A Visit with Al Simon
By
A Visit with Al Simon
06-06-08
Story by Richard Parks and Photographs by Roger Rohrdanz
We met Al Simon at Jim Meyer Enterprises, located right above Lake Matthews, in as scenic and picturesque a place to have a hot rod shop as you will find anywhere. Al sports this big mustache and goatee and a smile that matches. He works with Jim Meyer on restoration of some of the most beautiful hot rods and customs cars, but also has his own shop in Riverside, California. He does chassis work and fabrication, but as he told us, “we have to be a jack of all trades.” By his work we could tell that he was a master of all these trades. Al was born in 1949 in Pico Rivera, California and attended Rancho High School for a year, before his family moved to Covina, where he attended Covina High School. He took metal and wood shop and worked with his father on cars. His father, John Simon, drove road racing cars and Al helped him build and maintain his father’s cars. He worked at Baldwin Park Motorcycle Shop while he was in high school and built motorcycles and other mechanical work. He owned a 1930 Ford 3-Window coupe with a Merc engine while he was in school, but didn’t join any high school car clubs and graduated in 1967. Simon enlisted in the Army in 1967, just after he got out of school and spent one year in Viet Nam, assigned to the 173rd Airborne Infantry Division. After his discharge from the Army, Al worked on Mercedes, Porsches and other European cars, but decided not to go to Europe to pursue the advanced training schools that would have been required of him.
He worked for Brooks Products Industries in El Monte, California, a well-known machine shop, then found a job with TCI Engineering in Ontario, building hot rod chassis. He then worked for Boyd Coddington at his shop in Stanton and was on Boyd’s TV show, American Hot Rod, for three years. I asked him what it was like to work for Boyd on the TV show under all that pressure and he told me that “it wasn’t a lot of pressure for me. They left me alone to do my work and if they started to get excited, I let them know better,” he told me. Al is self-employed and comes into Jim Meyer’s shop to help him out with his projects. He is a builder, fabricator and restorer in his own right and has a shop called Al Simon Fabrications. He lives in Riverside, California and has been married three times, but has no children. As a kid, Al remembers racing quarter midgets in Norwalk. They were a hot rage in the 1950’s and there are still ¼ midgets racing. The tracks are tiny, maybe only 1/20th of a mile, but the action is fast and furious and those cars could really create some action. That’s where a lot of oval track professionals got their start in racing, sometimes as young as five years old. Al raced against Bobby Olivero, Jimmy Oskie, Dean Thompson and other hot shoes. Oskie won a string of championships and Olivero was my cousin, Mike Olivero’s first cousin. My father promised to get me a ¼ midget to race against the Oliveros, but that never happened and I could see how Al Simon so fondly remembered those days.
John Simon did a lot of drag racing and constructed a homemade dragster, which he ran at Colton, Riverside and San Fernando drag strips. Al would help his father and crew for the team. Later in life, Al would get involved in land speed racing. He built a 1934 Ford coupe with a fuel burning Arden motor in the 1980’s for Jim Lattin. Lattin has been the president of the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) and a force in land speed racing. Al went to the Bonneville Salt Flats on the border of Utah and Nevada in 1998 to crew on the Dave Davidson and John Beck Fuel Roadster. Besides working on the car, he got to drive the car and made a non-record run of 208 miles per hour (mph). Although the car is owned by Davidson, they honored Simon by painting on the car the name of Simon/Beck/Davidson. Simon also built a street roadster for Jim Kitchen, called the San Berdoo Roadster and it ran in the C and D roadster class at Bonneville. Kitchen belongs to the Road Runners car club in Riverside, an old and very honored racing club in the SCTA. Al joined the LSR (Land Speed Racers) club in 1999, a member club of the SCTA. Simon’s current project is a 1929 Ford roadster with a 470 cubic inch big block Chevy motor, which he will run in the A-Blown fuel roadster class at Bonneville. Al can be reached at 909 228-1456.
Gone Racin’ is at [email protected].
Al Simon sports this big mustache and goatee and a smile that matches. He works with Jim Meyer on restoration of some of the most beautiful hot rods and customs cars, but also has his own shop in Riverside, California. | Al went to the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1998 with the Simon/Beck/Davidson Blown Gas Roadster besides working on the car, he got to drive the car and made a non-record run of 208 mph. | |
Al waits after a run at Bonneville, while John Beck checks his Blown 302 Chevy motor. | At El Mirage, CA in 2002, the 811 car is shown with Dave Davidson (l), Al Simon (driver), and John Beck (r). | |
Al Simon also built this 370 cu in Chevy powered street roadster for Jim Kitchen, called the San Berdoo Roadster and it ran 210 mph in the C and D, Gas Roadster classes at Bonneville. |