Hilborn is a popular name in the Indianapolis 500 race, because Hilborn fuel injection units have been on Indy race cars for more than three decades. It was Stu Hilborn, an automotive engineer and lakes racer, who designed and developed the hybrid injection system, a variation of which is now used on new cars in an electronic configuration. His injectors have been used successfully and set many records in all types of racing including oval track, drag, dry lakes, super modified, off-road, motorcycle, tractor pulling, hydroplanes and Indy Lite series.

Bob retired from Chrysler Motors Corporation in the late 1980s, but he did so with credit for keeping the Chrysler nameplates prominent in all forms of racing. Bob is known as the originator of Mopar, a unit of operation that began as a performance parts division for Chrysler. It’s reported that he ran Chrysler’s Pure Oil Performance Trials team and the Mobilgas Economy Run efforts, and led the racing group that developed the Hyper Pak-powered Valiants for NASCAR’s short-lived compact car racing series. Mopar Magazine wrote that he “dreamed up” the Max Wedge and HEMI package cars Chrysler built from 1962 to 1968.

Pete was the co-founder of Pete & Jake's, a large and very successful street rod products manufacturer, also responsible for the design and construction of popular hot rods, among them the award-winning "California Kid" coupe. He has built, or had a hand in building, a number of notable rods, including the Eliminator coupe and two “HogZZilla” custom motorcycles for ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons. He was also involved in the restoration of several historic hot rods for Bruce Meyer, including the Doane Spencer roadster, Pierson Brothers coupe and Alex Xydias’s original So-Cal Speed Shop belly tank lakester. Pete is also the owner of So-Cal Speed Shop. In addition, he was Vice President of Marketing at SEMA, and was instrumental in the formation of the Street Rod Equipment Association, a SEMA council. He was inducted in to the SRMA Hall of Fame, the Route 66 Hall of Fame, National Rod & Custom Hall of Fame, Hot Rod Hall of Fame and the Grand National Roadster Show Hall of Fame. He has been awarded the Grand National Roadster Show Builder of the Year, Detroit Autorama Builder of the Year, Legends of Speed Lifetime Achievement Award and NSRA (UK) Hot Rod of the Century Award.

Borré got his start more than 40 years ago as a teenage counterman at a neighborhood auto parts store. To this day he admits to a passion for cars of any kind. It’s an infatuation he traces to his boyhood years, and that, he says, is what has always influenced his career choices. From the parts counter to management roles, Borré advanced to president of Sperex VHT Corp., a position he held for 17 years. Today, Borré is the CEO of Manik Motors, a major national supplier of truck accessories.

Borré’s affiliation with SEMA spans many, many years. He has held a seat on the SEMA Board of Directors, been on the executive committee, been active in the Professional Restylers Organization (PRO) and he has been a major contributor to the progress and growth of the SEMA Scholarship Fund.

Amy Faulk, SEMA’s Person of the Year in 1996, has been interested in automotive technology since she was a preteen helping in her father’s body and radiator repair shop. During her automotive career, she has held management roles at Racing Head Service/Competition Cams and TCI/Fel-Pro/Federal-Mogul. She is currently the chief administrative officer at Hypertech.

Faulk has devoted much of her time and talents to serving on the SEMA Board of Directors, as well as the SEMA Businesswomen’s Network (SBN) and the SEMA Motorsports Parts Manufacturers Council (MPMC). She also is credited with the development of the annual Silent Auction at the SEMA Show, which raises money for the SEMA Memorial Scholarship Fund.

Faulk is also a distinguished drag racer, earning the NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) title “The Winningest Woman in Racing.” Plus, she has won the NHRA Super Stock Driver of the Year award and national title victories in three different competition categories.

Turbocharging is synonymous with performance. That is due in large part to the efforts and accomplishments of Bob Keller. A tireless advocate of turbocharger technology, Keller has perhaps done more to advance the acceptance of the technology than anyone else in the industry. At the same time, he has been a determined promoter of the performance aftermarket.

Upon graduating from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1960, Keller began his professional career working as an aerospace engineer for Grumman Aircraft (Northrop-Grumman). Around 1963, he decided to merge his technical knowledge with his love of performance. He formed a small moonlight company called Turbonics, Inc., and began to pursue performance turbo applications for automobiles.

Keller left the aerospace business in 1973 to pursue his “turbocharger dream.” He joined the Flagship Marine Corporation and, in short order, persuaded the company to join SEMA. Keller exhibited the company’s line of TurboNautic products at the SEMA Show in Anaheim that same year. That was the start of a long relationship with SEMA.

In 1978, after holding key positions with numerous aftermarket companies, Keller decided to make a go of it on his own. He founded Turbonetics as a manufacturer and distributor of special-purpose turbochargers. Keller guided the company from its humble beginnings in his garage to the multi-million-dollar business that it is today. He holds multiple patents and is an active member of the SAE. Keller also has been published extensively in a variety of trade magazines and is a technical contributor to the NHRA. He sold Turbonetics in 1999 to Kelly Aerospace, where he still serves as a consultant and President Emeritus.

Keller’s ongoing efforts to educate consumers and the industry about the technical advantages of turbocharger technology are matched only by his efforts to promote the performance aftermarket. He served on multiple SEMA committees and task forces and chaired the Management Committee, the Environmental Strategic Planning Committee and the WD of the Year Committee. In addition to playing major roles in the formation of the Motorsports Parts Manufacturers Council and Sport- Compact Council, he served on the Select Committees of both. Keller served two terms on the SEMA board and was one of the original members of the SEMA/Ford Technical Initiative Task Force.

As chair on the Environmental Strategic Planning Committee, he authored the Voluntary Product Identification Program for emissions-sensitive products in 1993. His hard work on emissions and regulatory issues earned him yet another accolade, the prestigious SEMA Person of the Year award in 1993. Additionally, his continual recruiting of new SEMA members earned him several Ambassador awards.

Known as an avid hot rodder from the beginning, Keller’s passion for the performance aftermarket not only led to his own unprecedented success but undoubtedly benefited the entire industry as well.

Herb Fishel's mother tells the story of how-decades before winning the triple crown of racing, driving the pace car at the Indy 500 or being named one of Hot Rod magazine's 100 most influential people-he used to take the nipple off his bottle so he could wash his toy cars with milk.

While in diapers, he was training for his relationship with SEMA. As an adult, he pioneered the concept of a featured manufacturer, creating Chevrolet's "takeover" of the rotunda at the 1984 SEMA Show.

"This was the first time a vehicle manufacturer played a major role in the SEMA Show and led to the expansive growth of the Show," says Chuck Blum, president emeritus of SEMA. "Up to that point in time, OEM participation in the Show was very limited and inconsistent."

During his 40-year career at General Motors, Fishel said that he always believed in the connection between the high-performance industry and the auto manufacturer. It was a career that took him around the world and a long way from his native North Carolina.

Herb Fishel said that he had already made his mind up to pursue a career in auto racing well before he got to high school. "Cars totally consumed my thinking at that stage, [but I] wasn't thinking much beyond being a master mechanic," Fishel recalled.

Fishel's Uncle Bill, a mechanic at the local Lincoln-Mercury dealership, possessed a rather well-equipped home garage where Fishel spent his free time. "I would spend all my spare time with him after hours and on the weekends sorting parts and working on things like a Crosley Hot Shot and a midget-type race car powered by a Mall 11-horsepower engine," he said. "We also repaired lawn mowers."

That same Uncle Bill took Fishel and several other neighborhood kids to Winston-Salem's Bowman Gray Stadium each week during the summer. NASCAR ran modified and sportsman race cars there and, as Fishel noted, his group arrived early and stayed late. Billy and Bobby Myers became heroes to Fishel, who hung out at their shop and often followed them to the junkyards as they pursued parts for their '37 Fords.

Fishel may not have been looking past a future as a master mechanic in high school, but his parents were. Had they not intervened, he said, he would have skipped college and gone to work as a mechanic. But they insisted, so he enrolled at North Carolina State College to pursue a mechanical engineering degree.

While in college, Fishel kept close tabs on the racing scene and took particular notice of the Mystery Engine Caper at Daytona in February of 1963. [The 427-cubic inch "mystery" engine showed up at the 1963 Daytona 500 and is considered to be the foundation of GM big-block technology.

As he neared graduation, Fishel still had racing on his mind. "I wrote letters to Lee Petty, Junior Johnson and Bondy Long seeking employment," he said. "I never heard from Lee or Junior, but I did receive a response from Ned Jarrett indicating that they really appreciated my interest but really didn't have any need for someone with my credentials."

Undaunted, Fishel continued with his automotive interests-especially a fascination with the engines and cars that Zora Arkus-Duntov was designing and building. An on-campus interview with a General Motors representative led to a follow-up interview with Chevrolet Engineering in Warren, Michigan. Fishel said that his flight from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Detroit in April 1963 was his first-ever plane ride.

During that initial interview, Fishel was asked if there was anything special he'd like to do while visiting and he said that he'd like to meet Duntov. As luck would have it, Duntov was free for a brief meeting, and Fishel's fate was sealed. "With that introduction, they could have had me for nothing," he said.

Fishel spent his first six years with GM doing design and development work on all the engines he'd read about. In 1968, he was promoted to design engineer in the production High Performance Engine Group where he worked on the development of the 302 V8 for the Camaro, among other things.

Fishel's motorsports career began at General Motors in 1969 when he went to work for Vince Piggins in the Chevrolet Product Performance Group. "For the next seven years I was able to work one to one with many of my racing heroes: Junior Johnson, Bill Jenkins, Jim Travers and Frank Coon," he said. "I spent a lot of time working with Smokey Yunick at his Best Damn Garage in Daytona Beach." In 1976, Lloyd Ruess convinced Fishel to make the move to Buick to create the Buick Special Products Group. He returned to Chevrolet in 1983 to replace Piggins, who was retiring. "In addition to running the racing group at Chevrolet, I was able to spend more time with the high-performance and custom parts industry by participating in the major trade shows like SEMA and the Circle Track Trade Show," Fishel said.

Unfortunately, we have nowhere near enough space to highlight all of what Fishel accomplished during his 40-year career at General Motors. He led GM to the triple crown of racing by winning the Daytona 500, the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans all in the same year. Hot Rod magazine named him one of the 100 most important people in the first 50 years of hot rodding in 1997, and he was inducted into the Hot Rod Hall of Fame that same year.

When asked about the highlight of motorsports career, Fishel said it was driving a 1953 Ferrari 250 MM in the 2001 Italian Mille Miglia with the love of his life, Sandy Heng. Fishel retired from General Motors in September, 2003. One of his final duties was to drive the Chevrolet SSR official pace car vehicle to start the 87th Indianapolis 500.

Born into a racing family in Waltham, Massachusetts, Steve Bolio has been involved with cars and competition since he began to walk. He spent five to seven nights a week at racetracks from the time he was three years old, and he started piloting go-karts when he was in grammar school. He has maintained that affinity for the track throughout his life and still, at age 60, manages to turn hot laps in karts when time and his business allow.

He has also competed for 45 years in the automotive specialty-equipment industry, working at a variety of jobs in retail, wholesale, new-product development and manufacturing.

His first break into the SEMA side of the industry came after graduating from Waltham High School and attending Bentley College, where he studied accounting and finance. Bolio began his SEMA career when his best friend, a local body shop owner, informed him that Carl Carpenter, owner of a speed-parts distribution venture called Auto Racing Equipment Company in Cochituate, Massachusetts, was looking for help. ARE was one of the top five distribution outfits in the country at that time and was located on a dairy farm.

Interestingly, one of Steve’s fellow workers at ARE was Charlie Siegars, who later became the chief engine builder at Hendricks Motorsports under Ray Evernham and is currently director of manufacturing services at Evernham Motorsports. At ARE, Steve met and made an impression on the man who was to serve as his mentor, John Scafidi. (Scafidi himself was named to the SEMA Hall of Fame in 1998.) Even though Bolio was only 25 years old and was considered too inexperienced by some, Scafidi got him hired into the Hurst Performance company, where Bolio worked in manufacturing and product management and eventually became national sales manager. With Bolio’s induction, there are now seven members of that original Hurst sales and marketing team in the SEMA Hall of Fame.

“I had a lot of role models and mentors,” Bolio said, “but John Scafidi had faith in me for some reason. I was the youngest guy at Hurst, and I had pretty much a free hand. Hurst was a heck of a company then. We bought the Schiefer clutch company, and I ended up being senior product manager, though I’m not sure how that happened because I know I didn’t want it. I was also heavily involved with the development of the Schiefer quick-change rear end, which was a phenomenal product. And though I wasn’t really involved with it, the Jaws of Life was another of our major accomplishments.”

As his career progressed, Bolio held key positions with Keystone Wheel and Appliance Wheel, where he worked to restructure the companies’ customer base, reducing the number of direct accounts to make the line more valuable to the distributors and taking sales in the East from $6.3 million to $14.7 million in less than one year. He then devised a plan to spread the base to ensure that the loss of an individual account would not have a catastrophic impact on the company’s sales and profits. “It took about six months and a huge team effort, but we got it done without a hitch,” he recalled, “and that’s something that manufacturers are still trying to figure out today.”

He said that the Keystone organization had the best sales team he’s ever worked with. “I had two manufacturing experiences with people who are legends in the industry,” he said. “When I was at Keystone Wheels, we just kicked ass. People like Chuck Blum [former SEMA president/CEO and Hall of Fame member], Don Turney [former SEMA vice president of marketing], Don Kane, Mike McGarry [currently sales manager for Unique Wheel], Barry Horlick [WIC member] and Steve Swanson [who replaced Bolio on the SEMA board].”

For the past 18 years (as of 2006), Bolio has been a partner with John “Skip” Scafidi, son of his mentor, in the Manufacturers Rep firm of Scafidi-Bolio & Associates. As he gained experience and developed his skills from his earliest days on, Bolio also recognized that the industry needed to organize, regulate and promote itself, and he became a hard-nosed proponent of all things SEMA. His tenure with the organization spans its history, from the first SEMA Show at Dodger Stadium to its most recent iteration in Las Vegas, and it is replete with top-level leadership responsibilities.

Bolio served six years on the SEMA Board of Directors and five years on the SEMA Executive Committee. As the only male member ever elected to the SEMA Businesswoman’s Network Select Committee, Bolio is obviously an adamant proponent and supporter of women’s advancement within the industry. He also headed the SEMA Awards Committee Task Force and serves as a member of the SEMA Show Committee. He currently consults with several of the SEMA councils and offers his time and support for the SEMA Mentoring Program.

Bolio has been an active member of the Manufacturers’ Rep Council (MRC) for many years and serves on its Select Committee. In addition to his involvement with SEMA, Bolio served four years on the Performance Warehouse Association’s Board of Directors. He was previously honored by SEMA with its Rep of the Year award in 1999, and he was recognized as the association’s Person of the Year in 2003. Throughout his life, he has been a force to be reckoned with.

“I tend to be outspoken,” he admitted. “If I think something is wrong, I’m going to say so. I do try to make sure that I have a strong position, and I can honestly say that I’ve never said or done anything involved with SEMA or the industry that I couldn’t back up at least 100% and was in the best interest of all SEMA members. I think being accepted for that—for me to get into the Hall of Fame, which, frankly, was a big surprise—tells me a lot of things. One, that I’m getting old, but also that you can push the issue and still be respected.”

While he is justifiably satisfied with his career and his professional accomplishments, his pride is even more evident when he speaks of his family. “The only thing that I might change would be to not have traveled as much when my three boys were young,” he said, “but Sally did a fantastic job, and I was there at all events unless it was the middle of the week and I had to be on the other side of the country. I have no regrets. I didn’t always make the right decisions, but I’m comfortable with the decisions I did make and what I’ve done.”

And the industry is proud of who he is.

From its inception, one of SEMA’s major objectives has been to work with local, state and federal governments to ensure a healthy and cooperative business environment for the association’s member companies. No one has been more active or more instrumental in those efforts over the past 30 years than Russ Deane, SEMA’s longtime general counsel. He has not only worked tirelessly to protect the legal rights of automotive specialty-equipment businesses, but he has also been active on a variety of committees and task forces to help lead the association to its current size and stature in American commerce.

Deane has lived in the Washington, D.C., area for most of his life. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from American University in Washington, D.C., and he earned a Juris Doctor degree from the Georgetown University Law Center. During the early stages of his career, he worked as a legislative assistant to a congressman and was also Staff Assistant to the president of the United States, and he held a number of positions with government agencies. It was during his years at the White House that he was introduced to the automotive aftermarket and SEMA, and he was eventually retained as the association’s Washington counsel and, later, began to represent the group as its general counsel.

His life-long interest in cars and motorcycles made his relationship with SEMA all the more ideal, but his work with the automotive industry was only part of a very active political and legal career.

“I have never considered any career other than the law,” he said. “The law has allowed me the opportunity to pursue a number of activities that otherwise would have been unavailable to me. These include developing historic properties and assisting in the development of democracies in a number of countries, such as Estonia, Ukraine, Georgia, Poland and Afghanistan. I have also had the opportunity to work with other groups in areas of interest to me, including the American Motorcyclist Association and the Sports Car Club of America.”

Early in his work tenure at SEMA, Deane served on the Sound Control and Technical Committees that addressed the noise and emissions-control laws in the states and at the federal level. Emissions matters figured prominently in his work for the association, including development of the Section 27156 Executive Order program, as noted by SEMA Chairman Mitch Williams in his letter to the Hall of Fame Committee nominating Deane for inclusion.

“When the State of California established laws that banned emissions-related modifications to cars and trucks, Russ Deane led the efforts to create an exemption program for parts that could prove, via testing, that they maintained the vehicle’s emissions compliance,” Williams wrote. “Today, this process is known throughout the industry as the California Executive Order (EO) Program. Russ then led the effort to have the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accept and recognize parts with California EO certifications as legal for sale and use in the remaining 49 states. Without the California EO program and the EPA’s adoption of it, the performance aftermarket as we know it today would likely not exist or, at the very least, exist in a greatly diminished form.”

Deane also lead the counsel regarding the aftermarket’s legal challenges with EPA regulations concerning vehicle on-board diagnostics systems (OBD), Williams pointed out. Deane additionally challenged state and federal regulations that could have crippled or severely hindered the industry in the areas of wheels and tires, suspension, lighting and exhaust systems, and he was instrumental in fighting both state and federal “clunker” vehicle-scrappage programs.

“Deane also worked with SEMA Hall of Famer and former association President Chuck Blum to bring the aftermarket’s largest trade shows together in Las Vegas,” Williams said. “The combined events became Automotive Aftermarket Industry Week, which placed the SEMA Show and the association itself at the center of the global automotive stage.”

While he is perhaps the most accomplished attorney serving the automotive specialty-equipment industry, Deane is also a highly skilled and passionate enthusiast. He has raced both sports cars and motorcycles, and he has made numerous long-distance trips with friends on his favorite Harley-Davidson bikes. Even a brief list of those he numbers among his pals reads like a who’s who in the automotive world.

“Throughout the years, I have been fortunate to have had many mentors who have also been my close friends,” he said. “My relationship with friends and mentors has also been the most satisfying element of my career. In fact, most of my closest friends are part of the SEMA community. They include such luminaries as Wally Parks, Bob Spar, Chuck Blum, Brian Appelgate, Jim McFarland, Pete Chapouris, Dave McClelland, Vic Edelbrock and Chuck Schwartz, to name a few. There are many others, but I would be remiss not to list these. My friends have taught me a great deal about the business, but more about life.”

Of all the challenges he has faced, however, Deane said that the most daunting has been his effort to save and cure his wife Carolyn from cancer. “Even this challenge has been made more manageable as a result of the prayers and good thoughts from our friends, most of whom are in the SEMA community,” Deane said. He and Carolyn have been married for five years (as of 2007), and Deane has two sons, Rusty, 36 and Robbie, 33, from a previous marriage.

“In the end,” Deane said, “it is the relationships we have with others that provide richness and value to our lives. Value and respect those relationships, and everything else falls into place.”

Quality is a literal part of the SEMA mission statement and has always been implicit in everything the association does. Quality has also been inherent in the work and life of Raymond Bleiweis. From his numerous business ventures to his 56-year marriage, Bleiweis has been in it for the long haul, with a commitment to doing things right. Along the way, his contributions have added to the histories of some of the world’s most well-known automotive specialty-equipment companies.

Bleiweis graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx in New York City and attended City College of New York for two and a half years. Enlisting in the army at 18 with the outset of World War II, he attended officer candidate school and was commissioned a lieutenant. He became one of the few members of the military who served in both the European and Pacific theaters of the war, celebrating Victory in Europe Day in Antwerp, Belgium, and Victory in Japan Day in northern Luzon in the Philippines.

Bleiweis joined with his brother in a California plating company in 1952, where their primary business was re-chroming automobile bumpers. Bumper and Auto Plating operated five facilities around the United States and was eventually renamed Cal Chrome. Bleiweis left the company in 1957 to form Keystone Automotive, his own bumper-finishing enterprise in California’s San Fernando Valley and, eventually, nine other facilities around the country. Bleiweis got into the wheel business while at Keystone when a customer asked him to modify an original-equipment rim. At the customer’s request, Bleiweis cut the rim apart, plated it and then put it back together backward. Thus was born the first “chrome-reverse rim,” as well as one of the precursors to today’s massive custom-wheel business.

Keystone Automotive remains a formidable presence in the custom-wheel industry, but Bleiweis sold his shares in the company in 1965 to form Rocket Industries with his wife Claire. The company was named as a result of the burgeoning interest in missile technology at the time, and while Rocket branched into a wide range of product offerings over the years, the little-known phenomenon of custom wheels was the company’s mainstay early on.

“We were at a trade show in Columbus Circle in New York, and we were the only booth there showing wheels,” Bleiweis recalled. “We spent our time telling everybody what a chrome-reverse wheel was. Not too many people understood what we were doing.”

Still, the company took hold. In the late ’60s, Rocket Industries attended another trade show comprised of about 100 booths set up beneath the bleachers at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. That event evolved into the SEMA Show, and Bleiweis became one of the association’s early members.

Hurdles remained, however. Norris Industries, a major supplier of steel rims to the auto manufacturers, wouldn’t sell to aftermarket companies. On a fishing trip with the supplier’s purchasing agent and manager, Bleiweis managed to secure an agreement to buy Norris rims—but he had to buy 1,000 at a time. That fishing-trip agreement opened sales to the entire aftermarket, allowing the production of a wide variety of styled steel rims.

“We learned about wheels the hard way,” Bleiweis said. “Some of the ones we made were not quite right. We had to learn how to take the old wheels apart, strip and chrome-plate them and then put them back together with the bell side out, but we had all sorts of difficulties with alignment and so forth. Finally, we devised several pieces of equipment that checked the wheels.”

Those challenges led Bleiweis and others—including Arnie Kuhns and Mike Joyce—to seek quality standards by which wheels and, eventually, other products could be measured. Their efforts led to the formulation of recognized wheel specifications.

“We set up specs for steel wheels and then aluminum wheels,” Bleiweis said. “The people who were part of our wheel program had to comply with certain specifications for wheels utilizing load ratings and the test machines that we engineered. The program became well known all over the world, and I felt very good about it.”

The work of Bleiweis, Kuhns, Joyce and others led to the formation of SEMA Foundation Incorporated (SFI), which was primarily aimed at racing. Motorsports participants had to comply with the “SEMA specs” or be denied entry to sanctioned events. The program evolved into a separate entity, the SFI Foundation Inc., as a nonprofit that operates independently from SEMA and now provides specifications for everything from helmets and rollcages to clutches and driveshafts.

“Ray believed that the concept of self-generated industry standards was the only way to keep manufacturers from producing products that were not suited for the purpose intended,” said Kuhns, himself a 2002 inductee into the SEMA Hall of Fame. “Since 1982, the growth of SFI has been remarkable, but we might not have survived without Ray’s constant support and nightly phone calls.”

Raymond and Claire Bleiweis have three children, Mark, Brad and Laurie, as well as five grandchildren, and (as of 2008) Rocket Ray was still going into the office at the age of 84 even though he retired in 1995.

“I come in, but I don’t really work,” Bleiweis said. “I come in at 10:00 or 10:30 a.m., talk with friends like Billy Eordekian, who had a lot to do with my nomination to the Hall of Fame, and then go home early. There aren’t many people who were in World War II who are still around, but my doctor and I have an agreement. He’s going to keep me alive until I’m the last man standing.”

And that will undoubtedly be a quality venture all the way.