![]() 'We went to Chicago to the Legend Cup and we took Top Six in that show, so we got invited to go to the SEMA show.” 'We took it to a show and it was the first one we got really recognized at,” Pettus said. Split Second - the name comes from the car's split rear window, an iconic one-year-only Corvette feature - put Eddie's on the custom-car world's map. It took 18 months and 30,000 hours to turn a wrecked car into a thoroughly modern classic boasting a 500-horsepower engine, a modern six-speed manual transmission, upgraded brakes and a new interior with touch-screen controls. He does oil changes, brakes, tire rotations, timing belts.”Īfter years of steady growth, 2017 brought the completion of Split Second, a modified and improved 1963 Chevrolet Corvette. 'He has 3,000 regular customers he services. 'He still services and maintains Toyotas, Honda, Acura, Lexus, Nissan, Subaru,” Pettus said. It helped in the early days that Ed Sr.'s customers came along. 'His father-in-law was out of town, so we went to the barn in Amana and snuck the car out in the middle of winter, brought it back here and, on Father's Day, we brought him in here to show him we were doing a custom on it. 'A longtime friend of my dad's had his father-in-law's 1949 Chevy coupe,” Pettus recalled. 'So we did a lot of rust repair, maintenance, things like that, for 10, 12 years before we really started getting known.”Ī family friend commissioned the shop's first custom project. A lot of people don't throw a lot of extra money at cars,” Pettus said. After Eddie's opened in 2004, it took whatever work rolled in the door. In addition to high-performance engines and chassis, Pettus learned the industry's business and management sides.Īfter Wyoming Tech, Pettus worked for a Cedar Rapids body shop while he and his father located property and built their own shop. went to Wyoming Technical Institute in Laramie, which specializes in technical training for the auto industry. knew a bit about the business, owning and operating the long-running Interstate Import Repair shop in northeast Cedar Rapids, with Lee Kratz.Īfter graduating high school in 2001, Pettus Jr. 'My dad told me if I did good in school, he would help me start a shop.”Įd Sr. 'I wanted to do hot rods, old cars, for a living,” he recalled. ![]() ![]() Growing up, Pettus, now 36, always knew what he wanted to do. 'We're competing with, pretty much, the top 10 percent of builders in the nation. 'We've been getting a pretty good reputation across the nation,” Pettus said. 'We joke around that we're one of Cedar Rapids' hidden secrets,” said Eddie Pettus Jr.īut recent years have brought Eddie's Rod and Custom to the custom-car world's attention. It's the art created inside that's drawing notice nationwide. CEDAR RAPIDS - The low building on a nondescript commercial cul-de-sac in northeast Cedar Rapids is easy to overlook. ![]()
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