Hotchkis Sport Suspension has announced the opening of its new east coast location, Hotchkis Performance East. Located at the epicenter of motorsports engineering in Mooresville, N.C. – home to dozens of NASCAR and NHRA teams – the new facility offers custom fabrication services, safety equipment design and installation, suspension installation and racecar prep to enthusiasts and professional racers alike. In addition to its racing services, Hotchkis Performance East also adds new product manufacturing, development and distribution capabilities to speed up the R&D process and reduce product delivery times to Hotchkis customers and distributors.
"It has long been our goal to expand the company’s manufacturing and product development abilities,” said Hotchkis founder John Hotchkis. “With the opening of Hotchkis Performance East, we now have the ability to perform R&D on multiple platforms at once while simultaneously speeding up production, enabling us to deliver a timelier product to our customers. Not only do we now have these additional capacities, but with Kevin Bryde at the helm, we can now also offer suspension installation services as well as custom race fabrication.”
Hotchkis Performance East will be managed by Kevin Bryde, a designer and fabricator with more than 17 years of experience in motorsports. Bryde’s career has let him work with some of the most talented drivers in the industry including Dick Trickle, Tony Stewart, Sterling Marlin, Dario Franchiti, Juan Pablo Montoya, Martin Truex Jr. and Jamie McMurray. Most recently, Bryde worked for Chip Ganassi Racing in its Engineering Department, where his duties included design, fabrication and prototyping for NASCAR, IndyCar and Rolex Sports Car racecars. He also has more than 10 years of experience in all aspects of driver safety, including seat, head restraint and racecar cockpit design.
Located in the heart of “Race City, USA,” the new shop includes multiple service bays, an alignment rack and a two-post lift, as well as fabrication equipment and a full machine shop. All of these features allow Hotchkis Performance East to perform everything from basic suspension installation and alignment to full race fabrication and other custom work. Also, new Lincoln Electric welding equipment ensures that top quality welds are made on all custom fabrication jobs, safety equipment installations and Hotchkis Sport Suspension components manufactured on site.
“We’ve already begun manufacturing Hotchkis muscle car parts on site, and the deep pool of talent in Mooresville has allowed us to ramp things up very quickly,” Bryde said. "From ramping up production of our current suspension components to digging in on project car builds and motorsports fabrication, this facility gives one of the oldest and most respected names in pro-touring parts a beachhead in the Southeast. I’m excited to be part of a winning team.”
