When 26-year-old Vic Edelbrock Jr. took over aftermarket manufacturer Edelbrock Equipment in 1962 after the untimely death of his father, Vic Sr., many in the performance industry were skeptical Vic had the chops to carry the company forward. Sure, he had worked under his father’s tutelage, graduated from the prestigious University of Southern California in business, and even flew T-33 trainers while in the ROTC, but running a company like Edelbrock—always on the leading edge of performance technology and racing—into the future would take a truly gifted person. Vic’s mother told him if the business started to slide, she would sell Edelbrock to preserve the company and her husband’s legacy.
With many of Vic Sr.’s core group staying on to help maintain the company’s development and manufacturing, Vic Jr. had to organize how the company would move forward. He chose to focus on drag racing and street performance, and that decision, combined with the flood of new engine platforms and the popularity of the small-block Chevy, sent the company on a trajectory that lasted for decades. The Edelbrock company is the lasting legacy of Vic Sr. and Vic Jr.
But there was a time in the early 1970s when it seemed that not only Edelbrock but also the whole performance aftermarket industry might go away. The one-two punches of environmental concerns and gas shortages of the late-1960s and early 1970s put performance on the verge of being outlawed by the federal government. Car manufacturers buckled under pressure from the feds, instituting quick-fix environmental controls on new cars that compromised almost everything. Starting, economy, performance, durability, and dependability flew out the window. Cars were viewed as bad, and muscle cars and performance even worse. This is one reason why the muscle-car era ended. Edelbrock needed a dramatic shift in what it manufactured, who and how it benefitted customers, and how to deal with the state and federal government dictating what they could and couldn’t make.
Here’s how Vic put it: “We looked at what was coming down and decided that instead of ignoring the California Air Resources Board [CARB], we would get to know them. When they mandated the emissions levels, the OEs only had time to lean down carburetors and put a 230-degree thermostat in it. The cars would lurch and surge—they were terrible. We came up with the Streetmaster intake—it had good distribution and eliminated the surge, plus mileage went up. You could bolt it in with the stock carb. We had to do emissions testing, so we installed an emissions lab and CARB accepted our data, and we’d get an EO [Executive Order] number.” (The EO number meant any aftermarket component carrying it was certified for use in all cars with environmental controls in all 50 states.) So this pivot meant aftermarket performance changed from being of value only to racers, to being valuable for economy and the environment, plus it helped the car run better.
But Vic’s concern and drive to help the whole aftermarket went further. Vic was also instrumental, along with HOT ROD’s founder, Robert Petersen, Dean Moon, Roy Richter, Phil Weiand and others, in creating the Specialty Equipment Manufacturing Association, later changed to Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA). The industry needed a voice, and there was safety in numbers. Speed and performance was thought to represent a bad element of society in the eyes of bureaucrats and the media. With the formation of SEMA, represented by professionals, it helped change that image into a legitimate group of businessmen catering to a respectable customer base. Beginning in 1971, Vic would become both president and chairman of the organization for two terms.
In the late-1960s, Edelbrock was on the verge of participating in the many forms of evolving motorsports at that time: NHRA Super Stock, which itself evolved into Pro Stock; open wheel racing, including Indy, which was encouraging stock-block engines as a way to lessen costs and attract more teams; NASCAR; off-road racing like SCORE (Short Course Off-Road Events), and road racing’s exciting new Can-Am and Trans-Am series. Edelbrock attracted some of the key figures in these fields like Mickey Thompson, Parnelli Jones, Smokey Yunick, Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins, Sox & Martin, “Dyno” Don Nicholson, and so many others.
Into the 1970s, the company expanded its performance offerings; Edelbrock was no longer an “intake manifold” manufacturer, but instead became a performance powerhouse that offered packages of components to help take the guesswork out of performance upgrades for the enthusiast who wanted to do it himself. From the racing side, Edelbrock was still leading the field by offering components for the exploding segments of racing throughout the world. And the company grew to encompass six manufacturing buildings and an in-house foundry, employing more than 700 people, and offering a product line that numbered in the thousands by the end of the 1980s.
From the company’s perspective, we spoke with Eric Blakely, director of advertising, and Bob “Smitty” Smith, technical sales coordinator, both Edelbrock veterans. Blakely was quick to mention early profit sharing that Vic set up for employees. “This was in the early 1970s, way before this type of company benefit was common,” Blakely says. “But he would put money into your plan even if you didn’t; he was always doing things for his employees like that.” He also personally paid for a yearly scholarship to the Kansas high school his father graduated from in Augusta, Kansas.
He was also known to take criticism personally, to the extent that he’d sometimes call a customer who was experiencing trouble with an Edelbrock product. Vic welcomed racers to come to the El Segundo, California, facility, which reads like a who’s who of racing: Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins, Benny Parsons, Richard Petty, Larry Torres, Bob Glidden, Herb McCandles, and too many to remember. Says Smitty, “A lot of those racers would come out because it was snowing in the east, and we let them use our dynos and helped them, and Vic loved it.”
Vic’s enthusiasm for racing, fast cars, and continuing to offer the best components available extended to his family, with wife Nancy by his side at many events. Both went to nearly every NHRA Nationals and Daytona 500, including this year. His three girls—Camee, Christi, and Carey—were all involved in sports like horseback riding and jumping competitions, and water skiing. Vic, along with Camee and Christi, were participants in vintage road-racing events. Vic also amassed a healthy collection of historic race cars and boats, which were housed in a separate building not too far from Edelbrock’s corporate headquarters in Torrance, California, called Vic’s Garage. And he was like a kid for personal car projects, which he also used to test and promote Edelbrock products. Brizio Street Rods in South San Francisco built many personal cars, including a reproduction and then the original 1932 highboy roadster his father used to develop all of his early Ford flathead equipment in the 1930s, racing on the dry lakes of California. Vic and Nancy drove many of those hot rods on numerous HOT ROD Power Tours, which Edelbrock supported and obviously enjoyed from a pure participant perspective.
Vic and the Edelbrock family have placed a high priority on “giving back” to the industry and participants in that industry in all forms by creating the Edelbrock Foundation. Their main goal is to bring groups and individuals together to help educate and train youth to continue America’s passion and innovation in automobiles and racing. They also award donations to education groups like the Center for Learning Unlimited, which has a robotics program for middle- and high-school students.
More recently, to keep pace with OE electronic fuel-management like direct injection and more refined ignition systems, Edelbrock developed bolt-in supercharger conversions and upgrade packages, and also sells complete late-model engines with increased horsepower and dependability. Recently, when Edelbrock began to have some problems with the EPA again, Vic took up the challenge once more to educate them on the advantages of performance. Says Blakely, “He told us we did it before and we’ll do it again. He always took these issues with the feds getting into our space as a challenge, and he loved solving problems.” As Vic told HOT ROD just last year, “Edelbrock products have to do what we say they will do. We’ve always been passionate enthusiasts and a lot of our employees are car enthusiasts—it’s our lifestyle. We want to continue that forward and integrate what the next generation of enthusiast wants.”
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