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No Hollywood antics for Hi-Speed

Custom and classic cars are big business, and never more publicly than since the rash of cable TV shows about finding classic cars at auction and restoring and customizing those finds.

"Now there's this weird TV stuff where they build a car in two days and everybody yells at each other," says John Sewell, of Hi-Speed Rods & Customs, 829 E. 17th St. "We don't do that," says Sewell.

The 6-year-old shop has been featured in hot-rod and custom-car magazines for its innovative results and techniques used in restoration. But much of its work - from six-figure frame-off restorations to simple resales of cars bought at auction and everything in between - is for locals, not fabulously wealthy Hollywood types, says co-owner Anthony Ribeau, who handles most of the shop's sales.

"There are lots of guys who have some money now," says Ribeau. "A lot of times it's a good investment, too."

"The stock market hasn't been doing much," says Sewell.

Local customers make up the biggest part of the business, and the most common job is a modification or repair for a local customer with a classic or custom car.

But it's the flashy stuff that makes an impression on the floor. A recent visit to Hi-Speed showed the diversity of the auto lust Hi-Speed serves up. Within 100 feet of the former bread factory's front door was a screaming red Ferrari Mondial, a rusty '30s coupe that had been a drag racer, a couple of '60s era Corvettes, a showroom-new mid-'60s Chevrolet Chevelle, a partially restored late '50s Volkswagen convertible and a black 1962 Lincoln convertible that conjures up images of a president's final ride in Dallas. And a dozen other pieces of automotive and motorcycle eye candy that will eventually cause someone to part with between $10,000 and $100,000 or more.

A customized 1950 Mercury coupe, "Wasabi," restored by Hi-Speed fetched $330,000 at the Scottsdale Barrett-Jackson auto auction in January.

The shop is owned by Sewell, his painter and designer son Johnny Sewell, known professionally as Johnny Vegas, and Ribeau.

Sewell senior said he got the idea, and the financial wherewithal, for the business because of the amount of space that custom projects were taking up at his longtime auto-body business, Formula 1 Automotive Arts, a paint and body shop at 529 E. 23rd St. that Sewell started in 1979.

His son, Johnny Vegas, has a reputation as a fine automotive painter. The shop is full of his work, from perfect copies of factory paint jobs from the '60s and candy apple and metallic custom jobs to a faux rust technique that mimics the oxidized "patina" of an old vehicle that has aged in the desert sun.

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