Classic Car Studio’s 40,000-square-foot space is tucked away in Brentwood’s industrial park. Owner Noah Alexander works with customers around the globe who want to buy, sell, or repair vintage cars.
Since it opened 11 years ago, Classic Car Studio has grown from two guys in a leaky warehouse office to a team of about 20 in its current digs. The studio originally opened as a classic car dealership, and has since added a restoration service offering everything from paint and body or sheet metal fabrication to interior work.
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Soon, you’ll be able to look behind the scenes on TV.
Speed Is the New Black will follow Alexander, a Mizzou grad, and the intricate builds that come out of his shop. The premiere episode, airing May 24 on Velocity (an automotive-themed channel from Discovery) will focus on a ’65 Mustang whose owner wants to take it out on the road. Alexander’s crew customizes the Mustang with a Ford 302 supercharger and an EFI fuel injection system.
One of his clients, Charlie Smith of No Coast Originals, suggested they build a TV show around the studio. Smith had previously sold a similar show to Discovery. Below, Alexander shares his initial reaction, a memory about their first restoration, and his thoughts on the lasting effect of vintage cars.
How did Speed Is the New Black come about? [Charlie] said to me one day, “What do you think about a TV show?” I was like, “Wow. That could be interesting. I’m not really sure about that.” I decided to explore it with him. That was about two years ago when we started working on the project. Now it’s finally come to fruition. I like the fact that we’re a St. Louis shop. There haven’t been a lot of shows out of this area, so I like pushing good content out of the St. Louis region. We do a lot of high-end, really cool builds. It’s an interesting industry, so it’s exciting for me to be able to put that out there for everybody to see.
How do you hope this show is different from other car-building reality shows? What I always hear people say is they want less drama and more car-building. Initially, when we were working on the concept for the show, I told Charlie, “If we’re going to do a TV show, I want to do something I would actually like to watch” and base it around the comments I always hear people make. They say, “We want less drama. We want more process. We want to see what people are actually doing.” Our show really focuses on the cool custom work we do, all the steps involved, how hard it is, and how we strive for that quality. The first component is the process, and we really nail that on the show… The second half is, we’re building show cars, and we take these show cars to the track, and we really put them through the wringer. They’re not just good-looking cars. They’re good-looking cars that can flat-out perform.
Was restoring cars something you did growing up? It wasn’t something I did growing up, but I always loved cars. I didn’t have a lot of car people in my family. I went to Mizzou. I got out of school and found myself not sure of what I wanted to do. I started working in the car industry randomly over the summer. I was going back to get a master’s degree. I did not end up doing that. I kept working in the car industry because as soon as I got a taste, I knew it was my calling. I was like, “I have to do this. I must keep going forward.” That was about 12 years ago.
What’s one of your most memorable builds? I’ve got a lot of them. I can say almost every one of our restorations is really memorable one way or another, especially when it’s a full restoration where we work with the customer a lot to create custom touches. Quality and performance are also important to me.
However, what really got our shop started doing these types of restorations: We had two brothers that came in, and this was about seven or eight years ago. They were here on business in St. Louis, and they came into our shop and started talking about making these pro-touring Camaros. They basically wanted to take an old Camaro body shell and have all new performance, high-quality race-car touches, and really luxurious interiors. We were standing in our showroom, and I said, “Hey, you guys are from STL originally. Wouldn’t it be cool to come back here and build some cars in the city you grew up in and learned to love cars in?” For some reason, they said yes, so that’s kind of what got us started. We built these two matching cars for these two brothers.
They’re great characters. They’re really good customers. And they really helped us launch our restoration business and put us on the map there. The cars ended up going to [the SEMA Show], which is the big industry show out in Vegas. We raced them around the track and out into Spring Mountain… In the end we built two high-quality cars that they’re still out there driving today.
Do you own your own vintage car at home? If I own them I usually own them through the business. We’ve got 20 to 25 inventory cars that, yes, techinically I own. So I drive those around. Variety is the spice of life for me.
What do you think is it about vintage cars that keeps people investing so much time and money? With old cars, it brings back old memories for people. It might have been that their parents drove them home from the hospital in that car. I hear stories like people spent their youth repairing cars. A lot of my customers, the cars that they end up buying now in really beautiful, restored condition, they [weren’t able to afford] when they were growing up.
When it comes down to it, I’ve always found there’s a very large emotional attachment to the cars because of the experiences people have with them. As it is in life, we want to relive our good experiences as much as possible. That’s just what’s happening here.
The series premiere of Speed Is the New Black airs Wednesday, May 24 at 8 p.m. on Velocity.
