DECADES OF EXCELLENCE
Classic Porsche visits North Hollywood Speedometer, the instrument specialists
Not often do we feature a company founded over 60 years ago. North Hollywood Speedometer happens to be one of them. It has built its reputation thanks to its unparalleled experience and meticulous work, making it one of the leaders in its niche. Let’s swing by North Hollywood, California (where else?), to see what the fuss is all about
Specialised shops play a key role in helping today’s vintage Porsche scene thrive. Classic Porsche has featured a few of them over the years, including some located in Southern California, where 356s and early 911s in particular abound. North Hollywood Speedometer (NHS) is one name often mentioned by enthusiasts…as has been the case for decades. Would you believe the company came about in 1955? Curious to find out about the place and its history, we spent an afternoon with the firm’s owner, Ralph Klink, who gave us the grand tour.
NHS has had close ties with gauge manufacturer VDO for the last half a century. It settled on Lankershim Boulevard, less than a mile from its current location, before moving to their current address in 1969. That same year, the company, under the helm of Steve Heisler, had become the exclusive North American distributor for VDO Wholesale Parts. He and his team mostly supplied the booming hot rod and dune buggy markets with new products, although Porsche items represented a large bulk of the sales, too.
In 1972, Hartmut Behrens and Klaus Miese purchased the company; they aggressively expanded the business to include repairs, though they also started to see a demand for restorations and customising. Incidentally, they were the first to offer repairs on electric tachometers. The two partners agreeably split in 1985, with Hartmut keeping North Hollywood Speedometer while Klaus opened Palo Alto Speedometer, located near San Francisco. NHS, which employed eight technicians, heavily advertised and offered multiple seminars back then; however, emphasis slowly shifted towards restoration and custom work as years passed.
Even through the economy’s ups and downs, business remained stable over time, an attribute that drew Ralph to purchase the firm six years ago. It happened a bit by accident, as he explains: ‘I’ve known Hartmut since I was seven years old – he is a very dear family friend. My prior experience was as a dealer providing sales and service for surgical microscopes and lasers – another niche market – but I kept an eye on his business.
‘One day, we were sitting at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving dinner and Hartmut’s wife told him he should retire. His answer was: “What will I do with the business?”. And my wife Mary said: “We’ll buy it!” The timing was good
and we bought NHS in November 2014.’ Hartmut stayed on board as a consultant for about a year and, to this day, he will gladly pick up the phone if Ralph has a question.
Originally separated, the two units are now connected and under the same roof, and cover 4100sqft (380sqm), not including the upper storage recently added. The shop organisation has evolved since our host took over, with each item stowed in a dedicated area to easily find it. The showroom and office space occupy the front of the building, with parts storage – representing 50 per cent of the shop’s floor area – located behind.
One room is devoted to painting, stripping and sandblasting, and finishing cables; another to machining, from milling to turning. Our visit continues with a large area that sees most of the restoration activity and a room dedicated to electronics. Some decades-old tools and instruments continue to be actively used, still performing perfectly though occasionally needing repairs. They include signal generators for both speedometers, tachometers and accessory gauges.
A total of 11 technicians handle the day-to-day tasks, with a few of them having recently joined the crew as the Porsche market has truly taken off in the last couple of years. Each member has a certain speciality: 356s, early 911s, late 911s, etc. Yet, Ralph decided to cross-train everyone, so production isn’t affected if someone gets sick, for instance. ‘It has become much more
“A TOTAL OF 11 TECHNICIANS HANDLE THE DAYTO-DAY TASKS…”
of a team environment – the biggest asset of this company is its people,’ he adds. ‘The average time a technician has been with us is about a dozen years. The challenge is that they have to be skilled mechanically; but the work also requires an artistic approach when we are doing dial face graphics, for example.’
Technicians have access to thousands of parts gathered over half a century. About 30 per cent were purchased in large quantities as final buys from VDO, before Continental took over ownership and supply began drying up. Yet, the company also manufactures a lot of items used on an almost daily basis (almost none come from China), especially gears that are no longer available.
Restoration of Porsche gauges therefore sees a mix of parts: new from VDO, remanufactured from NHS, plus used, such as cases and dial faces. Finding them on the market can be a challenge; but other difficulties pertain to getting the correct graphics for the instruments (font, colours, etc), so that you cannot distinguish an Nhs-done gauge from a stock unit.
Since the 1970s, Porsche gauges represent about 80 per cent of the business, and not much has changed today. North Hollywood Speedometer mostly handles orders from shops based all around the world – retail sales only represent about 20 per cent of the revenue. But estimating the ‘restoration vs. modification’ ratio proves more difficult, as Ralph explains: ‘A lot of restoration will have a customisation thrown in. We often change the range and colour of the tachometers, for instance. Some customers also ask to remove the white dial faces on a set of gauges we made in the ’80s, and change them back to OEM.’ Once in a while, the team gets an instrument and soon discovers that it has been worked on by NHS 50 years ago!
Both 356 and 911 instruments represent the majority of the restoration-oriented projects. Sales of these two models are almost evenly split 50/50, although NHS does a lot more regular service on 911 gauges, since these cars are still driven quite a bit. The staff does not handle
“THE COMPANY ALSO MANUFACTURES A LOT OF ITEMS…”
‘modern’ clusters, though, starting with the complicated 997 – you almost need the vehicle on site to perform any work. However, the shop supplies a large portion of the instruments for Singer; they require combining two sets of gauges to create one set for each car.
By the way, do not expect to buy freshly restored, off-theshelf Porsche instruments from the company: such a purchase was still possible half-a-dozen years ago, however, Ralph made the decision to keep his valuable inventory for servicing gauges which are brought in, or shipped, by his customers. Time is an issue as well, although turnaround has improved tremendously. Ralph adds: ‘In 2015–16, we were inundated with orders; but we soon managed to drop our restoration lead time from six months to two to four months. We recently had more staff trained. It takes one or two years to train a technician – these guys take a lot of pride in their work.’
Besides instruments for Porsches, NHS also works on other brands, with an emphasis on German cars (starting with Mercedes-benz and VW models), in addition to a handful of Swedish, British and Italian automobiles. Let’s not forget some American vehicles (but only if they are concoursquality projects), especially since quite a few other shops have closed down. No Japanese gauges though, as Ralph does not have the inventory to restore them properly.
We truly didn’t know what to expect when we visited NHS, but the tour turned out to be fascinating, especially considering the company’s long history, which has evolved from primarily repairs to concours-level restorations. Who said you needed dozens of cars to make a vintage Porscherelated shop interesting?
“IT TAKES ONE OR TWO YEARS TO TRAIN A TECHNICIAN…”