Robert E. O. Speedwagon

Speedwagon is tall and athletically built. In his youth he wears his fair hair in a long mullet and carries a prominent scar running down his left cheek from nose to jaw. His usual dress is a dark three-piece suit and tie topped by a bowler hat, one that conceals hidden blades; later in Phantom Blood he trades it for Will Zeppeli's checkered top hat.

By Battle Tendency he has aged considerably, sporting a greyed flattop and an older man's complexion, dressed in a sober three-piece suit and at times a feather-trimmed fedora.

Speedwagon is a fiery, honorable figure who begins as a street tough and ends as a businessman without losing his fundamental decency. A gift for reading a person's true nature by scent lets him spot Jonathan Joestar's nobility during their encounter on Ogre Street and see straight through Dio's mask of remorse. Fiercely loyal, he warms to Jonathan partly because the young man treats his ragged companions with kindness, and he comes to cherish Erina as a friend even after Jonathan is gone.

Toward Erina and later Joseph he behaves like a doting uncle or father figure, and his courtesy runs deep enough that he quietly steps aside rather than intrude when he finds Erina nursing Jonathan. That righteousness endures for a lifetime, so that his will directs his foundation toward medical and archaeological progress. He is also loud, anxious, and openly emotional, breaking into a hospital to cheer Jonathan on, badgering Zeppeli to teach him the Ripple, and even offering his own body heat to thaw Zeppeli's frozen arm.

Speedwagon grew up in hardship on the dangerous Ogre Street, stealing to survive and meeting enough cruel people to learn to tell the good from the wicked by smell alone. He rose to lead the district's thieves and counted a Kempo master and Tattoo among his friends. Though he could never master the Ripple, blamed on never being pushed hard enough, he was a resourceful brawler, famous for a bowler hat fitted with a hidden buzz-saw that he hurled with deadly precision, and for a sledgehammer that could crush a zombie's skull in a single swing.

He first crosses Jonathan Joestar's path expecting an easy mark, only to find himself beaten and moved by the gentleman's mercy toward his men. Won over, he guides Jonathan to Wang Chan and stands by him through the horrors at the Joestar mansion, mourning George after Dio kills him. He follows Jonathan and Will Zeppeli to Windknight's Lot, fighting zombies with his hammer, thawing Zeppeli's frozen arm against his own body, and, after Zeppeli falls to Tarkus, taking up the dead man's hat in tribute. In the final battle he wards off zombies and cripples Dio's arm, later shattering the Stone Mask and seeing the newlywed Jonathan and Erina off at the docks.

After Jonathan's death he sailed to America, struck oil, and grew wealthy, founding the Speedwagon Foundation to fund medical research and conservation while secretly maintaining a department devoted to helping the Joestars. He grew into an uncle figure for Joseph Joestar, struck by how closely the brash youth resembled Jonathan. By the eve of Battle Tendency, now elderly, he learns of a human-shaped figure entombed in a pillar surrounded by Stone Masks.

When Speedwagon brings Straizo to view the dormant Pillar Man, Straizo betrays and nearly kills him, only for the Nazi officer Rudol von Stroheim to fish him from a river. He survives Santana's rampage thanks to Joseph and travels on to Italy, where he sees Wamuu, Esidisi, and Kars stir to life. For much of the story he shields Erina from the truth of Joseph's peril at the young man's request, and he reappears with Nazi aid during the final struggle against Kars. He begs Joseph to flee the Ultimate Lifeform rather than face it, and later grieves at Joseph's funeral, only for Joseph to walk in alive. Speedwagon dies of a heart attack in 1952 at eighty-nine, a lifelong bachelor whose foundation goes on aiding the Joestar line for generations.