Dick Wells, SEMA Show Co-Founder
By Gary Molinaro | January 29th, 2010 | Category: Obituaries | No Comments »It’s easy enough to list a few of the milestones and legacy of Dick Wells, who died Jan. 18 at age 75: The first editor of National Dragster; managing editor of Hot Rod; executive editor of Motor Trend; one of the originators of the SEMA Show; founder of the Street Rod Nationals. Looking past those markers, though, it becomes apparent that Wells’ impact is measured in more than titles and honors and firsts.
“Dick Wells was one of those people in whom the passion for racing and for rodding came together with a business purpose,” said SEMA President and CEO Chris Kersting, who knew Wells for 20 years. “He spent most of his professional career devoted to things that would further the sport, the hobby and the business that supported the automotive enthusiast.”
Wells took his early positions and experience with Peterson Publishing Co., for instance, and turned them into the force with which he co-launched the first SEMA Show in 1960. As the hot rodding, street rodding hobby and industry grew, Wells remained a prominent personality, leading the National Street Rod Association, serving as SEMA’s executive director, and sitting on the NHRA board of directors, among other positions.
An NHRA biography details his numerous awards: He earned SEMA’s Person of the Year award in1977 and was inducted into the association’s Hall of Fame in 1993. The International Specialty Car Association gave him its Founder’s Award in 1994, and he received the Street Rod Marketing Alliance Industry Recognition Award in 1996 and an NHRA Pioneers Award in 2001.
Still, Kersting said Wells’ lasting impression isn’t in those awards, but in the evidence of how he lived and worked. “He was also one of those people who reached out and served as a mentor,” he said. “I had a number of people contact me after his passing to say ‘He was the reason I got into this business.’”
Hot rodding icon and SEMA Show co-founder Alex Xydias met Wells when they both worked at Peterson. “I think Dick’s most important contribution probably came in the pioneering of the sport of drag racing and promotion of the automotive hobby,” Xydias said.
But again, there was more: “He left behind an expertise everywhere he went that helped whatever organization he was working with,” Xydias said. “With everything he did, when he left and went on to a new challenge, he left behind a lot of stuff that bettered that organization. He improved every group he ever worked with.”
