Shop Profile: Diverse Builds Drive the Team at Total Performance Motorsports
When you grow up in a racing family and spend your early years hanging around the pits at tracks from Salinas to Sonoma in Northern California, it’s easy to understand the growth of Aaron Cushman’s Total Performance Motorsports from restoring vintage race cars to producing a diverse group of hot rods and customs.
Aaron’s father was a professional drag racer back in the day and while his friends were playing with toy cars, Aaron was learning how to wrench on real race cars. As a teenager he worked on professional drag racing machines. Years later these early experiences led his former mentors to approach Aaron to restore or recreate the race cars from their glory years.
With help from his father nearly 30 years ago, Aaron started Total Performance Motorsports in Salinas, a shop that got its start turning out meticulously restored (or recreated) vintage racers. Aaron was toiling in relative anonymity, though, because race cars almost never wear the name of the builder on a fender.
“You really don’t put your name on those cars,” Aaron says. “It’s more about the sponsors, especially when you’re doing it for them, they want their name on it. I kind of liked it that way. At SEMA one year, a friend said we had more cars there than anyone and nobody knew our name!”
Expanding the Menu
As the industry was changing, Aaron decided it was time to expand and diversify the shop’s offerings.
“I told my dad, I’m going to start doing this stuff with less of an emphasis on race car restoration and more on building amazing customs with a nod to the past but a lean to the future,” he says. That meant adapting to the needs of the hot rod and custom customer that differed from a race car restoration.
“It’s two different worlds,” Aaron says. “In race cars the name of the game is let’s get it together. You have to do it fast. You have to do it safe. You’re always overbuilding to make sure safety is critical.”
In the custom car and hot rod world, while safety is still crucial, Aaron says, functionality is equally important. Customers like to drive their cars, so Aaron says his team of builders makes sure the drivability is there.
Modern Shop in a Classic Setting
A visit to the old Packard dealership building on West Market Street in Salinas illustrates a range of builds completed and underway. In addition to a ’55 Chevy, a C10 pickup, and a third-generation Camaro under construction, a ’63 Dodge crew-cab pickup stands out. In addition, a completed ’53 Pontiac is on display in the showroom and on a future build list is a full custom ’49 Packard two-door sedan.
These three distinct builds showcase the shop’s abilities to turn out whatever a customer dreams of driving, and its willingness to pursue the unusual. From formulating the design, to metal fabrication, paint and body, mechanical tasks, and final assembly, the only work that is consistently outsourced is upholstery. A closer look at these three projects shows how each build is its own challenge.
The ’53 Pontiac looks essentially stock at first glance, but subtle body modifications, a lowered stance, and an upgraded chassis, suspension, and drive train hide a modern heartbeat. Small changes make a big difference in the appearance of the car. Aaron says the rockers were extended closer to the ground to give the car a lower appearance. The wheel openings were also tweaked to make the lowering less obvious.
“We love to keep a lot of the factory cues how they are, then accentuate on what we can do to make them better,” Aaron says. He says the original heater controls were modified to control the modern A/C system to maintain the beauty of the vintage dash.
Truck Transformation
The ’63 Dodge crew cab truck is another challenge. An often-overlooked design, this build presents a truckload of issues. The original engine is being replaced with a Mopar Hellcat Redeye crate engine packing at least 800 horsepower and a 10-speed transmission. The truck will ride on 42-inch tires, Aaron says. But the really heavy lifting went into redesigning the cab. First on the list was reworking the pie-shaped B pillars before stretching the cab to fit larger rear doors that more closely resemble modern trucks.
“We measured Ford, Dodge and GM trucks to see what the average ratio was for front door to back door on modern trucks,” Aaron says. Once that calculation was performed, the cab was stretched, and the new rear doors were built from new steel. The interior will get its share of reworking, too. A more stylish early-’60s Dodge Polara dash will be fitted in place of the original minimal stock dash.
Small, Experienced Team
A small but stable veteran staff makes working with new and repeat customers easier because of the institutional wisdom acquired over the years. A 10-hour, four-day work schedule also provides longer weekends for personal time or travel to industry events.
While working with repeat customers is easier because of the longer relationships, Aaron says a new customer needs extra attention to make sure everyone is one the same page. That involves extensive conversations and often a set of renderings before a build begins.A repeat customer has laid down a challenge, though. He has a ’49 Packard two-door sedan that he wants Aaron’s team to make beautiful (Google it – it’s not a stunning design). The customer says he’s up for anything to accomplish that goal.
“I love this customer, so I can work on a concept,” Aaron says. The plans include sectioning the body, flattening the bubble on the roof to make the car appear chopped, and other body modifications. Add in a custom chassis and running gear as well as a one-of-a-kind interior and the finished car will definitely fall into the category of, “Well, you don’t see that very often!”
While Total Performance Motorsports may have started in a narrow race-car-restoration segment, these three builds – a Pontiac, a Dodge truck, and a Packard – confirm that the shop can handle whatever rolls in the doors these days.
Look ’em up at Total Performance Motorsports.
Photos by Michael Christensen
