It started in Los Angeles with two hot-rodders in high school, Mike Huniu and his cousin Eddie Levy. About the only thing that kept them in school long enough to graduate was their auto shop class. In fact, probably the only reason they graduated is they worked on the principal’s car.

They did their work in Mike’s father’s garage behind his house. When it began to spill out onto the lawn, they were told to take it somewhere else. By this time they had graduated high school and had saved enough to go into business.

It was the early 1950’s when they bought a service station on the corner of 51st Street and Hoover, which back then was a nice part of town. After a few more years of fixing and racing cars, they decided they liked tearing cars apart better than just putting them together.

Mike’s mother-in-law found an existing business in the paper. It was called Joe’s Auto Wrecking. She did not like the term "junkyard," but knew it was what Mike and Eddie wanted. The business was on a funny-named street called South Figueroa in a small town called Gardena. The year was 1954. Mike and Eddie named their new business Capital Auto Salvage.

In 1965 Ford was producing the first Mustangs, Johnson was U.S. President, and his wife Lady Bird Johnson started hollering about the salvage yards, wanted to close them down because they looked so ugly. Mike and Eddie did not agree, but decided to pretty it up anyway. They built a new building, put up a 12-foot high solid fence, put in curbs, gutters, and did some landscaping. As their business made money, Mike always wanted to spend it to improve the yard. Eddie usually agreed.

Mike had a son, Norman. Norman was a college man. He was also a businessman. While attending business classes at Long Beach State he ran a swap meet business selling ladies clothing out of four vans. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in business administration, he went to work at a Nordstrom department store as manager of their shoe department.

In 1981 Mike and Eddie decided it would be great to have a son or daughter work with them in the business. But whom?

By this time, Norman was not keen on a career with Nordstrom. He found business clothes too uncomfortable. He decided the long hours, getting his hands dirty, and making a little money working with Mike and Eddie was worth a try.

During the first four years Norman started diversifying and expanding Capital’s existing wheel cover business. Around this time car manufacturers started using more specialized wheels for "dressing up" their vehicles. They also began using aluminum, polycast, and rally wheels. This new phenomenon, plus the industry shifting from rear wheel drive to front wheel drive vehicles, created a large demand for wheels since the old style wheels would not fit on the new cars. As the years went by, Capital began to look more like a wheel business rather than an auto parts business.

In 1986 Eddie retired, and Mike and Norman bought his share of the company. Suddenly the EPA was breathing down their necks.

"They gave us 90 days to get rid of a two-story pile of motors and clean up the dirt," Norman said. "I thought it was a great idea. It was something I knew we wanted to do, but we needed the incentive of the EPA to go through with it."

Gone went the motor and transmission pile, gone went the contaminated dirt and with it the old ways of doing dismantling. They had cleaned up the yard for the EPA, but once he began, Norman found that he wanted to keep going. They completely cemented the yard which is just shy of two acres.

Money was tight however, and Norman did not have the cash flow to purchase brand new racks and lifts. So they made do.

"We spent two years getting the yard organized," Norman said. "We got used racks or made our own. We bought used, rebuilt car lifts from a gas station. We labeled the racks and mapped their locations. We installed a computer inventory system. We did it all ourselves to save money."

In 1988 Norman’s partner and father, Mike, passed away, leaving 29-year-old Norman in charge. Mike also left his vision, "The importance of goal setting, looking to the future, striving for perfection, and the importance of customer satisfaction."

Capital has since become one of the leading companies in the original equipment wheel industry.

Today Norman still hears his father’s words of wisdom for customer satisfaction.