The 1929 REO Speedwagon, the truck and the band. Band keyboardist Neal Doughty, founder of REO Speedwagon, had seen the name written on the blackboard in 1966 when he walked into his History of Transportation class at the University of Illinois in Champaign, Illinois, on the first day the band had decided to look for a name. Rather than pronouncing REO as a single word as the motor company did (“REE-oh”), they chose to spell the word out, pronouncing each letter individually (“R-E-O”). | Dean Cr