“We’re taking muscle cars and making them true hot rods with new technologies and parts,” said Kyle Tucker, president at Detroit Speed. “A lot of people like the older muscle cars like the Camaro and the Chevelle and they remember how cool they were. What they forget is how badly the drove, how slow they steered, how poorly they rode, the noise and vibration levels. We’re spoiled today. Most new pick up trucks today would out handle a 1960s muscle car. If you didn’t want to go buy a new Corvette, you can buy a Camaro or other muscle car but you give up a lot of the comfort and handling performance. That’s where Detroit Speed comes in. We’ve got the parts to make that old muscle car ride and make it out drive a new production car. That’s pretty neat.”

Located in Mooresville, NC, Detroit Speed has been turning out award-winning cars and parts since 2000. Currently, two Detroit Speed creations – a 1969 Camaro and a 1956 Oldsmobile 88 – are featured in March issues of Popular Hot Rodding and Rod and Custom Magazines.

Both cars, their engines outfitted with Vintage Air climate control systems, feature EMP Stewart Components water pumps (pictured left).

“It’s a good, simple, good looking durable package,” said Tucker. “Vintage Air and EMP Stewart Components really did their homework on it. It was exactly what we needed back when we were building the Twister Camaro and it still works today for our customers.”

While one-off custom cars are the passion at Detroit Speed, quality parts upgrades are the bread and butter of the company’s business. All Detroit Speed products have been through extensive engineering analysis, testing, and development to assure the highest quality performance parts possible. Each part meets the highest DSE standards for fit, finish, and function. But then, that shouldn’t surprise anyone considering Tucker and his wife, Stacy, are former engineers for General Motors.

“I was doing riding and handling analysis – chassis development on the new Corvette C-5 at Millford (MI) Proving Grounds for GM,” said Tucker. “I got into that program right out of school. It was great. I got to work with a lot of people who had history with the Corvette since the 1950s. It was great timing – the C-5 was just coming out and I hired in on a program where they needed somebody young and willing to travel. I did a lot of data acquisition on the suspension and powertrain of that car and I worked in that program for about 10 years – all the way through college on a co-op program and then right out of school. I learned a lot at GM, from testing to spring and bushing rate, how a car should perform at the edge, how it should ride down the highway and be comfortable. It was a great experience.”

The Tuckers took their engineering knowledge home with them and in 2000, put it to good use turning out what would prove to be a landmark car for the muscle car industry – the ‘Twister Camaro’.

“Stacy and I wanted to do something a little different,” said Tucker. “We had grown up in street rod families and I had a racing background. It was an innocent car. We weren’t looking to make some sort of statement. We just wanted to make a better handling and riding car. Unfortunately, when we started looking for aftermarket parts, nobody made them so we started designing our own parts and finished out of our two-car garage at home.”

The Twister Camaro (left) debuted at the 2000 Detroit Autorama and was later driven cross-country on the 2000 Hot Rod Magazine Power Tour. The car was quickly dubbed a ‘G-Machine’ as it combined the latest technologies in one package – it accelerated almost as well as a drag car, handled like a road race car and utilized a racing-style braking systems for improved stopping capabilities,

Additionally, the car employed comfort amenities like the Vintage Air system to give the original 1969 Camaro a 21st century feel.

“The car had performance and comfort,” said Tucker. “ It had a Scoggin Dickey 406 Bowtie block and a EMP Stewart Components water pump under the hood,” said Tucker. “It was a road race style engine that would perform easy on the street. Inside, we blended that with a Vintage Air system giving the car a better comfort level, something you wouldn’t mind taking to a road-race track or driving it across the country. The Vintage Air Frontrunner System provided that and an EMP Stewart Components water pump is at the heart of it.”

When the Twister Camaro was named the 2000 Goodguys/Popular Hot Rodding Magazine Street Machine of the Year, the Tuckers knew they had something special on their hands.

“The car was a real hit,” said Tucker. “It was a versatile car that both a show and race car. It got a lot of ink in the magazines and kind of put us on the map. People were hungry for a car and parts like that. Street rodding is a very mature industry. The Twister Camaro is a very hot car and the re-emergence of the muscle car together put us at the right place at the right time.”

The car created a flood of orders for new parts. Still working for GM at the time, the Tuckers launched Detroit Speed out of their backyard garage in Brighton, MI. The first product, an aluminum batter mount, was quickly followed by a host of re-engineered chassis and suspension offerings.

“We started building some parts and cars on the side,” said Tucker. “Pretty soon we got out of our two-car garage and built about a 1,300 square foot building in the backyard. Later, we took a six-month leave of absence from GM in 2001. I talked to my director and he knew what I wanted to do. He gave me a year and told me if it didn’t work, I could come back and have my old job back.

“It was a big step for me to take a leave of absence,” Tucker continued. “Stacy has an even more broad experience base in testing, ride and handling engineering than I do. She even worked at the Cadillac assembly plant in Detroit. She was putting a foundation together to move up through the corporation. I was at the Proving Grounds. That’s where car guys want to work at GM. That’s where you got to drive the cars, test the cars, and go break them. That’s where I wanted to stay until this came up.”

The Tuckers didn’t leave their vast engineering experience behind putting it to good use in their new venture.

“Having that knowledge from GM really helped when we started building the Twister Camaro and later when we started in the parts business,” Tucker stated. “We knew how to design that part, how to validate that part, how to manufacture it with quality control and good repeatability. A lot of aftermarket manufacturers don’t test like an OEM does because of the cost and time to do it. We wanted to truly engineer parts that we knew were good, quality engineered parts.”

The formula worked as Detroit Speed quickly outgrew the backyard business model and expanded into a new building in an industrial park.

“We had business coming in and I had a lot of ideas about different parts to manufacture based on the ones we made for the Twister Camaro,” said Tucker. “We could see the potential when we introduced the car. We built three more cars and took one of them to the 2001 SEMA show. That got us more cars and parts orders.”

By the middle of 2003, the Tuckers had put GM in their rear view mirror and were again forced to make a decision about Detroit Speed’s future thanks to its meteoric growth.

“We had again outgrown our space and commercial real estate was very expensive in our part of Michigan,” said Tucker. “We never thought the business would grow the way it did. We checked around and found out we could buy building in North Carolina for what it would cost to lease in Michigan. When we found a shop in Mooresville (right) that a NASCAR Busch Series team was using we decided to make the move.

“I was scared to death,” Tucked added in describing the relocation process. “We took a full year to do it because the people that we had on staff made the move with us. We planned the move for the families, sold our houses, and did what we had to do. Stacy and I were the only ones who weren’t from Michigan. Everyone else that came with us was from Michigan with families and kids in school there. In all, five families moved with us.”

Today, Detroit Speed turns out parts for all GM muscle cars in its new Mooresville location. The facility includes Administration, Order Processing and Shipping, Sales Offices, a Fabrication Shop, a Prototyping Area and of, course, an Assembly Area for the company’s custom cars. Later this year, Detroit Speed will add a CNC Turning Center so it can better control the quality of the washers, spacers, bushings, cross shafts, ball joint pockets and other parts it currently offers.

“Ninety percent of our products are sales of pieces that we’ve designed and manufactured and 10 percent is building cars, “ said Tucker. “Our parts business is growing so fast and we’re doing everything we can to keep up with it.

“We’re also car people and we like to build cars," he continued. "You don’t make money building cars from a business standpoint, but it helps us develop new parts and showcase our products. A final part of our business is parts we retail for other manufacturers. We will only do that for people we believe in and whose products we use. That includes people like Vintage Air, EMP Stewart Components, Be Cool Radiators, Baer Brakes. It’s those kind of components – parts we’ve used and believe in – that we want to pass on to our customers.”

Part of Detroit Speed’s marketing process is attending approximately 15 custom car and hot rod shows each year. Armed with a well stocked show trailer and a 69 Camaro parts display car, the events give Detroit Speed exposure, additional sales and insights into the muscle car industry.

“The best thing at the shows is listening to the customers,” said Tucker. “They’ll tell you what they way or need. If you’re a good listener, by the end of the season you know what new products have to come out.”

As long as the Tuckers keep on listening, you can be sure there are going to be plenty of cool GM muscle cars and the parts to make them that way in driveways and at car shows everywhere across America.

For more information about Detroit Speed, please log on to www.detroitspeed.com.