History
& The American Muscle Cars Family

  CEO Sal Perez's lifelong love affair with fast, classic muscle cars, began with his first car: a rare 1969 Camaro Z28.  After serving in the military, and then working as an instructor pilot, Sal decided in 1995 to pursue his infatuation with cars at a whole new level, and American Muscle Cars was born.

  Despite its humble beginnings as a one man operation restoring classic muscle cars in a storage unit, Sal's drive for perfection and demanding attention to detail soon catapulted the business into two separate shops, where rare muscle cars were the norm rather than the exception, and numerous award winning and magazine feature cars were resurrected from ashes.  With the word spreading, American Muscle Cars' reputation grew, and Sal moved the entire operation to the historic J. Filippi Winery in Guasti, California in January 2004, where the tradition of building unique and beautiful classic performance cars continued.

  With the change of location for American Muscle Cars, Inc. to Hot Rod Mecca came greater recognition and the opportunity for more growth.  As a result, American Muscle Cars, Inc. relocated to larger facilities yet again in October 2005, this time to San Bernardino, and added new capabilities to the AMC family.  Now, American Muscle Cars, Inc. is a full-on automotive manufacturing company, with comprehensive fabrication facilities, body and paint services, AND is now manufacturing complete 1967-1969 Camaro coupe and convertible replacement bodies available to the public as a new canvas to build their dream cars, or available as completely customized turn-key cars.

Bret Maxwell had a fairly early introduction into the world of custom classic cars.  He grew up down the street from a family that lived and breathed old American steel.  In his early teens, his car savvy neighbor built a 1955 GMC pickup that Bret fell in love with, so he went hunting for one of his own for his first car.  He ended up with a big window short bed 1957 Chevy pickup which transformed his life.  Through working on his truck and driving it to high school, he realized he had a true passion for hot rods, and wanted to pursue it.  When a close friend opened up a hot rod shop of his own, Bret begged to work with him.  His friend finally caved and hired him.  The shops name was Adam's Fabrication and this is where Bret learned the fundamentals of building quality hot rods.  When that shop closed he went to work for another shop called C.W.'s Hot Rods where his skills progressed.  After C.W.'s closed its doors, Bret decided that the only way he could build cars the way he wanted was to open a shop of his own.  In 2001, he and a partner started Firehouse Fabrication, LLC, where he fine tuned his craft and built cars with a goal of perfection.  With Firehouse, Bret's work was featured in several tech articles in Super Chevy Magazine and Chevy Classics.  After meeting Sal Perez in 2005, an interest was sparked to collaborate on a new venture.  Bret's desire to build only the best of the best coupled with the skills to get it done meshed well with the American Muscle Cars Inc. tradition of excellence.  This opportunity spawned a unique partnership that catapulted American Muscle Cars, Inc. into a complete full-service hot rod manufacturing company.