I am Dan Millen and I am the president of Livernois Motorsports.
I'm Dan Millen from Livernois Motorsports. I've been in this kind of racing automotive aftermarket
my whole life. It's what I've always wanted to do and I love doing it. We work on Ford, GM and Chrysler.
More late-model stuff. We do everything from engine building to tuning. We do the whole package
here at Livernois. A guy has, for example, with a newer Mustang, Challenger
or Camaro and wants to make a little bit more power can start off with something as small as
our tuner that you plug in and calibrate to make the car go faster
to a guy that wants some serious power
and wants to put a supercharger on it or make his Hellcat faster.
You look around the industry, there's a lot of shops like Livernois Motorsport but there's
not a lot of shops that do what Livernois Motorsports does. They don't
build their engines. They get them from somebody else. They don't do their cylinder heads. Somebody
else does. We kind of control it all here. It was a big investment up
front. It's like a one-stop shop. Let's take, for example, a Hellcat that's a 6.2 liter supercharged.
Our customer will take that thing and go from 700 horsepower to 1,200 or 1,400 horsepower.
We make that happen. We do the software. We do a lot and that's a key component for us.
Livernois back in the day was a more of a heat exchange company. We did a lot of stuff for
the radiators. I got interested in automotive stuff when I was younger. While I
do have a mechanical engineering degree, I was more interested in car stuff than I was in
heat exchange stuff. While Livernois was going on, I had my own little thing going.
I started bringing cars to the shop and working on them and making them faster. We got to the
point where we got big enough to where I had an actual business out of making people's cars
faster. It really started from there. It was a pretty easy transition from the fuel
injected small block turbo car. Did very well with that car. We were the first person in the ADRL with a
10-5 to go in the 3's. It was me and Billy Glidden racing side-by-side. Who was going
to get up there first to get a three second pass and we got it. To this day I believe we still got the
fastest 10-5 ET. I think it was 3.74. It still stands today I believe. The one thing you learn
in racing is you learn to get it done. It could be eliminations and something happens - an
engine goes bad - you figure out what you have to do to get to the next round. There is no
"no." There's no "it's not going to happen." You work up until the last second. Anybody that's looking
for a job in this industry, and if they're just a guy versus a guy that's a race car guy, you
want the race car guy. No matter what happens in your life of working, here or any
job site, if you're a race guy you know how to get it done. I don't want to say you have to fail but
we've been doing this for 20 years and I can tell you from 2000 when we started till 2010 we lost a
lot of money. We did a lot of things the wrong way. I think anybody's starting a business that's
very important. You're going to struggle. What makes us better from 2010 to today versus the 2000s is
having the right people. As I've gotten older we've attracted better people. I think the
people here today are what makes what Livernois Motorsports is. I'm one guy but
having good people in the beginning and seeing who's a good person
and what they can do for you and how you can help them will make your life a lot easier.
What does PRI do for me? PRI is here. You guys went one notch up for me. PRI is up here now.
PRI is more the hardcore racer. When I raced we would make sure when the PRI
show was going on, we made sure we were there. Every major manufacturer is there. Racers are there.
PRI has been great to me as a racer. Got a lot of sponsorship deals from PRI. As a
business it's another thing where you have to be there. Your competitors and
and others in the industry are there. You have to see what's going on. The foot
traffic is great. A lot of customers show up there. PRI is a definitely a staple in Livernois
Motorsports places to go. We always want to go. With what's going on this year, with what you guys
are doing, it's awesome. We appreciate it. Why would you buy an engine from Livernois?
One, we do everything in-house. We machine it, we balance it, we assemble it, we can dyno it, we got
a reputation behind it. You're going to get a piece that's cutting edge and we stand behind
it. I really think that we build one of the best engines out there. I am Dan Millen and I am PRI.