Lea este artículo en español aquí.
Rey Sotelo would have been a local motorcycle legend if he had done nothing more than help Mike Corbin organize the first annual Independence Day Rally in 1997. But it was his work in reviving the Indian Motorcycle brand that put him on the national map, earning him a place in the Sturgis Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2001.
He also produced 750 now-scarce replicas of the famous Captain America bike from the movie “Easy Rider,” created custom motorcycles for the upper echelon of sports figures, owns and runs Hollister Powersports, and co-founded the annual Hope Motorcycle Rally to raise money in the fight against prostate and ovarian cancer.
Friends for over 40 years, Corbin said that Sotelo is “probably one of the best motorcycle dealers I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“It’s the way he takes care and makes sure everything’s perfect with the customer,” Corbin said. “When you buy a bike from Rey, you just bought yourself a friend, too. He’s always Rey, no matter what. He’ll be there for you.”
Sotelo’s love of motorcycles was firmly cemented long before receiving his first ticket at age 10 for riding a Briggs and Stratton mini bike down the street.
“My buddy James and I were enthralled with motorcycles,” Sotelo said. “We’d sit on the corner just to watch Robert and Tom Talerico ride home on their Harleys. We’d go to their garage, and they’d be polishing their bikes. We just got hooked.”
On his 16th birthday, Sotelo bought his first Harley-Davidson motorcycle using $1,000 he had earned as a busboy at the San Jose Airport, along with $600 borrowed from his less-than-enthusiastic mother.
“She didn’t want anything to do with it,” Sotelo said. “My dad wasn’t into motorcycles either, but I’d have to wait until he got home to kickstart it for me so I could ride—I didn’t figure that out for two or three months. But that’s where things began.”
Graduating early, he rode the Harley from San Jose to his job in Sunnyvale, where he was shuffling mainframes at an Intel warehouse. By the age of 19, he was married and managing the place. By 21, with the prospect of a promotion and an unwelcome commute to San Francisco, he asked to be laid off and started working on Harleys out of his garage.
“Guys started bringing their bikes,” he said. “They would need this or that, and one thing led to another. I rented a spot next to Garcia’s Car Club in Gilroy and started selling parts. It wasn’t zoned for service, so we did all that in a garage at night.”
It was the start of South County Motorcycles, founded in 1979, and it was profitable enough to allow Sotelo to acquire a nearby lot, drop in a 40-foot container to serve as a machine shop, and fill it with equipment like a valve grinder, a cylinder boring machine, a mill and a lathe.
His first big break came when Morgan Hill’s Custom Chrome came to him with 2,000 floorboards in need of alignment due to a design flaw.
“The owner asked if I could fix them to lie flat,” Sotelo said. “It took us to the next level. I would knock out 500 sets, take them over, and it was instant cash. One thing led to another, and it seemed like everything they got in needed reworking.”
He built a 67,000-square-foot shop with the profits and started working with custom designer Arlen Ness, producing around 400 unbranded Harleys a year for distributors as far away as Belgium.
“We were building them,” Sotelo said, “and we would paint and customize them as whatever your brand was, like ‘Steel Stallions,’ ‘Ultra Customs,’ ‘Thunder Cycles.’ And I didn’t care whose name we were putting on the bike as long as they were putting my name on the check.”
A change to California vehicle identification number laws created legal complications for Sotelo and forced him to produce motorcycles under his own trademark as the California Motorcycle Company, only the second manufacturer to be recognized in the Kelly Blue Book since the demise of Indian Motorcycles in 1953.
A second break came when he designed an oversized “Big Boy” bike for San Francisco 49er Ralph Tamm, which soon became a must-have for other sports figures. One example, seen in a Sports Illustrated photo spread, showed San Francisco Giants manager Dusty Baker lying on his Bob Marley-inspired motorcycle.
In 1998, Sotelo became a key player in the revival of the Indian Motorcycle brand as several manufacturers were seeking the rights to the trademark. Sotelo was contacted by one of the contenders, Indian Motorcycle North America, and given six weeks to produce six working prototypes for a court hearing in Denver.
“At the hearing,” Sotelo said, “one guy brought a half-scale wooden motorcycle. Another guy brought a drawing. We actually proved that we could build that motorcycle.”
Awarded the trademark, the Gilroy-based company produced 1,100 Chiefs in its first year. Sotelo saw California Motorcycle Company absorbed into the Indian Motorcycle Company and was appointed president and CEO.
Much to his consternation, that meant spending most of his time crisscrossing the country to raise capital and fighting with the board of directors about the direction of the company. When asked by the New York Times if he was satisfied with the bikes that were being produced, Sotelo did not mince words.
“We haven’t even scratched the surface,” he said he told the reporter. “My goal is to build an Indian motorcycle. We are building a Harley with Indian clothes.”
His honesty almost cost him his position in the company. Sotelo was relegated to production, where he had wanted to be in the first place, and forbidden to talk to the press. Sotelo battled the board over his desire to build a “real motorcycle.”
With the economic uncertainties following the 9/11 attacks, the company became further unstable. In 2002, Sotelo refused to renew his contract and reached an acrimonious but profitable parting. The company collapsed shortly after.
“I just kind of took the next 10 years or so off,” he said. “Then my father-in-law, Mike Greenwood, tells me about his Honda store and how it’s not profitable. I opened my big mouth again and said, ‘The only way you can do this is to bring the other brands in.’”
Having sworn to himself never to return to retail, Sotelo began consulting and was hooked again. Not realizing how much he enjoyed the contact with his legion of customers, he opened Hollister Powersports in 2014.
“All of a sudden,” he said, “they found me. All these people I had done business with started coming around. I just didn’t realize how much I missed the industry, the lifestyle and the customer service.”
With the help of his wife, Angela Greenwood, who serves as the controller of the business, he found himself back in the thick of the motorcycle world, even carrying the latest iteration of the Indian after another company picked up the trademark.
Along with Greenwood, Albie Jachimowicz, Timm Westmoreland and Dave Tozer, Sotelo also helped create the Hope Motorcycle Rally in 2017 to raise money for research into prostate and ovarian cancer. The rally, which happens Sept. 25 to 27, will culminate in a grand finale at the Golden Nugget Lake Tahoe.
Through the ups and downs of his career, Sotelo said he has never lost his passion for the business or the motorcycles that he has admired since his youth.
“I love building motorcycles,” he said. “I get very personal about it. It’s about creating something that becomes part of someone, a part of their personality. It’s a pleasure to be part of that whole thing.”
Ed Heffelfinger’s “Conversation With Rey Sotelo”
Hollister Powersports is located at 411 San Felipe Road, Hollister and can be found on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Purchase Hope Motorcycle Rally tickets through the event website or by calling (831) 630-5200.
We need your help. Support local, nonprofit news! BenitoLink is a nonprofit news website that reports on San Benito County. Our team is committed to this community and providing essential, accurate information to our fellow residents. Producing local news is expensive, and community support keeps the news flowing. Please consider supporting BenitoLink, San Benito County’s public service nonprofit news.
You must be logged in to post a comment.