Well, we’re still kicking - another year for me to look back at all we accomplished! It is easy to take for granted that a small business will always be around, but keeping a small, relatively new company alive is no small feat. 034Motorsport is about 6 years old, and while not a “small” tuner shop, in the scheme of small businesses, we are on the small side with about 20 employees. We don’t have years of sales and business to keep us afloat, we can’t benefit from huge cash reserves or large open lines of credit from banks - especially not in this day and age. To say that we are not only alive but thriving makes me feel very fortunate and blessed!
What does keep a small company like 034Motorsport alive, growing and thriving is a passion for what we do. This ultimately translates into innovative, value-filled and useful products, which ultimately MUST translate to and convince you the customer to send us the business. When this works well, really well, it creates a vicious cycle of passion, action and satisfaction, which is exactly what is and has been happening at 034Motorsport!
I heard an interview with one of the founders of Twitter recently where he spoke about how the service actually came about. At the time nothing like Twitter really existed, he was in a group of friends and colleagues who all had varying areas of expertise and interests - and they all got to talking. One of them was really interested in “city emergency service” communications, he had an idea to create a website that would easily broadcast the simple one-line communications used by many police, fire and emergency services. Another member was an expert in developing software tools for Internet use, another in social media - you get the idea. What he said was Twitter came about from the result of this group of diverse yet like-minded individuals all wanting to “scratch an itch”.
That term, “scratch and itch” absolutely resonated with me because that is very much the 034Motorsport you see today. What is the distinction? Well, companies are started for lots of reasons, the problem is, many are started when a group of individuals come together and figure “hey, we can make money at this” or “Hmm, you have a valuable skill, I have money, let’s start a business and make more money”. The issue isn’t making money running a business; the issue is having that be your only reason to be in business. Don’t get me wrong, lots of companies do it, but that’s not why we do what we do at 034Motorsport.
The company you see today is the result of collaboration between many talented and skilled people who are all “scratching that itch” for a passion they have. People who all bring unique talents, skills and interests to the table to create a complete service that is extremely rare in any auto aftermarket company. Every task performed each day at 034Motorsport must be executed by someone who is skilled and passionate about doing that job. Every sale written up, every phone answered, every wrench turned, product engineered and tested, box packed, bill paid, harness built, product CNC machined, welded, bent, ground, cut and assembled must be done by someone who is fulfilling a passion for that task. We are not selling a commodity - we ultimately offer a product that is the result of a unique skill and experience set, facilitated by someone who would rather do nothing else. That is our goal at 034Motorsport and what we commit to doing each day we open the doors in the morning!
We greeted 2010 like we do each New Year, with open arms and a long list of demands. We weren’t about to accept a boring, status quo year, only a year of growth and ground breaking new developments would do for us.
034Motorsport Facility
Manufacturing/Engineering
Right off the bat our Haas VF-2 and VF-3 CNC machines were working overtime to manufacture our parts and we were still falling behind. Never wanting to be out of stock on a part, ever, we brought on a new Haas DT-1 CNC machine. The DT-1 is actually a small machine, much smaller than our other 2 machines, but due to its size, it is actually very fast. Much like a little RC airplane motor spinning at 30k rpm, the DT-1 is light so it can move faster. It’s perfect for machining many of the small parts that we do such as bushings and brackets, pretty much anything smaller than a 5” cube. The cast iron table is about 1/5 lighter than the VF-3 machine which means that the table can move and change directions faster, the motor spins faster, all this adds up to cranking out small parts more quickly making our production faster and more efficient.
We also brought on a 3-D coordinate plotter to help make our engineering faster and more efficient. This is a precision piece of equipment with a swiveling arm and an electronically tracked stylus at the end. By simply touching the stylus to a part that we want to design, or an interacting surface, we can quickly and accurately model the part in minutes, allowing us to prototype more quickly as well. This arm was in use throughout the year and helped develop more quickly and design with better accuracy many of the parts we released this year.
Service Department
If you’ve never been to our facility, at the end of 2010 you would have noticed that space was at a premium. In a good way of course! Every square inch of the place was being utilized, so much so that we were considering hanging desks from the ceiling to make more space! (not really as this isn’t OSHA approved). Dreading the thought of having to move our entire facility, a stroke of good fortune meant that an additional 5400 square feet of space was opening up adjacent to us (in the same building) increasing our space from 7,600 to over 13,000 square feet. In December 2010 we began expanding into this new space - which has really breathed new life and potential into the company. Our original space is now being used for sales, customer service, accounting, shipping, receiving, inventory and manufacturing. The new space is a new state of the art service facility with 6 lifts! Our goal is to provide dealer like service as well as crazy performance, racing and fabrication services like we always have.
In addition to expanding the service department, we also enclosed our chassis dyno to create a "cell". The main advantages of creating this cell are to contain the sound (which in many cases disrupts our sales staff 100 feet away in the front of the building, and also allows us to better control air flow and the fumes.
New Staff Additions
With a growing company came additional needs for staff in almost all areas of our company. With the reputation growing of our 034EFI Plug In Harnesses, Max Stanton came on to apprentice under Christian Miller in our wiring department. Max quickly picked up the art and technicality of the harnesses we build, some of our lead times in 2009 were 4-6 week, now down to 2-3 weeks at the most, and many fully custom harnesses shipping in 1-2 weeks. All harnesses are engineered, built and tested in house with the ECU before they ship to ensure 100% problem free operation. Max also helps out giving tech support, doing sales and also giving support on Audizine forums.
With phones ringing non-stop here at 034 we can always use good help. Ken Stevens, a local Audi enthusiast with a very cool B5 S4 project, joined us to assist customers with questions, process orders and ensure that a human voice always answers the phone when you call 034Motorsport. Sam Resnick, also an existing 034 customer, relocated from the East Coast to help improve our sales and customer service. Sam is a C4 S4 enthusiast and always willing to go above and beyond for a customer.
APR Distributorship
In November of 2009 APR contacted us and wanted to meet, and we agreed. In December we had a wonderful visit with their management team and had the honor of touring their state of the art facility. The result of our talks were increased collaboration, some exciting future developments as well as we becoming the head APR dealer in the Bay Area, CA region. The partnership was very successful through 2010, being able to connect local customers with APR products and tuning took our service to the next level, especially for new Audi models.
APR flashes are very popular, it’s common for customers to come in, get a base line dyno, an APR flash and then a post-flash dyno so each customer can see the gains specific to their car. It also helps us to assure customers that the expense of the mods actually gained them the power that they desired. This all fits in very well with our product philosophy, that each part or service performed to a vehicle should have a purpose and a clear benefit. Our expertise with tuning, ECU hardware, software, and logging have allowed us to interact closely with APR in a very technical way to address anything that is less than ideal quickly and efficiently – even working with them to test new products.
Racing/Project Highlights
GTI-RS
After sweeping all three events at the Eurotuner Grand Prix in 2009, we knew we had to retire our Time Attack A4 from the competition. Instead we planned to Time Attack the A4 aggressively in the Redline Time Attack series – which we did! But this meant we needed to build a new car – which we also did! A late night conversation about options resulted in an idea that we would eventually run with. The conversation started out like this – “Well, our last car was an Audi with a VW engine, what if we build a VW with an Audi engine, what would that look like?” This continued until we had our concept – a custom wide body Mk4 VW GTI with a mid mounted Audi 2.7t engine using a 996 turbo rear suspension and a whole slew of other tricks and technology to make it all work! Yes, quite crazy, and quite ambitious! By now a year has passed and you’ve likely heard about the car, that is our hope anyway! If not then, well, here are some online resources to get you up to speed!
Of course we couldn’t build a car like this without taking it out and putting it through its paces! All along our plan was to debut what we now call the 034Motorsport GTI-RS at the 2010 Eurotuner Grand Prix, the perfect venue to show the world what our car is capable of. With the event held in October, we spent considerable time testing the car, breaking it, re-engineering and improving the car before the competition. Building a car like this is a unique challenge, unlike taking a good stock car and making it better, we cut the back out of a car and installed a totally different drivetrain and suspension system from 2 different cars. And all in 4 months, start to finish, no easy feat!
We did finish the car in time, and with not quite as much testing as we’d hoped to have, we headed to S. California to compete with other tuners from around the country. We are proud to say we finished the event and won the dyno and road course event by a wide margin. We were not able to sweep the event due to a transmission output breaking during the first drag launch. You win some you lose some, but for tackling a project like this in such short order, we are incredibly proud to have built a car of this caliber.
Time Attack B5 A4
As if preparing GTI-RS for the ETGP 2010 wasn’t enough, we put even more on our plate, an entire season of Redline Time Attack Racing in our A4 Quattro. In the past we had installed a 2.9L R32 engine in the front of the A4, which was a great combination for an event like ETGP which required big dyno’s, fast drag pulls as well as fast road course. The VR6 engine is heavy, however, and we were leaving seconds on the table at the road course events. Since Redline Time Attack was all road course we knew we could create the best car for that single event, which meant shaving a lot of weight off the car. Out came the VR6 and in went a 2.2 liter 4-cyl 20v 1.8t based engine, shaving 150lbs off the nose of the car alone! A slew of additional lightening got us another 150lbs, the combination of these modifications made the car over 10 seconds per lap faster at Sears Point Infineon Raceway – an eternity! We can truly say now that our A4 is one of the fastest B5 chassis race cars in the world and rivals the development of the Speed Vision Champion S4s - which we’re very proud of.
Our main competitor was a Cobb Nissan GTR which we were just never able to catch. With about 1000HP, 330 series tires, ABS and electronic diffs it was just in another league compared to what we could pull from our older chassis, however we were achieved several second place finishes which we were very proud of, especially considering we were one of the only European cars there. We also placed 2nd at the Primedia Super Lap Battle in our class.
One particularly proud showing was our run at the Global Tuner Grand Prix hosted by GMG at Laguna Seca Raceway. Out of dozens of Porsche 996/997 race cars, a Viper, a Twin Turbo Ferrari, a 1000HP E46 M3 and many other highly tuned Evo’s and STI’s we placed 2nd overall at the event behind a multi-million dollar Volvo World Challenge GT Race car. And we were only 3 seconds per lap off that car, our fastest time being a 1:31.221, very fast for Laguna! The GTGP was the culmination of everything we learned last year, combined with the fact that Laguna is one of our home tracks meant a very strong showing.
As always, the growth, opportunity and and amazing customers we get to work with continues to thrill us each year we do business. Surviving such a terrible economic disaster and continuing to do what we love each day is certainly success to us professionally. Just some of the metrics that blow our mind as we look back over the year...over 10,500 orders shipped, over 35,000 orders shipped since we started the company, 15% growth in sales over 2009, over 20 staff, over 13,500 square feet of space, over 5000 products manufactured in-house here in the USA, dozens of new products developed and released, the list could go on and on. To think we accomplish these sorts of things while doing what we love and not always realizing how much its grown until we stop to take a look is truly rewarding and thrilling. Ultimately, all of these things are because and for you the customer, to make your car faster, more thrilling and safer to drive.
Here is to 2011, another year of expecting much more than the status quo, we greatly look forward to working with you on your projects and connecting with your passion for raw metal, rubber and power!
Bringing your fast dreams to life,
Javad Shadzi
President
034Motorsport
This article was published on Wednesday 22 June, 2011.
