Business Matters: Union Speed and Style Brings Classic Feel to Osseo
At 340 Central Avenue in Osseo, cars from a bygone era get a new beginning. It’s where you’ll find a business that mixes speed with style.
“As soon as I learned you could do this for a living, that was pretty much my goal,” said Jordan Dickinson, owner of Union Speed and Style.
Union Speed and Style puts the wow factor back into classic cars and motorcycles. Dickinson showed CCX News what will happen to a 1932 Ford Cabriolet.
“This whole panel will get taken off all the way up to the body line here. We’ll make that panel new, weld it in, smooth it out, and you won’t even be able to tell it’s had any work done to it,” said Dickinson about the Ford Cabriolet, which is getting rebuilt for a race on a New Jersey beach.
Projects like this are hard work. They also require patience.
“A lot of times when guys are going to do a build like this, it may take years just to find the parts,” he said.
But Dickinson finds joy in the work, breathing new life into classics from the ground up.
“Any full ground-up builds, that’s usually the stuff we like to do the best because we have full control from start to finish then,” said Dickinson.
Union Speed and Style remakes the bodies of old vehicles. The company works with outside specialists for engine and paint work. Dickinson said his main customers are hot rod and bike enthusiasts. Full builds can start at $100,000.
Rebuilds Can Take Years
Dickinson has been doing this line of work since he was 16. Twenty years later he can tell you what the hardest part is.
“Getting paid,” smiled Dickinson. “As far as the business goes, that’s kind of the hardest part of it.”
The other hard part is projects can take years.
“It can be anywhere from six months to six years. It just depends on how big a scope the project is,” said Dickinson.
A Long Road to Osseo
Union Speed and Style moved from Monticello. It took many years to find its new Osseo home. Almost eight to be exact.
“The building was a major draw because it was an old Ford dealership. So if you look in here and see the old trusses and rivets and everything else, that’s really what drew us in,” said Dickinson.
The historic building was built in 1914.
“What you see in here now thought is there’s been a year and a half worth of renovation done to it. All the brick that’s in here has actually been relaid. It’s old brick from the ’20s and ’30s, but it was brought in here and all put up so this looks like what you would have found back in the era,” Dickinson said.
Construction on the new Osseo building is about 80 percent finished. It won’t officially open for another month and a half. And once the car-build business is a full go, the owners have a vision to turn the building they own next store into a brewery.
Dickinson hopes to make it a classic destination.
“We get work all the down to Texas, California, everywhere.”
