Although Alex's filmmaking was doing well, he accepted a position as editor of Petersen Publishing's Car Craft magazine in 1963. He stayed with Petersen 12 1/2 years, transferring to Hot Rod Industry News where he later became publisher. While there, he also served as director of the annual Petersen Trade Show, which eventually became the SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) Show-the tenth largest trade show in the U.S. After leaving Petersen, Alex went on to work with partner Mickey Thompson, organizing the SCORE off-road equipment trade show.

At the time, Pete was working as a product development technician at Clayton Industries, manufacturer of dynamometers. During his tenure, he met Mike Hoag who had left Blair's to form M & S Welding with Sherm Gunn, building dragsters. Pete wanted to work for them and consequently took welding classes at night until they gave him a part-time job. In 1971, he left Clayton and went to work at Blair's.

A member of the Vintage Tin Hot Rod Club, Pete began work on a chopped '34 coupe that would have a seminal impact upon not only his life but also the hot rod world. Finished in traditional black and flames, the coupe was photographed for the cover of the November 1973 issue of Rod & Custom along with a similarly chopped canary yellow coupe of Jim "Jake" Jacobs. The two rodders hit it off and decided to start a small hot rod repair business in Temple City, California. Then came the call from Hollywood, specifically Howie Horowitz, producer of the hugely successful Batman series. He wanted Pete's car for a made-for-TV movie called The California Kid. The show starred a young actor named Martin Sheen.

The Kid put Pete and Jake's Hot Rod Parts on the map, and the pair ran a thriving business which, because of their innovative style and seat-of-the-pants marketing savvy, took the hot rod business out of the backyard and into the mainstream. Meanwhile, in 1982, Alex was inducted into the SEMA Hall of Fame.

Pete and Jake's was eventually sold in 1987, the year Alex retired, and Pete went to work as Vice President of Marketing at SEMA. Having been instrumental in the formation of the Street Rod Equipment Association (SREA), the job was a natural, and Pete became a driving force in the transformation of the SREA into the Street Rod Marketing Alliance, a council of SEMA. Pete was also elected into the SRMA Hall of Fame.

Pete has never been a stuffed shirt or desk-bound kind of guy, and when it came time to move on from SEMA, in 1990, he formed an alliance with Bob Bauder called Syntassien and, among other exciting projects, completed a pair of Harley-Davidson "HogZZillas" for Billy F. Gibbons of ZZ Top. The friendship with Billy has resulted in numerous projects. Syntassien was a long word but a short-lived company. Pete had a bigger vision, and in 1995, he opened The Pete Chapouris Group (PC3g) at 1357 East Grand Avenue, Pomona, California.

Under Pete's direction, and with the help of his team of craftsmen, PC3g quickly evolved into one of the world's premier hot rod shops, garnering magazine ink for the cars it built like a Guttenberg press.