Isky: Ed Iskenderian and the History of Hot Rodding

INTRODUCTION

Long before NASCAR and other racing teams developed the hero card giveaway, which fans collect or might even use to snag an autograph from their favorite racing driver, Ed Iskenderian employed the idea to good effect with this 8 × 10 glossy. It was shot many years ago in front of Isky Racing Cams’ building at 607 Inglewood Avenue in Los Angeles and shows a younger, dark-haired Isky with his famous Model T-bodied roadster hot rod. If you wrote to Isky and asked for an autograph or a product catalog, you received one of these (for only 25 cents) with your return package. (Photo Courtesy Ed Iskenderian)

As I write this, Ed Iskenderian is preparing to celebrate his 94th birthday, which is today. How does a legend and pioneer of the automotive aftermarket performance parts industry (in this case the production of engine camshafts and valvetrain components) celebrate turning 94? Simple: by enjoying birthday cake and a party with his lifelong friend, John Athan … who turns 95 only a few days later.

If you picked up this book, you likely know that Ed Iskenderian’s ISKY Racing Cams has been an innovator and leader in the performance aftermarket for nearly 70 years. The man they now call Mr. Isky is still at the helm of the company that bears his name, and even pushing 100, still goes to work nearly every day. In the beginning, he was the sole employee of his little camshaft production company, with a single cam-grinding machine sitting (on a dirt floor) in the back of friend John Athan’s tool-and-die shop in Culver City, California.

Ever the keen promoter, Isky wanted racers, enthusiasts, and kids alike to have Isky Racing Cams stickers on their car, and he developed many attractive logos and graphics for these highly sought-after stickers. Certainly among the most fun and interesting sprang from when someone dubbed him The Camfather during The Godfather movies era. Friend and advertising rep Pete Millar developed the Warner Brothers-esque graphic, complete with Ed’s trademark cigar; the likeness is startling. Isky would grind you a camshaft you could not refuse. (Photo Courtesy Ed Iskenderian)

Isky is ever present at hot rod shows, races, rod runs, and all sorts of automotive events; the line for his autograph is always long. Here Isky and the author visit at the 2015 GasserFest II car show at the Automobile Driving Museum in El Segundo, California. (Photo Courtesy Kirk Gerbracht)

Through innovation, consistent hard work, strong ethics, keen promotion, advertising, and what we now call brand building, Iskenderian built a huge worldwide performance parts business that changed the face of the speed parts game and is still in it.

At the age of 95, you might expect a frail, hard-of-hearing little old man, and that is so not Isky. He’s not a tall gent, but still sturdy and barrel-chested with clear eyes, a strong rich voice, a firm handshake, and an ever-present cigar. Over time, some of racing’s very best and most notable drivers have run Isky cams in their cars, particularly in the earliest days of NASCAR, and throughout the post–World War II history of drag and land speed record racing. Of Turkish Armenian descent, he’s an American-born citizen, a father and grandfather, and he served his country during World War II in the United States Army Air Corps. He learned machining and life skills in junior high, high school, and the military that helped him launch his own business in his mid-20s, without a college education. Regardless, he’s smart, savvy, highly ethical, professional, courteous, well read, and well spoken to this day. His memory is better than that of my computer.

He’s also a model of consistent solidity: He built a famous Ford hot rod in the 1930s and 1940s and still owns it. He’s owned his business and worked essentially the same job for seven decades now, although his sons have taken over much of the day-to-day at Isky Racing Cams. Ed can still grind a camshaft and still owns the machine on which he produced his first one. He eats lunch at the same little South Los Angeles burger joint every day. And he’s known his best friend for 87 years.

As I’ve assembled this book, I’ve gotten to know this gentle giant of the performance industry; we’ve had many good interview talks and storytelling sessions at his Gardena, California, office and shop. And I hope we have many more yet.

It is further my hope that he would agree that we’ve become friends. I’ve written and published books about some of my Hollywood car guy heroes, including Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, and James Garner. And even though he’s a different kind of hero, I promise you that Ed Iskenderian’s car guy legend status is no less earned than McQueen’s, Garner’s, or Newman’s.

Ed has enjoyed a long run in the performance industry that grew up because of and around him. His long life and tenure cast a wide net over the speed parts business, stretching from the late 1930s to today. And he knew, was friends with, raced against, or competed with the pioneering merchants of speed: Engineering genius and racer Ed Winfield, whom he acknowledges as his primary mentor; Vic Edelbrock (Senior and Junior); Phil Weiand; legendary engine builder Bobby Meeks; and other camshaft innovators and producers, including Chet Herbert, Clay Smith, and Chuck Potvin, plus several members of the Offenhauser family.

Isky is uniquely qualified to recount the history of this movement, the industry, and of his company, because he was there. When the aftermarket performance industry decided to organize and form a professional trade association in the early 1960s, the membership, composed of his competitors and peers, elected Ed Iskenderian its first president. And he’s still an active member.

I’ve seriously enjoyed putting this book together for you, as I’ve equally enjoyed getting to know Mr. Isky. I hope you like the result of our BS sessions.

Matt Stone

Chapter 1

IN THE BEGINNING

Two of the Iskenderian brothers, and you’d recognize the mop-headed Ed on the right anywhere. At left is younger brother Luther who is deceased. (Photo Courtesy Ed Iskenderian)

Edward Iskenderian was born July 10, 1921, in Cutler, California, a tiny rural farming town in the Central Valley, near Dinuba and Visalia, in Tulare County. My father, Dickran, was a blacksmith who emigrated in 1910 from Turkey. He recalls now, "There were too many blacksmiths in California already so that wasn’t a good option for him in the New World. My dad somehow had saved up enough money for a down payment on a wine vineyard farm, so at the beginning he was a merchant farmer in America.

"He also worked in a restaurant, helping manage the chickens. They didn’t have refrigerator freezers back then, so the restaurant had to maintain a stock of live chickens. When someone ordered a chicken dinner, they’d say, ‘Hey Dick [his Americanized name], one chicken!’ He’d go back into the cage, catch one and kill it, and then give it to the cook right away, and they’d prepare it while the customers were eating their salad or having drinks.

"My mother, Armine, moved to America in 1919, meeting my father shortly thereafter. Iskenderian is an original Armenian name, stemming from an Eastern European version of Alexander, which read as Iskender, adding the ‘ian’ to Armenianize the name, thus Iskdenderian. My parents met here in America, through the localized Armenian community, family connections, and so forth [California’s central valley had a large Armenian population at the time].

"My family moved to Los Angeles around 1921–1922, not long after my mother immigrated and met and married my dad, and I was born. He’d been in the wine trade near Tulare and suffered near total loss of his crops due to massive winter frost in 1920. So he had to give the farm back to the bank. I was born up there, but we moved to Southern California when I was still a baby. We lived near Pico and Western in Los Angeles. I have two brothers, Luther, 3 years younger and Ben, 13 years younger.

Some of the Iskenderian men gather at Abraham Iskenderian’s shoe repair shop on Main Street in Visalia, California, circa 1914. Ed’s father, Dickran, is seated at left. Dickran’s brothers (Ed’s uncles) are Abraham (center) and Iskender, also known as Alexander (right). (Photo Courtesy Ed Iskenderian)

"There wasn’t any demand for blacksmith work in LA at the time, so my dad used what little money he had left to open a shoe repair shop, the same work some of our family members also did in Central California. I remember he used to take me to work with him, and I’d sleep up on a mezzanine above the shop.

"Then we moved to 30th and Main Street, and I went to Jefferson Street School for grammar school. Believe it or not, back in those days we used to have a little shop class in grammar school where we’d begin to learn to work with tools. We got to work with wood, and then later metal. When we were in junior high, we had wood shop, metal shop, and electrical shop, too. And of course in high school there was auto shop. This was great, learning how things worked and working with our hands and with tools. I’m sure this is why I ended up wanting to fix or make things.

From Radios to Cars

"I became very interested in radio and amateur radio. I remember two guys in my homeroom class broadcasting on a 5-meter frequency. They could talk to other amateur radio enthusiasts 10 or even 15 miles away, which I thought was fascinating. So I went to one of the guy’s houses to check out his little homemade radio rig, and he showed me how I could build my own. This was at the dawn of what people later called ‘HAM’ (or Home Amateur radio operators). These guys didn’t have any radio licenses so they made up their own series of call letters and kind of bootlegged their way onto the air. And so did I! This taught me a lot about electricity. I used to repair radios for local people in my neighborhood, for 50 cents or sometimes it was 75 cents if the capacitor was burned out and needed