two stories about Edelbrock

Like I said a couple posts ago, Matilda's going to have Edelbrock cylinder heads, and the same Edelbrock intake manifold that was on Bertha, which I've cleaned up and painted the lettering.  I like Edelbrock a lot, and I have two stories about it.

There's a story about how Vic Edelbrock got started in the speed parts business.  Disclaimer:  I could look up the details of this story, but I'm going to just tell the story as I remember it. 

As I remember the story, Vic Edelbrock ran a service station in Southern California.  He was a hot rodder, and like a lot of other early speed parts manufacturers, he started out making parts for his own car.  Then, when his fellow racers saw he was successful, he started selling his parts in small quantities to people who asked for them.  But his main source of income was still his service station.

So, as I remember the story, the turning point for Edelbrock's business came when "Pete" Petersen (I can't remember his real first name, but everyone called him "Pete," as a shortened form of his last name) of Petersen Publishing was starting a new magazine called HOT ROD.  He sold some advertising space to Edelbrock in the early issues of HOT ROD.  When that first deal came to an end, Petersen called on Edelbrock to ask if he wanted to renew the advertisement.

"Well," Edelbrock answered, "I don't know ... I've been getting so many phone calls from people wanting to order parts from me, I barely have time to pump gas for customers anymore."

Petersen paused for a while before replying, "Well, Vic ... did you ever think that maybe you're not in the business of pumping gas anymore?"

Edelbrock renewed the advertisement and grew his business into one of the largest aftermarket speed parts suppliers in the nation.

In spite of their success, however, Edelbrock doesn't necessarily behave like a giant corporation, which brings me to my second story.

It took me a long time to find a job after college.  That was almost entirely my fault, as I hadn't made things easy on myself at all, but as the job search dragged on and on, I started to get more and more worried, and to be honest, I was becoming increasingly depressed about the situation.

Every day I was scanning CareerBuilder and Monster, although I almost never got any responses from replying to their ads.  I found that I had better luck (not great luck, or even good luck, but better luck...) from just sending out resumes and cover letters to companies I was interested in.

My search tended to go by themes.  Maybe one week I'd send out resumes to all the crane manufacturers I could think of.  Another week, maybe it would be generator manufacturers.  And so on.

One week, I thought, what the hell, let's shoot for the stars.  I sent out resumes and cover letters to a bunch of "dream jobs":  basically just every automotive aftermarket manufacturer I could think of.  I wrote to Holley, Comp Cams, Crane Cams, Crower Cams, JE Pistons, and of course, Edelbrock.  I'm sure there were others that I'm not thinking of right now, as well.

Well, I wasn't really expecting to hear back from any of them, just because I didn't hear back from the vast majority of companies I wrote to.  But, I actually did get two responses.

One of the camshaft manufacturers (Crane or Crower, but I can't remember which one) actually sent my resume back to me, which seemed like a strangely insulting gesture.

But, I also got a reply from Edelbrock.  It was actually a letter, written on Edelbrock letterhead, and I still have it.  It says:

Dear Mr. French:

Thank you for the resume and the interest in our company.  It appears you have prepared yourself well for a career in your chosen field.

We have a relatively small engineering staff and the good fortune to have a very small turnover rate.  The result is that we seldom have an opening on our staff.

At present, we do not have an opening and do not anticipate any in the near term.

We will keep your resume on file in case an unexpected opening should occur.

Again, thank you for the resume and interest in us.  We wish you the best of luck in your career.

And it was signed by the vice president of research and development.

Looking at it now, it looks like it's maybe a half a step above a form letter.  But at the time, after about a year's worth of being ignored and rejected, and by comparison to the camshaft manufacturer's response, I thought it looked almost like a love letter.

I appreciated that they'd responded at all, and the encouraging words and personal signature made me feel like Edelbrock really would consider me if they had an opening.  I took some encouragement from it, and it also boosted my opinion of Edelbrock quite a bit.

I'd always liked Edelbrock just because I'd see their sticker in among all the other contingency sponsors (the little stickers around the front wheel well) on all the NASCAR stock cars.  So after receiving this letter, I put Edelbrock among my favorite speed parts companies.

I'm not going to claim that I've bought everything from Edelbrock that I possibly could, but the most expensive items on the engine will be the cylinder heads, and those are coming from Edelbrock, and a big part of the reason for that is because I still appreciate them sending that letter.