Jim Green’s Performance Center a destination for car lovers by Polly Keary
This 1934 Ford Phaeton took three years of 50-hour weeks to hand-build from scratch, and, like a funny car, includes a full tilt body that allows easy access to the motor. It is just one of many remarkable vehicles on display at Jim Green's in Monroe.
It’s not every car repair store that has a whole small town inside it.
But at Jim Green’s Performance Center in Monroe, it’s the first thing you see when you walk in the door.
Besides the full-sized car museum, that is.
So much does Jim Green love cars after a lifetime of racing them, building them and fixing them that he has devoted most of the front of his vast building in the Fryelands to displaying cars in the setting of a 1950′s American town.
A Ford Model A is parked near a drive-in sign featuring 30-cent burgers. A classic Ford pickup is filled with wooden Stroh’s beer crates.
All around the display of more than a dozen remarkable cars, trucks and one tractor are the scenes of a bygone America, including store fronts, an old gas station and more.
But some of the cars speak to a history closer to home than the Route 66 signs in a glass case commemorate.
Some of them were built, rebuilt or raced by owner Jim Green himself.
A life in racing
Jim Green started out working in an auto parts store in 1956 and by 1966 he had his own speed shop. Called Jim Green’s Perfomance Center, it remained open for 45 years.
He started racing in 1958 and did well, mostly at drag racing. When he met a girl named Betty who liked racing a lot, too, he married her, and the two formed a team that was a winning combination for years.
Betty became one of the nation’s first female crew members and the two raced all over the Western United States and Canada.
In 20 years, the two won the National Hot Rod Association World Championships twice, once in 1968 with a car called the Jiminy Cricket Special C/Dragster, and again in 1973 with a car called The Green Elephant Funny Car.
Between 1972 and 1979, they placed in the top 10 every year.
But it was after Green thought he was done with drag racing that he built one of his most impressive dragsters.
On display in his showroom is the eye-popping “Assassin” a 22-foot long needle-nosed drag racing car with a chassis just four inches off the ground and a cockpit no bigger than that of a kayak.
Originally built in 1967 for another drag racer, is was the first car ever to do a six-second run at 229 miles per hour.
In 2001, years after Green had stopped drag racing, he decided he wanted to restore a car like the classic drag racers of the 1960s, and located the Assassin.
Today, after an exhaustive restoration process, it is restored to its 1968 configuration and is an eye-catching feature at car shows when it is not on display at Jim Green’s.
Other of his impressive projects include the “Phunny Phaeton,” a 1934 Ford Phaeton with a hydraulically-operating tilt body that lifts up and away to create easy access to the engine.
It, too is on display, with the body lifted up to show off the engine.
But one of the most stunning of the machines at Jim Green’s isn’t on display, and it isn’t a car.
It is the tractor called “Shotgun,” and it is parked out of sight in the back.
It has not one but three Ford 429 motors, arranged in banks in front of the steering wheel, and it looks like something Mad Max would drive through a wall of an enemy city.
It has won major pulling contests, and has pulled as much as 88,000 pounds.
More than just racing
There is, of course, a lot more to Jim Green’s than a great museum.
Within its 37,000 square feet is one of the top five performance car shops, or “speed shops,” in the nation, specializing in a kind of engine beloved of performance car owners called a single overhead cam engine.
He has worked on many exotic engines, including a Maserati, but prefers to work on American cars, mostly hot rods and muscle cars, he said. He does work for car owners all over the world, and recently sent an engine to New Zealand.
There is also a full retail shop with high performance auto parts, a machine shop, a service center and a storage area.
Not only that, but Jim Green’s can serve as an event venue as well.
“We had 137 people in here once,” he said. The cars can be moved to make room, and tables laid out in a central area, for events for people who love cars.
There is even a kitchen available for use, in which all of the handles on the drawers and doors are made of Craftsman tools.
Moving to Monroe
For 45 years, Jim Green’s was quite successful in Lynnwood. But space was limited there.
And for 15 years, he’d dreamed of putting together a museum within an old-time town.
So when a space three times the one he had occupied in Lynnwood became available in Monroe, he took a chance.
“It was so perfect, I decided to sell the one I had.” he said.
Since coming to Monroe, he said he has gotten a lot of customers back who used to make the drive to Lynnwood in the years before traffic became too onerous.
He invites anyone to come see his collection of cars, or to talk about how to fix or improve a hot rod or performance car.
He works a lot of hours, he said, as many as 70 per week, but for him, it’s not really work.
“It’s a hobby and a passion, and a business,” he said. “I’m lucky. My hobby is my business.” [End]
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December 2, 2011:
I got a surprise call from Jim this morning. We go way back when he had a machine shop on Lake City Way here in Seattle. In 1970, I made arrangements to purchase our ’57 from Jim and have owned it ever since.
He asked me to consider putting the ’57 in his museum in Monroe, Wa. when I no longer have the desire to race it. I told him it would give his offer careful consideration in the future and that it was a personal honor to have the car considered for public display.
Perhaps it would be a most fitting retirement for the old ’57 but it is a matter I must discuss with the entire family prior to any final decision and I would prefer to put the car on loan to the museum so our family still owns the car. – Roger Young
'57 at SIR (Pacific Raceways)
'57 in staging lanes at SIR in 2000
Jim Green's '73 Vega Funny CarCourtesy of NHRA at SIR
Courtesy of NHRA at SIR
