Do It For A Living

Dave grew up in Melbourne, Australia and has always been a petrol head. He knew from an early age that he wanted to work with cars and left school at 15 to get an apprenticeship at a local dealership. During that time, he began racing go carts to satisfy his need to race. Once he finished his apprenticeship program, he became qualified to be hired as a mechanic. He then got a job at a shop that focused on motorsports and he began racing cars himself. After that, he took a job at MoTeC in Melbourne for 5 years before being transferred to MoTeC Europe for 8 years. He then transitioned out and started EPS (Electronic Performance Systems) to be his own boss. He started the business in his garage and continue to operate that way! He uses a couple rooms as an office and for building looms and then uses the garage for injector testing and installs. He sells MoTeC hardware, builds custom looms and travels around the world to tune cars for various customers. Be sure to check out his immaculate Audi Quattro car that he

Lance is from South Africa and he grew up working with his dad at his dealership and salvage yard. When he grew up, he took over part of the business and spent years growing it. Eventually, he decided to make the move to America and attempted to continue with the auto salvage business. He came over on a holiday visa and quickly discovered how hard it is to become an American citizen. After 3 rejections, he was able to finally make it legal and he and his family got their citizenship. Along the way, he started in North Carolina, then Abilene (in Texas), then went to San Bernadino. After many failed attempts, a friend convinced him to become a dealer for the Superformance cars in southern California. Being that Superformance is located in South Africa and Lance having dealership experience, this was a logical fit so they went with it! Superformance provides a “Turn Key Minus” vehicle which consists of a body with suspension and a rear diff. The EPA allows this because it only contains 1 of the 3 components requ

The Ring brothers grew up around their dad’s fueling station and spent their time tinkering with whatever they could get their hands on. Jim moved around a few times and eventually moved his family back home to Spring Green, WI (2 hours west of Milwaukee). He saw a 1969 Camaro Indy Pace car for sale in the paper and had to get a loan from a bank to purchase the car. He fixed it up and ended up selling it for a profit. This was the catalyst for starting his own shop. Jim found a vacant car dealership and bought the building with a friend to begin working on and restoring cars. Several years later, he sold that building and bought a piece of land with his brother to start Ring Brothers. They were doing collision repair to pay the bills and bring in steady revenue. But their passion has always been for the customer and restoration side. On each one of the restorations, they would find more and more products that they didn’t particularly like. So, they would make these pieces in house! They built another building

Kris grew up in Chicago and stayed there to go to college. His family has always been enthusiasts and he grew up tinkering with anything he could get his hands on. He got a degree in Aviation Flight Management and got his A&P License. He never worked in the aerospace industry because he got offered a job at a fuel management company. This company was buildings components of Holly’s EFI throttle body. His next move was over to AMS Performance as their 4th employee. He helped them grow the business. He decided to make a career changed and moved to Las Vegas to dabble in the fitness and then finance industry. He even lived in China for a while! Then he moved back to the states and bounced between Las Vegas and Chicago to help with web development and marketing. Totally shifting gears again, he partnered with a friend and started an app development company in Austin. Sadly, their product didn’t make it and Kris had to switch gears yet again. This time, he headed back to Chicago to do photography with a friend

Gary was born in Panama but grew up in the United States. His father had a machine shop and Gary was always around cars. He worked at his dad’s shop at a very early age and learned the importance of hard work. His parents ended up getting a divorce and Gary moved to Panama to live with his mom when he was 9. In his early 20’s, he bought a truck and began modifying it immediately. He increased the power with a supercharger and did basic tuning adjustments. He went to law school and became a lawyer but he never lost his passion for cars. So, he began installing parts and tuning in his free time. He eventually teamed up with MAPerformance to get parts to Panama and worked with tuners and engine builders from the US to grow his business. He also took tuning classes from EFI University to expand his knowledge. Race Lab Motorsports now occupies 8000 sqft and has a dyno, a fab area, a marketing department, and parts sales. There is a second floor in the building where he will be teaching classes on fabrication and i

John was born in Florida but moved to Philadelphia when he was 10. His dad and he were always tinkering and fixed things rather than replacing them. He stayed in the area and went to college at Penn State to get a Mechanical Engineering degree. Even though his passion for cars never went away, he got a job at a beverage company and ended up in California managing a facility. During that time, he had a side hustle of selling other people’s parts online. It became more and more difficult to make a profit and he wanted to take the company a different direction. He had a list of parts that he wanted and needed personally for his 05 Mustang GT which he road raced. The first one was to deal with an overheating and front-end lift problem he was experiencing. So, he came up with the Track Spec hood vents by using Magnahelic Differential Pressure Gauges to find the optimum location to evacuate heat and equalize pressure. He now operates the entire business out of a 2-car garage! He has found companies to manufacture h

Scott grew up in Minnesota and enjoyed tinkering and making stuff as a kid. He played with dirt bikes and 3 wheelers anything else he could get his hands on. His dad got transferred for work and ended up in Colorado. After high school, he enrolled in an automotive program while working at a construction job. After graduating with his Associates Degree, he went hunting for a job. He had bought a Mitsubishi Galant VR4 and fell in love with imports and turbos. During this time, he meets Nick who’s dad ran the performance shop in Denver and they were going to get the first AWD dyno in Colorado. Scott spent the next few years working at another shop and begin honing his fabrication skills. He built a turbo Eclipse and took it to Mac’s for tuning. They were really impressed with Scott’s work and offered him a job. After working there for a few years, Scott decided he wanted to go it alone and started MoFab. He would do any fabrication work he could get his hands on. He moved the shop a couple times as the work incr

Dennis grew up on a farm in Indiana and went to Nashville Auto Diesel College before getting drafted to the Air Force during Vietnam. He took a position as a mechanic for their vehicle maintenance division and spent his time repairing equipment. When he got back to Indiana, he met a girl whose family lived in Ft Worth. During one of their visits to her family, he realized there were a lot of jobs in Ft Worth and made up his mind that is where they wanted to move. He got a job as a tractor dealer as a mechanic and worked his way up the ladder for the next 20 years. In 1989, he met Jim who was building wiring harnesses for the conversion van market. Jim wanted to expand the business and start making a harness for hot rods and Dennis was perfect for the job! They built a universal wiring harness that could be used for any hot rod. During their first swap meet, they sold out immediately and knew that had a great product! A year later, Dennis quite his job at the tractor company to build wiring harnesses full time

Bob has been racing his entire life. He got started in small Morgans and Triumphs in California and was jealous of the loud and fast American race cars. He stepped up to Corvettes and started winning immediately. He caught the eye of Carol Shelby who was trying to get Bob to race in the Shelby Cobra. After Bob had to race against a Cobra, he was convinced it was superior and went over to Carol’s team to drive. He won a bunch of races that year and then they took the Cobra to Europe with Dan Gurney to dominate there as well. This led to a stent with Enzo Ferrari racing and testing in Formula 1. Then Peter Revson of the Revlon Company lured Bob back to the US to race in CanAm Series.  During one of the races, there was a mechanical failure which sent Bob into the wall and crushed both his feet. The doctors said he would never walk, much less race, again. From this tragedy came the opportunity to create the Bondurant Racing School. He has been at a few locations over the years. But he fell in love with Arizona b

Tim was practically born into working on cars. His dad worked at an automotive repair business and Tim immediately took a liking to cars. When he turned 14, he got a compact truck and began modifying it for the mini-truck scene. He built the car all by himself and was happy to show it off at high school. He got his associates degree and got a job at O’Reilly Auto Parts as a delivery driver. Over the years, Tim worked his way up through the ranks, managed his own store, and even worked at the corporate office. Tim’s dad, George, eventually went out on his own and opened up George’s Automotive Performance which was a mix of general repair and simple performance mods. Tim decided to make a career switch and go work with him. They began doing more and more restorations and performance upgrades for muscle cars. After a few years, Tim decided he wanted to compete for the Riddler Award and spent 4 years working on a Mustang which ended up making it to the Great 8 at the show. Eventually, Tim bought the business from

As kids, Trevor and Travis saved up their money and spent it on go carts. With a matching contribution from their dad, they were able to get pretty serious and eventually toured around the US and Canada to race go carts. They both ended up going to college but continued to race. Their goal the whole time was to be professional race car drivers and they thought of school as their backup plan. Travis ended up working at the race track in Calabogie as a driving coach and began developing a business plan to educate drivers at various skill levels. He was also racing with a Porsche team. The track ended up buying several Mustangs to use as learning vehicles and they needed a mechanic to take care of all of them. Since Trevor had a background in working on cars, Travis invited him up to work together! When the R34 GTR came out, Trevor and Travis worked with Switzer Performance in the US to import engines and upgrade GTR’s in Canada. This was the beginning of TWOth Autosport. They worked closely with Switzer to deve

Dirk has always been a builder and tinkerer. He started working for a clutch company called Kennedy Engineered Products that built engine adapters and clutches for VW’s. He was working as a clutch assembler and was in college for a Mechanical Engineering degree. He worked his way up the ranks at KEP. In 1994, Dirk was working on a project for the Japanese import vehicles and asked his boss if he could take the idea and run with it. In 1996, he started Advanced Clutch Technology (ACT) and started branding the pressure plates himself. He has steadily grown the business over the past couple decades and sees no end in sight. He currently rents a 22,000 manufacturing facility and has 40 employees. They have been a strong proponent of having a strict pricing policy. This was a tough decision in the beginning, but it has turned out to be the right choice. It has allowed shops and sellers to make a good margin on the parts and keep the industry going.

Description: Doug and Brad DeBerti, the father and son duo, have a new Discovery Channel show called Twin Turbos. Doug was born and raised in Montana and moved down to Bakersfield, CA when he was 18. In the late 80’s, Doug got a new truck and began making custom parts for it. He wiggled his way into a building lease and took out 4 credit cards to raise capital for the new business. In an ingenious move to project inventory, he would buy empty boxes from manufacturers and weighted them down! He would just purchase the actual products when the customer would buy them. He sold off that business and started an accessories business that was very successful. During this time, he and his son started DeBerti Designs with the purpose of building custom show vehicles. They would build vehicles, show them at tradeshows, and then sell them to fund the next project. They switched gears and bought a truck to race off road. Very soon, they began defeating the odds and winning races. They leveraged their story and success to

Glen is from New Zealand and his dad actually used to own a trailer company. His dad sold the company in the mid-eighties and it was a couple decades before Glen got back into trailers. After high school, Glen got into construction and went off to create his own construction company. Glen then moved to Dubai and did construction there as well. Over the next decade, he built a very large business with around 700 employees. His next adventure went down a completely different path. He took his wife and two small children to the United States. They bought an RV and toured the US for 6 months to take a break from it all. After the adventure, they moved back to New Zealand and Glen decided to get back into building trailers. He had bought a race car and struggled with loading and unloading it. So, he decided to fix the problem himself! He started with a motorcycle trailer that lowered to the ground to make it easier to load. The next phase was building a single-axle trailer that was capable of carrying a small car.

David was born and raised in Ohio and has been there his entire life. Growing up, he was very active in outdoor activities and his dad was racing. By the time he was 18, he had his SCCA license and was racing pretty regularly. When he went to college, he started off in Accounting but changed it to HR and Psychology. During school, he wrote a business plan to distribute wheels in the Midwest. His dad owned Dayton Wire Wheels and he noticed there was a void in the market of distributing wheels. After working in a wheel & tire store after college, he decided to make his business plan a reality and begin distributing wheels. Steve (David's twin brother) and their dad originally had the idea for a custom welded 2-piece wheel that they could cater to the needs of their customers. This business also took off quickly and Steve brought David in as a partner to help manage the business. They now use their own skill sets to work together to continue to grow the company. David had to shut down the distribution busine

Bob grew up in Colorado and has been around racing his whole life. His dad raced with SCCA and then became the chief driving instructor in Colorado. His dad brought the family to a race and they met another family of racers. It was at this time that Bob would meet his future wife (she was 11 and he was 13). Bob went to college for a business degree and ended up in California after graduating to become a stunt driver. He ended up moving back to Colorado when he and his wife got married. Back in Colorado, he managed one of the Acura dealerships and created a racing program. A group of investors came to Colorado Springs looking to purchase the abandoned Pikes Peak International Raceway and were looking to have a local person manage it. Bob was then chosen to come on as the General Manager. He has become an investor and is now the President of the track. Over the years, Bob has vastly expanded the offerings and revenue sources for the track. Typically, it is easy to fill up the weekends with enthusiast events. Bu

Scooter grew up as a mechanic and got his first job right out of high school. He was drafted to the Navy during the Vietnam War where he served as an aircraft mechanic. When he came back home, he got a job at Racing Head Service around 1972. They were having trouble finding good camshafts for their market so they started Cam Dynamics (now Comp Cams) to fill the need. Over the past few decades, Scooter and the team have built Comp Performance Group into a juggernaut in the aftermarket powertrain industry! Now, Scooter looks for possible acquisitions to expand their reach and offer superior products. They also recently underwent a large logistical overhaul of their company and implemented a new software system to help manage it all.  Scooter has also been very involved with SEMA. He spent 6 years on the Board of Directors and served 2 of those years as the Chief Executive Officer. He has helped the SEMA organization push the RPM Act in an effort to combat some detrimental EPA language that prohibits street cars

Larry scraped and saved up $1000 to purchase his first Canon Rebel XT DSLR camera back in 2004. He had been taking pictures with a simple point-and-shoot but wanted to step up his professionalism. He had his own business fixing & building computers but also took pictures as a paparazzi. These jobs were a means to an end that allowed him to take automotive pictures. Over the last 13 years, he has traveled all over the world and been to hundreds of events to pursue his passion. As a testament to his dedication, Larry funded many of his photography trips by justifying them as investments. He would take a chance to travel to an event with the intent of selling his pictures, but it was never a guarantee. This drive and passion resonated with the owners and drivers of the cars and Larry became a world-renowned automotive photographer and editor. Michelin has sent Larry to Austria to do a shoot with a Ford GT, Ken Block and the Hoonigan crew hired Larry to take pictures during Climbkhana, he took aerial pictures

Chris went to college at an art school in Michigan and focused on graphic design. After graduating, he worked at several design firms and worked his way up the corporate ladder. He was also running a forum called EFHonda to pursue his passion of the EF Honda chassis. He even started his own parking lot meet up called the EF Honda Meet to hang out with fellow enthusiasts. In 2004, they stepped it up and rented Gingerman Raceway on a Monday and took their cars out on to the track. They called it Westminster Honda Meet 4 (for 2004). As the years went by, the Honda Meet grew and turned into a tight-nit community where people would look forward to the meet every year. Chris focused on making it a very professional event and created new designs and marketing material for each event. But cars weren’t the only thing he was interested in. Chris had been attending a lot of music festivals and was meeting a lot of artists all over the country. So, he decided to blend the two hobbies and create GridLife. Taking what he l

John bought his first Eagle Talon when he was in high school and upgraded to a turbo Eclipse when he got to college. He did quite a few mods and ran it a lot at the drag strip. Then, John and some buddies got together and rented a small shop to modify their cars and others for customers. After a few years, John separated off and took his fabrication equipment to work at another shop. That second shop began to shift to more domestic cars so John decided to go out on his own. He bought an 8500 sqft building to house a few lifts, the dyno, engine assembly room, and an area for his fabrication. He has grown to having 4 employees and working on several different import cars. He has been focusing on only working on stuff that makes him money and has grown the business steadily over the years.