot of the legends of hot rodding such as Ed Iskenderian were there bench racing on Saturdays. Pink was also a member of the Russetta Coupes Club that raced at El Mirage Dry Lake, and he got to be fast friends with Fran Hernandez, Bobby Meeks and Don Towle, who all worked at Edelbrock, and also with Vic Edelbrock himself. He had the best in mentors and teachers anybody could ever want, and they became lifelong friends.

Ed Pink

At the time, Pink was working only part time for Baney and most of the time for his dad in his paint store. The Korean War was on, and Pink was drafted into the Army. He ended up in the 25th Infantry Division in Korea.

“Afterward, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do,” Pink said. “I went to work as a mechanic for Louie Senter at Ansen Engineering. Then my friend Jack Landrum and I decided to open a little garage and Richfield gas station in 1954. We called it Pinkland—a combination of Pink and Landrum. Jack helped me run a ’34 Coupe at El Mirage, but the partnership just wasn’t successful. Neither one of us had any business experience, but it was something we tried together, and it didn’t work. We remained friends until the day Jack died.”

After Pinkland, Pink went to work for Frank Baron of Tattersfield-Baron fame, but he knew that wasn’t what he wanted to do, so he opened another Richfield station and garage. He soon realized that repairing stockers was not what he wanted to do either, so he moved on to Eddie Meyer Engineering.

“Eddie also had a repair business,” Pink said. “Most of his customers were movie people, and I was his mechanic for whatever he needed done. I learned a lot working there. My mentor there was Eddie’s son Bud, another great learning curve and great friend.”

Again, Pink knew that, as good as the job was at Eddie Meyer Engineering, it wasn’t what he wanted to do with his career, so in 1961, upon an invitation from Tony Nancy, he opened his own shop in Nancy’s Sherman Oaks complex. In addition to Nancy’s upholstery shop, the complex housed Kent Fuller’s chassis shop as well as metal shaper and body builder Wayne Ewing, who shaped A.J. Watson’s Champ Cars and the Greer-Black-Prudhomme dragster.

Ed Pink

Pink couldn’t have found a better home. Initially doing some ignition and cylinder-head work, Pink found himself in the middle of drag city, and his customers included Nancy, “Big John” Mazmanian and “TV Tommy” Ivo, to name but a few.

His main concept was that you first have to make the engine live, and then you make it run faster. His whole outlook was preparation. That was one of the lessons learned from Bobby Meeks that he follows today.

Pink’s attention to detail brought him to the attention of racers beyond the quarter mile. That sport was changing, and drag racers were starting to build their own engines. They only needed Ed for advice, and that was hard to charge for. However, a call came from Bill Eaton at Vel’s Parnelli Jones to say that they were converting a DFV Formula 1 engine to run Indy, and they asked Pink to do some special machine work on some connecting rods for them. He said yes, and that started another great relationship.

After word began to spread about Pink’s talents, Cosworth Engineering asked him to perform similar work for its IndyCar engine program, including building its DFX engines. At the peak of that period, Pink was building engines for half a dozen IndyCar teams, including Tom Sneva’s, which won the 1983 Indy 500. He also did engines for Arie Luyendyk and Tim Richmond, who won rookie of the year honors in their respective years. That kept him busy until the late ’80s, when engine building again shifted in-house.

Where next? Well, why not the 24 Hours of Daytona? Old friend Jim Busby was racing 962 turbo Porsches and wanted Pink to take over his Porsche engine program. Pink agreed, and that was the start of another very successful program.

Busby’s Porsches became the fastest in the field and the ones to beat. Pontiac contacted Pink and wanted him to take over its GTP Sport Car racing-engine program, which featured an all-aluminum five-liter V8 to be raced in a Spice GTP car built in England, and that led to a Trans Am program for Pontiac.

Pink helped develop the Turbo Buick V6 engine for Indy and was the head of the design team for Nissan’s Infinity V8 engine for Indy. He was also heavily involved in midget racing with four-cylinder engines for Ford and Toyota that won a combined 10 USAC National Midget Series championships, and the Ford Silver Crown V8 that won four titles in the USAC National Silver Crown Series—all four in a row.

It was a Nissan Indy engine that gave Pink the toughest time. The cylinder block was 80% developed, and some cylinder heads were somewhat finished. But that was it. Pink had to design the rods, pistons, dry-sump oil pump, and every component to make a complete engine. Turns out, they didn’t have the necessary budget to do the project right. In spite of that, the team did win a race and were in contention at a few others.

“I learned a lot, so it wasn’t all bad,” Pink said. “The biggest thing I learned was what you can do when you don’t know you can’t do it.”

Of all the projects over the years, Pink was the proudest of the Toyota Midget engine.

“All TRD had was a cylinder head and a valve cover, and we designed the complete engine,” Pink said. “The first time out at the one-mile Copper Classic in Phoenix in 2006, it set quick time and won the race with Dave Steel driving. To this day, the Toyota engine is the one to have, as it wins most of the races, plus all of the championship teams are Toyota powered. I’m very proud of that.”

Pink learned a lot over the years doing what he loved. He achieved what he did because he listened and learned and applied what he learned. While he’s won many awards and been inducted into numerous halls of fame, Pink said that his key was to keep focusing on the project in front of him.

“Retirement” is a loose term for Pink, who sold Ed Pink Racing Engines in 2008. He has remained involved in the industry with projects such as donating engines for auction to benefit the SEMA Memorial Scholarship Fund. Today, he still keeps busy at Ed Pink’s Garage in Newbury Park, California, where he and longtime friend Bob Brandt are involved with some very interesting projects.

 

 

Tenacious Leader and Enthusiastic Advocate

 

Donnie Eatherly’s career path hasn’t always taken him in a straight line, but each experience shaped the second-generation co-owner and president of P&E Distributors in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. His father, J.D. Eatherly, founded the company in the mid 1950s, first as a retail operation and then later expanding into distribution. Today, it’s one of the longest-running speed and truck-accessory shops in the region.

 

Eatherly knew he wanted to be around racing after his father started taking the family to the Saturday night races at the Nashville Speedway in the late ’60s to watch some of the customers, including P.B. Crowell, Coo Coo Marlin, Marty Robbins and Daryl Waltrip.

 

Later that fall, he requested two stacks of model cars from Santa for Christmas. Appropriately enough, it was model cars that also led to the early beginnings of SEMA, and the association and Eatherly were on converging paths to meet in the future.

 

Some of Eatherly’s earliest memories were of the installation bays at P&E—running and playing or sweeping the floors. Later, he stocked shelves, and he was learning to install stereos by age 14.

 

Donnie Eatherly

“I always ran around with people who were a lot older than I was. I always had a thirst for knowledge, and I had a lot of respect for people who had already been through the things that I was trying to learn, so I relied on them a lot. I was being taught by a fellow named Buzz to learn the installation business, I enjoyed listening to the music and the camaraderie of being around my Dad’s employees. You know, they didn’t give me a hard time,” he laughed.

 

It was also during his teenage years that Eatherly fell in love with motorcycles. A neighbor let him ride his 1973 Kawasaki 100, and Eatherly was hooked. He saved up what he made in the shop over the summer and bought that bike for $300.

 

“After a couple of years, I took that bike and stripped the wiring to the bare bones, headlights and blinkers gone,” he said. “I painted it Kawasaki lime green with a rattle can of Dupli-Color touch-up paint from the shop, added a Webco head, a Hooker header, Koni shocks, a K&N filter, Preston Petty fenders, and planned on being the next Roger DeCoster!”

 

As a young adult, Eatherly worked off and on for his father in every facet of the family company, in addition to other ventures. He remembers unloading truckload after truckload of Holley carburetors.

 

“At that time, we were Holley’s largest aftermarket distributor,” he said. “Big Dave and the wholesale guys on the phone would pre-sell those things by the cases. I would help unload the trucks, stack them by part number, label them to the customer, and sometimes they would all go back out the same day. We were the first Holley customer to turn in a million-dollar order. It jammed their computer because it didn’t handle that many decimals!”

 

Donnie Eatherly

Eatherly’s other fond memories include repainting the exterior of the store with all of the manufacturers’ logos and the store sign. That’s what lead him to attend commercial art school, where he met his beautiful bride of 37 years, Donna, and honed the skills that he later used painting commercial signs, interstate billboards, and lettering racecars and delivery vehicles. But he hadn’t forgotten about motorcycles.

 

“I tried motocross, but I was not very good,” he said. “I knew I wasn’t a racer. I belonged behind the wrenches.”

 

Then he became friends with a family of racers, the Peraleses.

 

“The mother and father were both anesthesiologists and had no problem funding their boys with top-notch equipment,” he said. “I remember driving with Kenny, one of the brothers, to New Port Ritchey, Florida, to pick up some new racers from a privateer race-bike builder—a YZ100, a YZ80 and a 125 Elsinor. This was around 1976.”

 

That was his first encounter with lendendary tuner E.C. Birt, the Smokey Yunick of the two-stroke world. Not long after that, the Perales family opened a Honda and Suzuki dealership in Dickson, Tennessee. They talked E.C. into moving his business in with them to focus on their family’s racing venture.

 

“Soon they couldn’t keep me away, and I talked E.C. into letting me come to work for him,” Eatherly said. “I was doing all the porting and polishing and some machine work. I learned a lot from E.C.—how to weld and run lathes and end mills.”

 

Some of the motorcycles he worked on won races such as the Daytona Half Mile, the Canadian Grand Prix, and the Houston Astrodome National 125.

 

“I had a blast working for E.C.—some of the most fun in my life,” he said. “When I would be doing a cylinder, E.C. would say, ‘Think like gasoline, boy!’”

 

A fire at the family business in 1982 took Eatherly back to work for his father for a time, but he missed working with his hands in a machine shop. A deal that he and his father put together to purchase a small shop in town fell through, so he cooked up a plan to get back into one. His plan was to learn as much as he could while working at a shop and then open his own place at Tennessee Speed Sport.

 

The deal fell through on a Friday afternoon, and Eatherly’s father ask him in the parking lot, “Well what are you going to do now?”

 

Eatherly replied, “NASCAR’s in town down at the speedway this weekend. I’m getting a 12 pack of beer and going to the races, and then I’m going to work for a machine shop come Monday morning.”

 

Eatherly called the first person he thought of: Roger Grooms at Grooms Engines.

 

“I told Roger: ‘I’m going to work for a machine shop today; it might be yours, it might be Rock City Machine, or it could be John Ripatoe’s, but you’re the first person I called, and I’ll meet you for lunch today to discuss it.’”

 

So they met for lunch, and Eatherly disclosed his love of machine shops and his ultimate plan of starting his own. He told Grooms, “I guarantee I’ll be your best employee.” Eatherly bought lunch, and Grooms hired him on the spot.

 

Being an efficiency nut, Eatherly soon recognized opportunities to increase production. After coaching his teammates, he helped to successfully triple head-building output in two weeks. His zeal was contagious, and Eatherly was moved throughout the factory to rally the troops and up production across the board. He eventually landed in the crank-grinding department, where he learned how to run crank grinders and welders. He doubled the output there, as well. He couldn’t know it then, but this art of persuasion would serve him well as an industry advocate later in life.

 

One day in the mid-‘80s, Eatherly’s father showed up at Grooms’ and asked to see his son.

 

“They came and got me from the crank grinder,” Eatherly recalled. “I went up front to meet my father, and he said, ‘Come with me. I have something to show you.’ I said, ‘Dad, I don’t work for you. I can’t just walk off. I have to get permission.’ And I started laughing.”

 

It turned out that his father had purchased a 90,000-sq.-ft. warehouse for the distribution company and was excited to share it with his son.

 

Not long after that, Eatherly went back to work at the family business. During that time, people such as Bob Cook, Bill Perry, Skeeter Jordan and Sam Compton were some of his mentors and manufacturers’ reps calling on P&E. Cook encouraged Eatherly to join SEMA, but convincing his father would prove to be a challenge. Eatherly came up with a plan to pay the dues using a cash bonus from Dee Zee’s SEMA Show special, which paid $1 per running board ordered.

 

Eatherly made use of the association’s resources right away and volunteered in many different capacities over the years, including being a early member of the Young Executives Network. During his three terms on the SEMA Board of Directors, he was a contributing factor in the formation of the SEMA Data Co-op, and P&E was one of the first receivers to sign up.

 

Eatherly has also served as a mentor to many in the industry, including young entrepreneurs participating in the SEMA Launch Pad program. He’s a proud contributor to the SEMA Political Action Committee, and he was thrilled to accept SEMA’s Warehouse Distributor of the Year award on behalf of his team at P&E in both 2004 and 2009. He served a long list of other SEMA committees over the years and now once again serves as a newly elected SEMA Board member, beginning in July of 2018.

 

Aside from his SEMA activities, Eatherly has served as president of the Custom Automotive Network (formerly known as Performance Warehouse Association), three terms on the board of the Custom Automotive Network as well as on various committees, and still sits on the board of the Antique Motorcycle Club of America. He advocates for the industry politically whenever he has the chance and has been called upon twice by members of Congress and the Senate to speak at the Capitol and the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on behalf of small businesses regarding The Main Street Fairness Act.

 

One of Eatherly’s proudest accomplishments was purchasing P&E Distributors from his father in 1995, along with his brother Steve. By 2007, the two had almost doubled the revenue of the company.

 

Being a business owner hasn’t always been an easy ride, but Eatherly has drawn on the lessons learned about hard work, tenacity and the cycles of a business from watching his father. Today, P&E has 80 employees in three locations, and Eatherly’s son and nephew are learning the trade.

 

He did realize his dream of owning an engine machine shop that he, Jim Simpkins and a fellow he called Mr. Bill started at Tennesse Speed Sport. Eatherly named the company “The Engine Shop” after one Sunday spent at home painting signs in his basement while listening to the Talladega NASCAR race.

 

“Davey Allison had won the race, and he was in victory circle celebrating and thanking all his sponsors,” Eatherly recalled. “He said, ‘I have to thank all the boys back at the engine shop,’ and I said, ‘That’s it, the perfect name!’ The Allisons are my heroes.”

 

Reflecting on his career, Eatherly said, “I love working in this industry, helping others like our customers, manufacturers, reps or other warehouses. It’s wonderful to see how we all work together and communicate and learn—even competitors. It’s fun to look back at how it’s changed and some of the ideas we talked about in the past that came to fuition. It’s truly gratifying to know you were a part of that growth and success.”

 

Eatherly said that his induction into the SEMA Hall of Fame is an incredible honor.

 

“You know, it’s a strange feeling to be humbled and excited at the same time,” he explained. “Those two just don’t seem to go together, and it’s the weirdest thing—you just don’t know what to say.”

 

Volunteer Service

 

SEMA Board of Directors Member 2007–2013

SEMA Political Action Committee President’s Club, Red Line Member since 2016

SEMA Executive Committee Member 2009, 2012, 2013

WTC SEMA Board Liaison 2007–2013

SEMA Marketing Task Force Mmember 2008–2013

SEMA Rep of the Year Chair Person 2005, 2008, 2017

SEMA Rep of the Year Committee 2016

SEMA Election SOP Task Force 2007 and 2013

SEMA Nominating Committee 2009, 2011, 2013

SEMA WD, Person, Rep of the Year SOP Task Force Member 2010

SEMA Data Pool Program Volunteer and Current Participant

SEMA Launch Pad Mentoring Program 2016, 2017

CAN Pioneer Award Honoree 2014

CAN President 2012, 2013

CAN LRP Chair Person

Three-term CAN Board Member

Chaired CAN Person of the Year Committee 2009

Chaired CAN Manufacturer of the Year Committee 2008

Hosted the Hot Rodders of Tomorrow Division 2 Championships 2009–2015

Antique Motorcycle Club of America Board Member since 2013 (Membership of 10,000 across the world.)

A passionate enthusiast who grew up helping her dad rebuild cars, Moore is among the industry’s most active volunteers and leaders. She has chaired countless SEMA councils and committees and spearheaded numerous special projects that have helped to advance the industry. In 2012, Moore was instrumental in guiding an all-female Mustang build that received national coverage on the CBS Evening News, as well as local news coverage, a feature in Times Square, and an award for Best PR on a Shoestring Budget from PR Daily. Described as a dedicated professional with an engineer’s mind, an artist’s vision and a heart of gold, Moore continues to advocate for the industry and mentor the younger generation. She currently supports the SEMA Cares Committee, regularly attends the Washington, D.C. Rally, and is involved with the SEMA Scholarship Committee.

To know Crower’s story is to know the history and essence of the automotive specialty-equipment market. Growing up in the ’30s, Crower was captivated by cars and speed from an early age. Whether it was the Moto-Scoot he modified at the age of 13, the Harley he got when he was 17 or the ’36 Ford coupe or ’32 Ford roadster that followed, Crower was always looking for ways to improve speed. After a brief period in the Air Force, Crower headed to San Diego, where hot rodding was flourishing. In 1955, he opened Crower Racing Cams & Equipment Co. and began manufacturing race products. From the mounting of the 671 Blower on his Hudson to the Crower Glide Clutch and wings on Don Garlits’ race car, Crower is credited with advancing the industry’s speed, safety and overall innovation.

Chandler is the creator and owner of one of the most iconic vehicles to have ever graced the planet: Bigfoot—the Ford F-250 pickup that is credited with starting the monstertruck craze nearly 45 years ago. Chandler created Bigfoot in 1975 when his personal off-roading passion led him to a series of truck modifications, including bigger tires, bigger axles and rear steering. At the time, monster trucks didn’t exist, and Bigfoot gained national attention at car shows, making television appearances and eventually spawning 20 clones that continue to tour the country today. Bigfoot paved the way for an entire market of monster trucks and has influenced the truck industry as a whole.

Joe St. Lawrence started RTM, the industry's first production company for auto how-to shows in the mid-1980s. He created PowerBlock, television’s first two-hour, auto theme-block featuring how-to shows that introduced SEMA-member products to million of viewers. St. Lawrence’s shows sparked parts-buying on Monday, and gave DYIers the confidence to bolt-on aftermarket parts and customize their vehicles. He introduced broad audiences to cool cars and helped change the image of the backyard mechanic into a tool-wielding expert.