Alex Xydias—Hot Rod Hero, WWII Vet, and Filmmaker—Passed Away at 102.
Xydias started the So-Cal Speed Shop and played a significant role in the emergence of hot-rodding.
Alex Xydias, the first hot-rod hero, creator of the So-Cal Speed Shop, WWII soldier, and co-founder of SEMA and the SEMA Show, died this morning in Southern California. He was 102.
Xydias’ life reflected that of the American Century. He was born in Hollywood in 1922; his father was a movie producer, which would come in handy later on when he began shooting key events around the country, including the Indy 500 and Sebring.
Xydias grew up during the Great Depression, working at a petrol station on Hollywood Boulevard for ten cents an hour. When he learned of a job that paid 11 cents per hour, he accepted it right away.
“Imagine a time like that, when just a single penny would make that much of a difference,” he had previously told us.
When the United States entered World War II, Xydias volunteered in the Army Air Corps and trained as a flight engineer and gunner on the B-17 and then the B-24. “I was a pretty good shot, too,” he told Autoweek.
He never served overseas, but as he liked to joke, “I did a heckuva job protecting Arizona from a Japanese attack.”
When he left the Army in 1946, he utilized the $100 he received to open the So-Cal Speed Shop, where he sold Edelbrock and other brands of speed equipment to fans of the nascent hot-rod movement.
To promote his company, the Speed Shop started racing, first with a belly tank and later with a streamliner, long before Hot Rod magazine was formed. Xydias drove.
“The belly tank was like a pressure cooker inside, and I was perched in the nose with no protection—I was the crush zone,” he said to the American Hot Rod Foundation.
The So-Cal belly tank, driven by Xydias, established the Class A Streamliner record of 130.155 mph. That resulted in one of the first covers for a new journal, the aforementioned Hot Rod magazine, created by his buddy Pete Petersen.
He then enlisted Dean Batchelor, a friend and fellow WWII aviation veteran, to help him build a streamliner.
They based their automobile after the pre-WWII Auto Union Type C land speed racer, but they mounted it on Model T frame rails. They ran the engine from the belly tank. Neil Emory and Clayton Jensen of Valley Custom designed the aerodynamically efficient aluminum body.
The first Bonneville Nationals were held in 1949, and the So-Cal team competed, achieving a Class C Streamliner record of 189.745 mph with a peak speed of 193.54. The next year, Batchelor achieved a record of 208.927 mph at the wheel.
By the early 1960s, Xydias had noticed a fall in the hot-rodding industry, or at least a decline in the flathead Ford V8 So-Cal specialized in, and decided to begin recording races and presenting them in auditoriums around Southern California.
“We had a station wagon and a couple cameras,” Xydias once explained.
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