1. Within a six-block grid in the backwaters of North Berkeley’s
burgeoning mom and pop industrial quarter, there are about two
dozen automotive specialists, a band of obsessive brainiacs who
can restore a GTO to factory condition, Babbitt a bearing for an
OSCA, or rebuild your Ferrari Tour de France after you wrap it
around a cactus in Zacatecas on the Carrera Panamericana.
Despite their automotive expertise, there are no grandiose facades or designer nameplates,
just lots of corrugated sliding gates and chicken wire fences, sandwiched between the Potters
Guild, Jimmy Bean’s Cafe and the Cactus Jungle Nursery. Some of these guys don’t even
have a street number outside their business. You have to drive up and down the block
to deduce which door is the entrance to their workshop because it’s not listed on your GPS.
Of course, if you own a car that the Berkeley band would be interested in working on, you
already know who they are—and they probably know you!
The Fabulous
BOYS
By Kate Constantin

Stephen in his first car, a 1938
Maserati 6CM (chassis 1552,
previously owned by Mauri Rose
and Roberto Rossellini), which
was a gift from his father.
He had to learn to work
on its engine before
being allowed to
drive it.
2

2. It seems incredible that so much automotive restoration
talent coexists within such a small area of Berkeley,
California. It’s not as if Ford or Ferrari or Bentley had
a manufacturing plant nearby, nor is it home to an
inordinate abundance of car enthusiasts.
It all began when Stephen Griswold went West to
study history and English at the University of California,
Berkeley.
Stephen is the son of racing great Frank Griswold, who won
the first United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen driving the
1938 Alfa 8C 2900B that went on to win Best of Show at the
Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance for Jon and Mary Shirley
in 2008. Frank presented Stephen with an Austin 7 at age 8,
and the youngster’s racing history began at age 10. It was
evident by then that Griswold Jr. had motor oil running
thick in his veins.
Top and middle left: Frank
Griswold won the first
postwar race in the United
States, held at Watkins Glen
in 1948, driving this 1938
Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 Touring
Berlinetta.After his victory
lap, Griswold celebrated
with Briggs Cunningham,
who followed him across
the finish line, placing
second with his Bu-Merc
Special.The Alfa, owned by
Jon and Mary Shirley, took
Best of Show at
Pebble Beach in 2008.
Top right: Stephen Griswold
with a 1932 Alfa Romeo
Monza 8C in his shop in
the early 1970s.
Middle right:An overview
of Stephen Griswold’s
old shop.
griswold
Stephen Griswold’s 1952 Ferrari 212 Touring Barchetta
(chassis 0158) won the Hans Tanner Trophy for Best Ferrari
at the 1974 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.
3

3. In 1963 Stephen opened a shop that serviced and repaired
mainly Italian cars under the name S. Whitney Griswold Co.
in Oakland, then he moved the shop to San Pablo Avenue in
Berkeley in 1967. He expanded that business into a Ferrari
and Alfa dealership, which he sold in 1980, when he moved
his repair shop around the corner to Fifth Street and began
to concentrate on restoration. And the nucleus of expertise
was born.
More than 50 percent of all foreign cars shipped to the
United States during that period ended up in California,
and it became a mecca for sports car enthusiasts. Stephen
Griswold soon attracted some of the industry’s greatest auto-
motive experts to his camp and built up a world-renowned
restoration and service shop for exotic automobiles—
Griswold Co. “Stephen had a knack for spotting talent,”
says David McCarthy, an independent Ferrari motor
specialist and Griswold’s long-term employee in the 1970s,
“plus he knew cars. It was the perfect combination.”
Griswold remembers the halcyon days of the 1960s and
’70s with fond nostalgia: “Kids from Berkeley High School
used to come over and hang out. They would pick up a broom
or watch a mechanic after school. These kids were ever so
polite and they had the passion. You don’t find that in kids
these days.”
Griswold’s checkered past includes both the receipt of many
prestigious awards at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance
as well as the regular sales of expensive cars to some shady
characters who paid in cash. “This one guy came with $60,000
hidden in his sock,” recalls Griswold. “When they came in to
get work done—you did a good job. If not . . . well, I didn’t
like to think about it!”
reilly
Reilly & Company worked on
John Mozart’s 1937 Alfa Romeo
2900B Touring Spider, which
was Best of Show at the 1988
Pebble Beach Concours.
Phil Reilly (left) with colleagues
Ross Cummings and Ivan Zaremba.
4

4. In 1984, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Griswold
moved to Europe and the famous Griswold restoration shop
closed down. Griswold says that he left for the world of higher
competitive racing in Europe, where cars are not bastardized
by requirements for roll bars and safety features. Whatever the
reason, his legacy remains. Like a dying star that explodes,
the individual pieces that made up Griswold Co. spun off into
satellite orbits. Some, like Phil Reilly, set up shop a slight
distance away; today Phil runs a world-renowned restoration
shop in Corte Madera, California, that can boast several Best
of Show cars at Pebble Beach Concours and multiple wins at
the Monterey Historic Automobile Races. But the majority of
restorers continued with renewed life right in Berkeley. Even
if they had not worked directly for Griswold, they were there
because of Griswold Co.
Today, cruising the back streets of this area, the gray
unadorned warehouses belie the automotive miracles that
take place inside.
“Power, reliability
and no smoke…”
You can’t begin to guess at the bevy of Italian beauties
that have paraded within Patrick Ottis Company at 1220
Tenth Street. Ottis worked with Griswold for five years, and
when Griswold closed shop, Patrick seized the opportunity to
open his own auto shop just around the corner, quickly forging
his reputation for expertise rebuilding the motors of Ferraris
and Italian sports cars of the 1950s and ’60s.
Now in his 39th
year of specialization, Ottis doesn’t own a
cell phone nor does he use email, but his order book reads
like a Who’s Who of world-class Ferrari owners. Volumes
of binders contain invoices dating back to 1984, each one
in precise, painstakingly neat handwriting, listing every nut
and bolt, flange and hinge used in the rebuild as well as all
the files, specs and tolerances.
Typically Ottis has a dozen motors in his shop at any one
time. There are shelves loaded with blocks of 275s, 212s and
410 Superamericas and boxes filled with parts, cylinder heads,
carbs and crankshafts. “Here’s a Ferrari 250 GTO motor that
we created,” Ottis says. “We bought the 250 GTO block and
then the GTO heads from the Netherlands, and these are
reproduction GTO carbs. Basically this is custom built for
the owner, with lots of Italian Zagato Maserati influence.
We build to the customer’s specs.”
Patrick Ottis’s 1934
Alfa Romeo 8C 2300
Figoni Cabriolet was
First in Class at the
2010 Pebble Beach
Concours d’Elegance.
ottis
5

5. Nonetheless, Ottis and company rarely pump up the horse-
power of an engine above the factory specifications. Patrick
smiles when this subject is raised. “The fact is, with a dyno
we have known for years the exact horsepower of these motors,
and I believe that Ferrari gently exaggerated the stats on their
motors for the benefit of Aston Martin and Maserati. I am a bit
of an old woman when it comes to horsepower. I like my
motors to make exactly the hp that they actually got from
factory.” Since most clients want to drive their cars on track
or road for years to come, their requirements are specific:
“Power, reliability and no smoke—that’s what they want,”
states Ottis, “and that’s what we give them.”
The task of rebuilding these monsters back to their former
glory lies with the aforementioned David McCarthy, a 50-year
Ferrari specialist who worked at Griswold Motors as Service
Manager for 10 years. Today he works with Patrick Ottis and
rather self-deprecatingly terms himself a “self-employed me-
chanic who loves to put the jigsaw of a motor back together.”
A variety of Italian sports cars make their way into the shop
of Patrick Ottis, where their engines are rebuilt or fine-tuned.
It is often David McCarthy who puts the pieces back together.
A Ferrari V12 engine (above) awaits their attention.
mccarthy
6

6. “You take away a man’s
women and his cars,
and he has nothing
left to live for.”
Another one of Stephen Griswold’s dream team acquisitions
was a young Italian immigrant called Nino Epifani. Having
spent time in South Africa working with the Formula One race
team, Epifani went looking for a job the day after attending the
Pebble Beach Concours in 1976. He tentatively approached
Griswold who jokingly told him, “I have an OSCA that has
dropped a valve, and when you are done, that Maserati
Birdcage needs the transaxle taken out. We’ve been trying to
do it for two weeks and my guys can’t get it out. I need to race
it at Sears Point tomorrow morning.” Epifani got to work and
called Griswold that same afternoon. “I told him I was done . . .
then he thought I was joking!” Nino Epifani, who had never
worked on a Maserati before, soon became known as
“Mr. Maserati.”
Griswold Co.’s breakup in 1984 was Epifani’s big break.
By then, he had served for five years as Griswold’s foreman,
during which time several of his projects were class winners
at Pebble Beach. The same day that Griswold left for the
United Kingdom bemoaning the downfall of the classic car
restoration business, Nino wheeled some of the unfinished
restoration projects down the street to a newly rented shop
on Fifth Street—and Epifani Restorations was born. “I didn’t
believe that classic car restoration was over,” says Nino, an
expert in pre- and postwar Italian nut and bolt restoration,
“After all, you take away a man’s women and his cars, and he
has nothing left to live for.”
Surrounded by functioning telephones, cameras and fans
from the early 1900s, an old helmet from a bygone era, and
faded photographs of his family eating McDonald’s curbside
in the early ’80’s leaning on a Maserati Birdcage, Epifani now
heads a thriving family business. Son Paulo is the detail man
who wins the extra points at the Concours with his obsessive
perfectionism, daughter Deborah runs the office and grandson
Armando, aged 11, is in training! At age 80 Nino recently retired
from riding with the posse as a Reserve Deputy Sheriff for the
county, but he is still the maestro of classic Italian restoration.
Nino Epifani works
on everything from
antiques and vintage
models to postwar
sports cars.
epifani
7

7. The eccentric
professor’s laboratory...
Unlike Nino and Patrick, Laurence Anderson never worked for
Stephen Griswold; he was employed by Griswold’s competitor,
Fredz-Auto-Go-Fast, just down the street. But today, Anderson
specializes in Rolls-Royce and Bentleys, and his restoration
shop is right next door to that of his buddy, Patrick Ottis.
Due to the antiquity of many of Anderson’s assignments, he is
required to be creative in his approach. When an 1899 Mobile
steam car needs work on its burner, he goes to his library of
out-of-print editions and searches a greasy, well-thumbed
manuscript printed in 1902 for the relevant information. He
may use his turn-of-the-century lathe to machine a new nut for
the 1926 Bugatti Type 37 or he might rummage through his
wife’s doorknob collection to find a suitable replacement top
for the rear brass lantern of the only remaining 1903 Lenawee,
which went on to win Third in Class at Pebble Beach.
“My specialty is making things from scratch and figuring
things out,” he explains, “that’s why the FBI came to visit me.”
During the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s the Unabomber terrorized
America with bombs that used signature custom threads on all
hardware. The list of possible suspects was extremely limited.
But Anderson, who is capable of fashioning a rare engine
bearing for a 1930 Rolls-Royce
Phantom out of a tin-based
Babbitt, was on that list.
“However, my profile didn’t
fit,” he says jovially, “I have a
family and am not asocial. In
fact, I have lunch with my car
buddies twice a week!”
Walking through Anderson’s
workshop is like visiting an
eccentric professor’s laboratory. Adorning the shelves sur-
rounding the 1937 Phantom III Copper Fender Rolls-Royce,
which won First in Class at Pebble Beach for Don and Janet
Williams in 2008, are scores of items of curiosity, each with a
story. On the top shelf is a model floatplane worth $10,000,
produced by Rolls-Royce for a celebration banquet at Claridge’s
of London. Beneath that is an oilcan used on a World War I
British machine gun, which in 1919 became a part of the factory
Bentley tool kit. And on a filing cabinet is a piece of a clutch
from a Bugatti, which when installed whirls uncovered and
perilously close to the driver’s left foot. “Get your toenails
cut for free with that one,” Anderson jokes.
anderson
Laurence Anderson worked on the copper-fendered
1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III that earned a First in
Class at the 2008 Pebble Beach Concours for Don
and Janet Williams.
8

8. Another auto fanatic who started his midlife crisis early,
is Conrad Stevenson, whose love affair with fast cars
started at age 15. Although he never worked for Griswold
he knew him well and rode past the Ferraris and Alfas that
were parked outside of Griswold Co. every day on his
way to Berkeley High School. Before his 16th
birthday,
Stevenson bought a 1965 Alfa Spider Veloce with the
money he made as a dishwasher at a local Chinese restau-
rant. “It would have been the perfect pick-up car for the
girls,” he recalls, “except I spent all my time working
under the hood.”
When Stevenson blew up the Veloce engine he took it to
Griswold’s to get it fixed but couldn’t afford the repair, so
under the auspicious mentoring of Jon Norman he learned
how to repair it himself and his career was launched.
Unfortunately, Stevenson wasn’t on the road for long;
16 moving violations later, his driver’s license was revoked
for a cooling-off spell just before his 19th
birthday.
Today, marginally cooler and almost certainly the
youngest kid on the block at not yet 50, Stevenson has
made a name for himself in restoring postwar cars, in
particular Alfa Giuliettas. While Stevenson is a master
of engine rebuild, his first love is the aesthetics of a car.
“I just love the shape and form, the dynamics of the car,”
he enthuses. “I like to get involved in the building of a
body; the people who work with their hands—the panel
beaters—are the true artists.” Looking at his schedule
board, Stevenson’s love of form is evident. Sketches of
avant-garde back-to-the-future coachwork, supercars
he began designing at age 16, are interposed between
reminders for ordering parts and specifications for
present projects.
When he’s not working in his garage, he is driving the
“Trouble Truck” in the California Mille Miglia or souping
up his little white 1965 Alfa Giulia TI Taxi for the Carrera
Panamericana. In 2010 he blew away all the Porsches,
finishing eighth overall in that famous Mexican road race.
stevenson
Conrad Stevenson loves Alfas, but he’s interested
in anything with wheels.Witness the go-cart that
serves as wall art.
“Without that fraternity there would be no joy.
I wouldn’t do it any other way.”
9

9. “I never have to worry
about a midlife crisis,
I have been enjoying one
since I was 19!”
Just down the street from Anderson and Ottis are their car
colleagues Jim Groom of Groom’s Sportcar Services and
Jon Norman of Norman Racing Group and Alfa Parts.
Groom was with Griswold for almost 10 years in the service
department and now specializes in the rebuild of Italian and
British race cars.
When Groom
needs an expert
welder, he calls
in his friend
Dennis
Etcheverry, an
employee at
Norman Racing
down the street.
Likewise, Jon
Norman supplies
Alfa parts to shops all over the world, including Ottis, Epifani
and Groom, further demonstrating the incestuous nature of the
Berkeley band of auto experts. The former parts manager for
Griswold, Jon Norman started racing at the tender age of 19
with a Lotus 7 and his race career continues today with the
CSRG. “It’s great,” says Norman, “I never have to worry about
a midlife crisis, I have been enjoying one since I was 19!”
For the Berkeley band of auto specialists, classic car
restoration isn’t just a job, it’s a passion. Like Griswold
before them, motor oil runs in their veins and they celebrate
not only the art of the car but the joy of the drive. Bound
together by a common history, they remain, for the most part,
a tight-knit community of auto disciples. “We eat together,
laugh together, we work together,” says Stevenson. “Without
that fraternity there would be no joy. I wouldn’t do it any
other way.”
norman
groom
Top left: Jon Norman’s Lotus at rest.
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