Pete Eastwood lived a mere hubcap toss away from the goings on at Blair's Speed Shop and eventually punched a time card there along with the "who's who" of hot rodding.
Blair's was a "must destination" for not only the locals like Eastwood, but out-of-staters as well. Starstruck tourists went to 77 Sunset Strip and 6925 Hollywood Boulevard (Grauman's Chinese Theater) while rodders with a project on jack stands back home made a beeline to 2771 Foothill Boulevard.
Blair's wasn't just a place you bought speed equipment-Blair's was speed equipment. It became a small factory that could churn out damn near anything because of the talent that worked there. The place was cookin' six days a week from the minute Blair unlocked the place till o'dark thirty.
Every once in a blue moon, shakers come together that make the organization they work for: Robert Petersen had it with Ray Brock, Tom Medley, Eric Rickman, and Wally Parks. George Barris had it with Sam Barris, Bill Hines, Dean Jefferies, and Von Dutch. And Don Blair had it with...well you'll see.
And while this story is about the eternally youthful "P-Wood" it would be impossible to tell it without weaving in Blair's Speed Shop in the process. The "University of Blair's," as Eric Vaughn of Eric Vaughn Machine in Monrovia calls it, was as much a part of Pete's life (plus the dozens of alumni over the years) as high school, one's first girl, or first hot rod...you get the picture.
"When I was 7 or 8," smiled Pete, "I'd go to Blair's front counter where they had a big board with nickel and dime speed equipment decals. I'd save up my money and buy decals. I had a huge decal collection. Later, when I was 11 or 12, the guys at Blair's would put me to work. The thing that nobody wanted to do was polish Halibrand wheels on the race cars. On Saturdays when the guys came through, I'd polish their wheels for them. Then they taught me how to do the letters on the sidewalls so the race cars looked sharp. Blair sold spray paint and one of the guys sprayed a big gob of paint on a piece of cardboard and went out to the parking lot and picked up a cigarette butt. He tore the filter off the cigarette, dabbed it in the paint and started blotting the butt on the raised part of the lettering of the tires. I'd take that butt and dab that fine edge with silver paint. So I was the tire and wheel detailer at Blair's.
"I got the name P-Wood in high school. Steve Vandevere was always shortening and abbreviating everything. He kinda had his own language; he always shortened everything down to the minimum. He took Pete Eastwood and shortened it to P-Wood. How it stuck, I don't know, but it stuck. Steve worked at Blair's as well."
Role Models
Pete's first role model was his father Doug, who not only imparted in his son the love of antique automobiles that has stayed with Pete to this day, but also included him in his hobby: "We had a little Radio Flyer wagon and my dad would load pistons, rods and flywheels in it, and we'd walk over to Blair's to get them balanced, towing the wagon. My dad was restoring cars until the day he died," reminisced Pete.
Imagine the young theater buff by the Playhouse watching Richard Burton or Marlon Brando at work and becoming their understudy; that's the impression Mike Hoag had on Eastwood. When Pete was polishing Halibrand wheels in the parking lot at Blair's, Hoag was building all of Blair's chassis. He was the first high-grade chassis builder Pete had ever seen in action. Watching Hoag work motivated Pete to become a fabricator and chassis builder.
"I've been a Sprint Car and drag race fan for a long time. I'm more a fan of chassis builders than engine builders, drivers or owners. I'd go to the drags, stand in the pits, and look at how the chassis were built. Without a good chassis, they have nothing to race."
"Big" Steve Bovan, who worked in the engine room, traveled the country becoming a national drag racing celebrity by putting a lot of match racing competitors on the trailer. The Blair's Speed Shop Chevy II, and later the flip-top Camaro, put Blair's on the map against the likes of "Dyno" Don Nicholson and "Jungle Jim" Lieberman.
"When I was 14 or 15, if Bovan and his crewmember Ralph Jackson didn't have enough help, he'd ask me if I could go to the drags with him. He would tell me to go home and have my mom call the speed shop and tell Don it was OK. Bovan would load me in the truck with him and Ralph and go to Irwindale. Of course when we'd get to the strip, Bovan would sneak me in so he wouldn't have to pay for a pit pass."
A Knack
"We both worked at Blair's, but at different times," began Doug Robinson of Horsepower Engineering in Pasadena. "I worked for Don Blair from '56 through '60. Both Pete's dad and his uncle Warwick were into the horseless carriage-type cars. Pete is a different type of person. He's respected for his hot rod knowledge and his classic, vintage, brass-era cars. Very few people do well in both."
Robbie Robison of Vintage Race Car Restoration who started at Blair's in '64 remembers, "Pete was involved with a lot of classic vehicles. It takes a lot of talent to fix these projects. He's never been a mail-order guy to just go out and buy the parts and put it together. He's always got out and found it, or recreated it. Pete learned from his dad that there was only one way of building a car, doing it right and doing it methodically. You just didn't take an old greasy car and chop into it. Pete's never been that way, he couldn't work that way."
Which explains why so many high-profile owners have trusted Pete with their prized vehicles: "I've probably touched more of the 75 Most Significant '32 Fords that Ford Motor Car Company had listed than anybody. Six or seven had my chassis under them, plus I worked on 12 or 13 of them," says Eastwood.
"There are very few people like Pete that can cross over from the mega-dollar classic cars and go right back to the vintage dragsters, street rods, or Bonneville cars, there's nothing he can't work on," underscores Vaughn. "But working at Blair's was the key for our vast experience because we got to work on everything. When P-Wood worked in the muffler shop, he could look at the tubing bender for the first time and in a week make it talk to you like a Stradivarius violin."
Repeat
Let's just say the two Petes worked well together at Blair's, becoming close friends, so why not have another go at it? Chapouris and Eastwood that is. Chapouris, Eastwood, and Vaughn had honed their craft at Blair's while Jim "Jake" Jacobs had sharpened his skills working for Ed Roth. When they all came together, it was an unbeatable combination.
"When we started Pete & Jakes," continued Vaughn, "we wondered would enough guys even buy this stuff? Eastwood was never a money partner, but he was really the guy that made stuff happen. Chapouris was the jaw...the mouthpiece; Jake engineered the stuff and P-Wood was the execution guy, and I did the machining. We were like a band and each guy played an instrument. All of that falls into place between the Blair's and the Pete & Jake connection. Peter has the raw talent-he's got the head talent...he makes it happen. He just loves them cars," laughed Eric.
"I kinda did everything at Pete & Jakes," explains Eastwood. "I built chassis and complete cars, I did the entire hookup, the linkage, all the exhaust work. Remember, at first we weren't manufacturing parts, we were working on cars doing engine swaps and suspension work. We would take the pieces that went into a customer's car and adapt them to a kit component. Whenever we had something clever to do, Eric did the machine work."
'70s Life
Looking back, Pete states, "I don't know about anybody else, but I never had any money as a young guy. Every nickel I made went into my cars. I don't live high on the hog today. I drive a 10-year-old Chevy Tahoe. I've never owned a new car, never taken a vacation to Hawaii, I don't do that. I do cars. I bought my three-window for 500 bucks, which was a lot of money back then, but you could come up with 500 bucks. Now you've got to pay $50,000 for a basket-case coupe. They're just freakin' old Fords."
Besides, it's not the car that makes Pete a hot rodder; it's the love of the build, the road, and the track that sets guys like P-Wood apart. He's passionate about Model Ts with a top speed of 45 miles per hour, or tickling 200 in a '29 roadster. Yeah, he loves them cars.