Ed Almquist
As a legendary motorsport pioneer, Ed Almquist has done it all-racer, inventor, manufacturer, merchant, and author. Many original and patented inventions for the giant racing and performance industry are a result of Ed’s innovative “Imagineering” over a span of 60+ years.
After writing the world’s first speed manual copyrighted in 1946 (which helped “kickoff” hot rodding as a new post-World War II motorsport), Ed founded Almquist Engineering. It was a bootstrap enterprise, started with a dream, that flourished and became the largest maker of hot rod and racing equipment east of California. Later, the Almquist manufacturing division became Sparkomatic Corporation (one of the first volume suppliers to the nation’s speech shops).
Once the nation’s premier motorsports mail order icon (disturbing millions of catalogs) in the 1940s to the 1970s, Ed Almquist introduced many industry first-including: popular hard core, race winning equipment, universal floor shifters, compound manifolds, tuned exhaust systems, lifetime spark plugs, style setting fiberglass bodies, and accessories. Long before the days of plastic credit cards, Almquist introduced the first and only retail credit plan for racers and rodders (a good idea before it’s time so it bombed).
Ed is one of the few industry car guys capable of taking a new idea all the way to a finished product and then peddling it successfully. Today, many of Ed’s inventions, such as Sparkomatic spark plugs, floor shifters, gas saving lubricants, and air ram cold air induction (introduced many years before GM “copied” the concept), are still in use nationally on street, drag strip, and circle track cars.
Often called one of the “Granddaddy’s” of American stock-car and drag racing, Ed has been a member of the Society of Automobile Engineering since 1961 as well as a charter member of the NHRA. Ed is the author of “Hot Rod Pioneers”, a 400-page book featuring famous personalities who created the fastest sport on wheels.