A Webpage About...

Rebel's Car Stereo Centers were a small chain of full-service Car Stereo stores in Portland, Oregon in the 1970s. Full Service meant you could shop for a car stereo and have it installed there, often the same day. And when it needed maintenance or repair, you could take your car (or just the stereo) back to Rebel's and get it serviced. The name Rebels came about because the owner, Don Selley, was nicknamed The Rebel. Don was a race car driver in Canada before starting the Rebel's stores in 1970 (and he continued to race while he owned the Rebel's stores). His racing car had a Rebel flag painted on it. One of Don's race car mechanics, Ron Michaux has contacted me since I started this web page, and has filled in a lot of the gaps in my knowledge. Don Selley bought the Canyon Road and N.E. Halsey stereo shops from Jim McNulty in late 1970 and renamed them to Rebel's Car Stereo. He expanded to eight stores by 1972. The list of known stores includes Canyon Road, Halsey, Union, Seaside, Astoria, Pendleton. There's two missing... Some of the stores also included a clothing shop, Rebel's Thread Shed.

I worked as a repair tech for Rebel's from 1974 to 1977. I was taking a course in Radio-TV Technology at Portland Community College when the ad popped up that Rebel's was hiring a service tech. I applied and was hired. It was a welcome change to actually be getting paid for what I loved to do! And I learned how to relate to customers, and soon found out that many of them were emotionally attached to their stereo! There were some real tough dogs, and some marginal designs that were bound to smoke if cranked up loud. I had to deal with that and sometimes break it to the customer that they might consider getting something with a little more power. But I didn't give up easily. If someone really wanted an old dog of a stereo fixed, I did my best to give them that.

I worked at Rebel's East (10870 N.E. Halsey in Portland) from 1974 to about 1976. My boss was Steve Bennion, who was a great guy to work for. I don't know when the Bennions bought that store but Don Selley no longer had any part in it. I'm guessing he sold it around 1973. The other Rebel's, called Rebel's West, was at 10905 S.W. Canyon Road in Beaverton, and I think it was still owned by Don Selley. The manager there was Rick Bernard, who I met briefly a couple of times when I had to go and pick up some equipment from that store. But the Bennions, who owned Rebel's East, soon bought out the Rebel's West location, probably around 1976. Steve's Uncle Fred Houston was the new manager. All of the former employees chose to leave except the sales girl. I forgot her name at the moment. She was tall and slim and had very long blonde hair. She stayed on for about a year. Getting back to the change of ownership, since the rest of the staff left, now they were without an installer or repair tech at Rebel's West. So they decided that their best installer (John Gibson) and technician (John Cirillo--me) would be assigned to Rebel's West. This was fine by me because I lived in Aloha, and it was only a few miles' drive to Beaverton, compared to driving to Northeast Portland every day. I worked at Rebel's West from 1976 to 1977, which is when I departed for Texas. I came back to visit Portland a few years later, and Rebel's was gone! I heard that in the late 70s they had opened a third location in Tigard, but by the time I visited they all were closed. I know businesses come and go, but usually there's a reason why they close up shop. Guess I'll never know. I did finally make contact with one of the sales girls (Judy H.) who was working at the same time as I was at the Rebel's West in 1977, and who also was working at the Tigard store after that. When she quit, Rebel's was still in business. She didn't notice when they closed up either.

So that's my relation to Rebel's Car Stereo. It has been a long time, over 35 years ago as I write this in 2012. There is no trace of Rebel's Car Stereo in Portland, even the buildings are gone. It's almost like it was never there. That is one of the reasons why I needed to make this webpage, and also so that other people who remembered Rebel's would have something to look at.

I have managed to hang onto a few artifacts from Rebel's and have received a few more and some photos from Ron Michaux.

This is an aerial shot from the Microsoft Live Maps website that I captured in 2007. The building that once housed Rebel's West is in the center, with the trees and grass around it. The building to the left used to be a Wigwam Store. Now they are both gone, replaced by a car dealership. The Rebel's property became part of the parking lot.

Shown above is the Muntz 888 8-track tape player, their flagship model as of 1974. This was one of the most powerful 8-track players available at the time. Not long after, Craig came out with their Power Play series, which blew away the Muntz models. Muntz soon became Clarion, and then the in-dash models started becoming popular, with secondary power amplifiers that could be mounted out of sight under the dash or in the trunk. Finally, cassettes overtook 8-track in popularity and this model disappeared from memory.
I wasn't a big a fan of the 8-track format, because of a few annoying side-effects with the format, particularly the double-tracking phenomenon where you heard another song bleeding through from an adjacent track, and the tendency for tapes to get wound up so tightly that the mechanism couldn't pull the tape. We called this "tape drag" and the usual solution was to shove a matchbook under the tape so it could get better tension. Along with the fact that even though you could select from four different programs, you could never really index to the song you wanted (8-track lacked a rewind and only some models had a fast-forward which was not really that fast), I think these shortcomings finally won more people over to the cassette format. Besides, as we've seen time and again, retailers don't like to waste space carrying the same titles on different formats. As with record albums, Beta tapes, VHS tapes, and finally cassettes themselves, having to stock the exact same titles in two different formats was taking up precious space in the retailer's showroom.

Oddly, now that the 8-track format is dead, I've gotten a little bit nostalgic about it. The above Muntz 888 from my collection is still working fine, and I recently picked up a used home type 8-track player that only needed a new belt. In recent years I've found many 8-track tapes in good condition at places like flea markets and the Goodwill store. So it's still possible to re-live the experience of playing an 8-track tape, clicking through the tracks to hear the song I want. This old underdash relic lives on!

I'll add a few more car stereo photos when I have a chance and more historical details as they become known.
As a side note, I have learned that Don Selley passed away Nov. 23, 1995 in Tennessee. He was 57 (born Nov. 8, 1938).

If you've read this far, I assume you remember something about Rebel's Car Stereo.
If so, let me hear from you. Especially if you have any photos!