131: John Nguyen quit his day job to pursue Track Spec Motorsports and has parlayed that into the Spec Corvette racing series

Manufacturer, Racing -

131: John Nguyen quit his day job to pursue Track Spec Motorsports and has parlayed that into the Spec Corvette racing series

John was born in Florida but moved to Philadelphia when he was 10. He and his dad were always tinkering and fixed things rather than replacing them. He stayed in the area and went to college at Penn State to get a Mechanical Engineering degree. Even though his passion for cars never went away, he got a job at a beverage company and ended up in California managing a facility.

During that time, he had a side hustle of selling other people’s parts online. It became more and more difficult to make a profit and he wanted to take the company a different direction. He had a list of parts that he wanted and needed personally for his 05 Mustang GT which he road raced. The first one was to deal with an overheating and front-end lift problem he was experiencing. So, he came up with the Track Spec hood vents by using Magnehelic Differential Pressure Gauges to find the optimum location to evacuate heat and equalize pressure. He now operates the entire business out of a 2-car garage! He has found companies to manufacture his products and focus his efforts on R&D, sales, and customer support.

Onto his next adventure, John was talking with a racer friend who was reminiscing about racing C5 Corvettes when they first came out. Within a 3-hour drive, they had formulated a plan to create a Spec Corvette series! The idea was to have a very reliable and available car that can be race-ready (including the car) for around $20,000. They have had a few races so far in 2018 and plan on expanding to areas outside of California. They teamed up with a race coordinator called Speed Ventures to actually conduct the race and now have 27 drivers in SoCal and 10 others spread across the country.

Contact Information:
Website – wwwTrackSpecMotorsports.comwww.SpecCorvette.com
Instagram – @TrackSpecMotorsports & @Spec_Corvette
Facebook – /TrackSpecMotorsports & /SpecCorvette


5 comments

  • Erin Grimes

    Congratulations John! You’re such an inspiration, so glad you were able to share your story and passion with the world!

  • Mark

    Did you learn a lot, Oli!?

    Great podcast John!

  • Stephanie Cemo

    Awesome story! John is an exceptional human being that stands behind his products and is passionate about helping the racing community. I wish you all the success in the world John… you deserve it!

  • Oli Thordarson

    This is a good podcast. It is entertaining and I learned a lot.

    Spec Corvette is awesome.

  • Oli Thordarson

    Awesome story. I learned a lot.

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