092: Ken Anderson has helped many companies grown their US presence. Hear about his latest venture with Mountune USA

 Ken Anderson grew up in LA during the 70’s and enjoyed normal kid stuff like biking and skateboarding. Ken’s first car was a VW Bug and he discovered how much fun it was to customize it. In the mid-80’s, he got a job at a local Honda dealership in the parts department. That dealership begin importing Mugen parts from Japan and was installing them onto cars. After a few years of working at the dealership, he wanted to get into racing and got in touch with Russ at RC Engineering. Ken started as a shop assistant and learned a lot about engine dynamics during his time there. Then, he heard about an opportunity at HKS and got a job as a sales person. He got in on the ground floor of HKS bringing their excellent build quality to the US.

After some time, he had an opportunity to team up with Rod Millen and began importing parts for the Miata when it was first brought to the US. They built some great cars and imported all sorts of parts for the Miata and other Mazda cars. Eventually, Ken saw yet another opportunity in SUV’s and branched out to start a company that imported accessories for vehicles like the Land Cruisers, Montero’s, and Troopers. This was the first company that Ken started on his own and he grew it to be a very large company. Then he sold his stake to a partner and exited the business.

The next venture was back into smaller sports cars. He met a man who worked at Cosworth during a car event and this meeting turned into another business opportunity. At the time, Cosworth’s primary role in the US was to support the Champ Car racing series. But Cosworth wanted to manufacture and sell more parts in the US and Ken was put in charge of that task. When Ford sold off the Cosworth arm of the business, Ken helped introduce several products for different vehicle manufacturers. They got started with products like a CNC head for the Subaru STI, as well as a CNC head and cams for the Mitsubishi Evo. After building up yet another business, Ken left to go work for COBB Tuning for the next 1.5 years.

Ken then traveled to England for the Autosport Performance Trade Show and had a meeting with Mountune to sell them the Accessport. David Mountain, the founder of Mountune, was actually looking for somebody to introduce the US to their products and knew that Ken would be perfect for the job. So Ken took the offer and opened up Mountune USA by himself and proceeded to grow the company very quickly. He now employs 13 people and occupy a large building in Los Angeles with a showroom, install area, engine dyno, and warehouse space.

Game Changing Product: High pressure fuel pumps for direct injection applications

Software: Adobe suite of apps, QuickBooks Online, Mail Chimp for direct emailing

Favorite App: WhatsApp for communication within the business, cloud storage on Box

Favorite Shop Tool: Solvent tank

Daily Driver: Focus ST or Focus RS

Future of automotive performance: ECU tuning will become more and more difficult.

Contact Information:
Website – MountuneUSA.com
Instagram – @Mountune
Facebook - /Mountune
Phone - 714-424-9400