Author Archive: Steve Renzi

Tucson Hot Rod Restoration

John Sewell, one of the three co-owners/partners of Hi Speed Rods & Customs, inside the showroom that is filled with classic cars and auto memorabilia.
photo: Steve Renzi

“People remember what their grandfather drove and they want that car. That’s what it’s all about and that’s what we do. Ninety percent of the people who come in here, it’s because of their emotional ties and memories,” said John Sewell, one of the three co-owners/partners of Hi Speed Rods & Customs.

Stepping inside Hi Speed is like walking into an American automotive museum. Lined up on display is a score of classic cars: big steel, gleaming chrome, sleek lines and raw automotive power. Mounted on the walls are hot rod posters, a gigantic vintage gas station sign that reads: Nothing dampens good service, historic photographs and an early Harley Davidson motorcycle.

However, unlike a museum where the displays can become static and stale, this is a business that works. Some of these classic cars are for sale and some are being restored for individual owners. Hi Speed is a full-service restoration center where hoods are chopped and lowered, new dashboards are designed and made, custom upholstery is installed, metal is straightened and aligned, dents and dings are fixed, broken glass is replaced and artistic paintwork is created and applied. Everything – except some specialized steel fabrication – is done on site.

On some restoration projects, every piece, down to every nut and bolt, is taken apart, cataloged, fixed if needed, plated, and then put back together. It’s like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, except this time, Humpty needs a Hemi engine, positraction, and an electronic ignition.

“We’ve worked on some cars, well over a thousand hours and we’re working on one now that may go over two thousand,” said Sewell.

For this interview, we’re sitting in a back office at Hi Speed. On the wall is a tattered 48-star American flag found in the trunk of an old Mercury. The building, located at 829 E. 17th St., is 30,000 square feet and used to be the old Rainbow bread bakery. It’s been Hi Speed since 2005. This business requires a lot of traveling and John’s two partners are out of town.

“We’re always searching the country for collectible cars and motorcycles,” said Sewell. Vigilance, knowledge and quick decisions are required, he explained. “In this business, the first guy there with the cash wins.”

Anthony Ribeau is the partner who specializes in buying and selling. Restored autos and vintage Harley Davidson motorcycles from Hi Speed attract customers worldwide and are often placed in prestigious car auctions. However, unknown to most people, these auctions are like playing roulette, according to Sewell. Auctions are a gamble because there is no guaranteed cash reserve – whatever the car sells for, is what you get – and if you don’t know cars, or what people want, you can lose money, big time.

This is where the third partner, Sewell’s son “Johnny Vegas,” comes in. Vegas has established a well-known reputation as a car, boat and motorcycle custom painter and artist. One classic restoration done at Hi Speed and painted by Johnny Vegas and crew, was a 1950 two-door Mercury Coupe, completely painted an eye-catching wasabi green, that sold for a world-record $330,000 at the Barrett-Jackson car auction in 2011. That car is now in a museum in Grand Junction, Colorado.

Restored autos and works-in-progress. photo:Steve Renzi

Knowing what people want is the key to their success. Restored autos from Hi Speed have also been represented in invitation-only corporate car shows. One photograph in the main office shows one of their vehicles parked right next to the one and only Batmobile. How cool is that?

“We put in air conditioning in a lot of older cars. People may love their grandfather’s old car, but they want it to drive like a modern car. Take an original 60s muscle car for example, we’ll put in a state-of-the-art suspension, new drivetrain, stereo system, electronic ignition and fuel injection. After we get done with it, press the throttle and you’ll get a handful,” said Sewell, a man who has been a NASCAR short-track racer – top speed 130mph – and who once owned a 1966 Chevy Nova, a street legal drag car that had a parachute release in the back.

When asked what his ultimate find would be, Swell said: “You might be surprised, but it’s an early 1930s, three-window Ford. Painted Henry Ford black, believe it or not, they painted the cars with a paint brush. Most Fords of that era (1932-1935) had five windows, the three-window Fords are extremely rare.

“A lot of our customers have become my friends. We’re always looking for vintage cars and motorcycles. We don’t like to see an old car forgotten in a yard and wasting away. It’s a part of American history. We want to fix it and put it back on the road.”

Hi Speed Rods & Customs is located at 829 E. 17th St., (520) 623-1973 and online: HiSpeedCustoms.com. Hours of operation are Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Old Pueblo Printers y El Tucsonense

Albert M. Elias stands next to a 1914 linotype, the typesetting machine that helped to print the El Tucsonense newspaper in the early years.
photo: Steve Renzi

Standing next to a vintage 1914 linotype machine, in the backroom of Downtown’s Old Pueblo Printers at 255 S. Stone Ave., 85-year-old Albert M. Elias is reminiscing about the days he worked for the Spanish-language newspaper El Tucsonense.

“My grandfather, Francisco S. Moreno, founded the paper in 1915 and served as the publisher and printer until 1929. The paper was published here in this building, typeset on this machine, starting in 1922. After my grandfather died in 1929, my grandmother Rosa Elias Moreno took over as publisher. She had five children, four sons and one daughter, the boys all became printers and the daughter is my mother,” Elias shares.

At the turn of the last century, in 1900, the population of Tucson was about evenly divided between Hispanic and Anglo residents. Let’s not forget, Tucson was once a part of Mexico—an isolated frontier outpost in the midst of a hostile desert environment. As a part of Mexico, the capital in Mexico City was a long, forbidding 1,500 miles away. Under appreciated by many people, the Hispanic pioneers who settled here were resourceful, resilient and independent. They established the traditions and set the stage for those who came after them.

Those traditions included both a pride in the home country, most Tucson Hispanics came from Mexico, and a pride in the Spanish language. In the early 1900s, Tucson was the largest and most sophisticated center of the Hispanic population between El Paso and Los Angeles, according to the book Los Tucsonenses by Thomas E. Sheridan. Tucson had Hispanic entrepreneurs, businessmen, politicians and owners of grocery stores, barbershops and meat markets—in other words, a middle class.

“Their prominence gave Tucson a bicultural vitality unique to the Southwest,” Sheridan scribed in Los Tucsonenses.

The first issue of El Tucsonense.
photo: Steve Renzi

One aspect of that bicultural vitality was Spanish-language newspapers. There were many of them and they were an important forum for Hispanic political and day-to-day life. They covered the news of the United States and Mexico, they covered people and events in the Tucson barrios that the Anglo mainstream press typically ignored, and they were an outlet for Hispanic writers, intellectuals and poets. There was El Fronterizo, El Mosquito and the biggest and longest lasting of them all—El Tucsonense.

“I started working for El Tucsonense as a paperboy on my bicycle in the late 1930s,” Elias recalls. “It came two, sometimes three times a week. It was an afternoon paper, about four to eight pages. Cost 25 cents a week.

“During high school I moved into the print shop and began to learn the printing trade. I got out of Tucson High at 1 o’clock and worked in the print shop seven hours a day. I was a ‘printer’s devil’—an apprentice printer. I learned how to become a typesetter, a compositor who puts the pages together and a pressman who runs the press.

“It was all hands-on, labor-intensive… Everything had to be assembled, typeset and taken to press. A single page may take up to six hours,” Elias explains.

Elias’ favorite part of the paper was the local sports (deportiva) section, especially baseball.

“My uncles played baseball on a local semi-pro level team called the Tucson Aztecas. They played at Riverside field on West Congress, where the freeway is now. There was also Eagle field on 16^th Street, where the Barrio Brewery is (now) and they played at Hi Corbett field before it was named that. I also remember boxing matches at the Labor Temple and wrestling and boxing at the Sports Center on West Congress.”

Elias’s love of baseball was shared later by another young employee at the print shop named Arturo Moreno, who is now the owner of the Los Angeles Angels major league baseball team.

El Tucsonense covered local, national and even international news. It had sports, political cartoons, comics and advertisements printed in Spanish and English. It also had good journalists. Elias remembered Editor Ricardo Fierro as one of the best.

“He was a one-man newspaper—he could do it all,” Elias states with conviction.

El Tucsonense began in 1915 and lasted until 1962. Fortunately, the entire collection of newspapers has been saved and is now preserved at the University of Arizona in Special Collections. It can be accessed online at Library.arizona.edu/contentdm/mmap/.

Old Pueblo Printers is still going strong as a commercial printing company. In 1966, Albert M. Elias and a partner, Oscar Araiza became co-owners. Elias became sole owner after 1990. At 85-years-old, he still goes to work every day.

Old Pueblo Printers is located at 255 S. Stone Ave. Hours are Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Phone (520) 624-5851 with inquiries.