Courtesy of Summit Racing Equipment
It all started with a Corvette.
It was 1968, and a young engineer owned a 1967 roadster with the L71 427 cubic inch/435 horsepower engine. He made some connections to get hop-up parts at a discount, and it wasn’t long before his drag racing buddies found out and wanted the same deal. From such humble beginnings Summit Racing Equipment was born.
Fast-forward to 2018 and that one-man startup is now the World’s Speed Shop®—the go-to parts source for thousands of gearheads around the globe. We got here by putting the customer first: save them money on the parts they want, deliver those parts quickly, and back them with the best customer service in the industry. That’s certainly something worth celebrating.
Since it’s our customers that have made Summit Racing what it is today, they’re getting the anniversary presents:
Special Promotions:
We’ll have great deals on parts and accessories all year long. For example, we’ll be pricing select parts at $19.68 and $50.00 (clever, isn’t it?) and posting weekly special offers on SummitRacing.com.
Bet You Didn’t Know:
You can be the neighborhood’s source of Summit Racing lore by reading the attached 50th Anniversary Timeline. Here are some interesting tidbits we ran out of room to include—some never-before revealed:
Summit Racing’s first “store” was the basement of a donut shop in Stow, Ohio. The coffee and pastries were nice, but the location didn’t get a lot of traffic. A year later in 1969, we moved to our first true store that sat next to a Midas Muffler and a pizza shop in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. It was 1,500 square feet and just 20 feet wide.
Summit Racing built its first project car in 1980. The Elite Enterprises Lazer 917 kit car had a Buick V6 drivetrain pirated from a front-wheel drive GM X-body, cradle and all. The Lazer was featured in the February 1981 issue of Car Craft magazine.
We’ve printed nearly 200 editions of the Summit Racing “Big Book” catalog since the first one appeared in 1974. The catalog was an annual publication until 1987 when we went to the six catalogs/year format.
The Summit Racing catalog’s famous pullout car feature ‘centerfold’ was added in 1990. That first car was a tube-frame 1960 Corvette with a 406 cubic inch small block making around 700 horsepower on nitrous. The street-driven car ran mid-nines in the quarter-mile—and garage walls across the world rejoiced.
The 1967 Corvette that kickstarted Summit Racing was restored in the mid-2000s. The L71 was punched to 496 cubic inches with a SCAT rotating assembly, a COMP Cams hydraulic roller cam, Quick Fuel-modified carburetors, and Trick Flow PowerPort® Oval aluminum heads. The big block now makes about 590 horsepower.
Summit Racing would not have gotten off the ground without the support of our customers. As a company of enthusiasts, nothing gets us more excited than helping you bring your automotive passion to life. We’ve been offering Everything You Need for Anything You Drive for 50 years, and we’ll be doing it for the next 50.
