Always on the cutting edge of market trends, this multi-faceted Southern California racing operation began by focusing on the import scene, even earning a Pikes Peak class win. It has since expanded into electrification, among other new frontiers.

When friends Tony Kwan and Mike Chang founded Evasive Motorsports in 2002 as an early e-commerce website, “we were one of the few in the industry selling parts online,” Kwan recalled. “I believe that’s what gave us an advantage. Many people were already selling on eBay, but we believed it was important to grow our own site and drive traffic to our own platform. That was very important to growing our user base and creating customer loyalty. As online shopping grew in popularity, businesses that didn’t adopt this sales channel began losing sales to those who did.

“We started really small, selling parts from home, mainly for Japanese cars,” he continued. “At first we found our niche in small accessories—lug nuts and things like that. As we grew, we moved into a one-lift garage in Walnut, near Los Angeles. Now we had a place where we could stock parts that we thought were cool and that would sell. We tried to focus on the rarer items, parts that were harder to get, because we didn’t want to be like everyone else. As we grew, we invested everything we made back into the business. We’ve moved five or six times since then.” In March of this year, Evasive moved again, into an 18,000-square-foot facility in Cerritos, California.

While Evasive Motorsports has grown its physical plant, it has also built a knowledgeable, dedicated and enthusiastic staff, numbering between 20 and 22 as this was written. “We’ve been lucky to find great people,” said Kwan, “and we’ve put together an amazing staff with good work ethics. We try to inspire our team members and help them grow individually. Everyone here is almost like family. I think that’s why our turnover rate is so low.”

Everyone on the team helps select parts for the catalog. “They are all very much in tune with the industry. They’re hip, and they have good taste. So if any of them spots something that they think we should sell—something they think is going to be really hot—we will go ahead and get it. Mike and I can’t take all the credit; we have a really good staff.

“We attract new customers mainly with our social media presence,” Kwan continued. “And we keep them coming back by building cool projects and offering good advice, as well as the latest and greatest products.”

Thinking Young

Not surprisingly, Evasive’s customers are young. “Most are probably between 18 and 35,” said Kwan, “and the ones who are over 35 have been with us since the beginning.” More significantly, “at least 50% of our customers take their cars to the track.” So in addition to parts—still mainly for Japanese and European imports—Evasive Motorsports offers race preparation services, including wheel alignment, corner balancing, suspension installation and tuning, and general maintenance. “We’ve track-tested an extensive range of parts,” Kwan added, “and we encourage our customers to call us for recommendations.” 

You don’t attract serious racing customers unless you race yourself. Here again, Evasive has been tuned from the start to its younger, import-focused audience. “We were one of the first companies in the US that participated in Time Attack,” Kwan recalled. That was in the mid-2000s, when Time Attack was already popular in Japan, with significant support from Japanese tuning companies. “It was just starting to take off in the US,” initially with exhibition races promoted by Japanese tuners. “Over time,” said Kwan, Evasive’s participation “helped us earn our ‘street cred,’ both within the US and globally. We even competed in a Time Attack event at Tsukuba Circuit in Japan, with a supercharged Scion FR-S that we built with backing from the manufacturer, and HKS as the title sponsor.” The Evasive car lapped Tsukuba in 59 seconds, “where anything under one minute is a pretty big deal.”

Peak Performance

When Kwan talks of building “cool projects,” he means race cars. Among the coolest have been the cars Evasive Motorsports has built for the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Interestingly, Kwan sees the 156-turn, 12.2-mile ascent as “an evolution of our involvement in Time Attack. It’s similar in that it’s a time trial, but it’s a much more grueling course and a more challenging environment.” It’s also a world-renowned event, where Evasive can not only “challenge ourselves” but also “compete with some of the greatest racers out there. Our marketing strategy is to show what we can do.” Furthermore, when Evasive first faced the Peak in 2013, “there weren’t many other tuning shops from our industry that were competing there.”

Since then, the various Scion FR-S setups that Evasive has run up the mountain have become “cooler” every year. They started with an HKS supercharger, then turbo-boosted power on an original FA20 platform, which was eventually swapped out for a Toyota 2JZ straight six. After placing 11th in the Time Attack 1 Division in 2019, driver Dai Yoshihara returned in 2020 with the same purpose-built, 2JZ-powered Toyota 86, now fed by a larger turbocharger. But the Evasive effort would prove a nail-biter all the way. Practice was plagued by minor failures, and then a major drivetrain issue that required a new transmission. The car was not back together until 3 a.m. on the Saturday morning before the race on Sunday.

Having failed to qualify, Yoshihara started last—just as the sky darkened and drizzle dampened the road. Despite a brush with a safety rail near the top of the course, Yoshihara finished 1st in the Unlimited division, and 9th overall, with a time of 10:11.446. “If he didn’t clip that railing,” Kwan observed, “he probably would have driven a sub-10. But we were very happy with the way things came out.”

From Retail to Manufacturing

In addition to its comprehensive catalog, Evasive now manufactures its own product line under the name EVS Tuning. “We started EVS four or five years ago,” Kwan reported. “This has been a fulfilling venture for our team, as we get to design and create our own parts. We try to create products where we see a need for our customers. A lot of times when we’re at the track, we see things that we think people could use.”

For now, a lot of those parts are destined for Honda S2000s, whose owners comprise “a big chunk of our customer base. Aside from suspension parts, we have roll center adjusters, camber kits, and a roll bar.” EVS also developed a carbon-fiber aero kit for the Civic Type R, because “at that time, nobody else had one. It was really successful. So we made a roll bar for the Type R as well.

“Another of our most popular parts right now is the GTLM aero mirror,” he continued. “We designed and developed it from scratch, in-house. Once it was ready to go, we recruited high-quality manufacturers to mass produce the components. We assemble it in-house, and because the parts come from all over the world, there is less chance of anybody copying it.” 

Most EVS manufacturing is contracted out—to whomever provides “the best-quality samples,” said Kwan—although Evasive does make prototypes on its own CNC machine.

Customer Reviews

Like Kwan, Rodger Rivera grew up in the So-Cal universe of modified motoring. “We were running Subarus in the 1990s,” Rivera told us. “Then I moved up to Seattle in 2001 and changed from lowered cars to rock crawling to lifted trucks, and then back to lowered cars. That was about 2003. I realized I didn’t have any connections. So I reached out to a friend, who happened to be a friend of Tony, and now he provides all the parts on our cars.”

The cars include a pair of WRX STi’s: a 2017 for Rodger and a 2015 for his wife, Tara. Both run mostly HPD events. “Ninety percent of the aftermarket parts on both cars are from Evasive,” said Rivera. “And I say 90%, because for tuning, I obviously have to use a local shop. If I still lived in California, I’d have Evasive do 100% of the work on the car.” 

Rivera is impressed by Evasive’s “dedication to motorsports. It’s not just the quality of the parts that they sell, it’s that they test them in the cars they run on the track.” There’s credibility—“weight” Rivera called it—to that. “You might spend a little more, but if you build it right the first time, you save money in the long run.” He cited the example of a custom front bumper he purchased for his S2000. “Everybody knows that if you are working with aftermarket parts, chances are you’re going to have to make some modifications.” The part Kwan recommended cost $2,000 more than “some knock-offs, but he guaranteed it would fit. And, no kidding, when I got it from paint, I put it on the car, and everything matched up, 100% perfect.”

When Rivera has had a problem, he’s been impressed with Evasive’s customer service. When an AutoPower roll bar that Tara needed—pronto—for an HPD event got bent during shipping, “Tony connected me directly to AutoPower and arranged for them to work with the shipping company so they could ship a replacement bar as soon as the claim cleared.

“Another time I ordered a pair of seats, and when they arrived the rails were a little too low, and my wife was a little too short, and she couldn’t see. Tony asked me to ship the rails back, and he worked with me on a replacement—and on top of that gave me a great deal on a pair of Recaro seats.

“They are just great people to work with. And they’re honest. They are not going to say, ‘We’ll get back to you tomorrow,’ when they know they can’t. They’ll be up front and say, ‘This is how long it’s going to take, and if you want to wait, we’ll be more than happy to do it for you.’ We’ve been in the car scene since 1989, and we’ve never had such great customer service,” Rivera concluded.

“They definitely go out of their way to make sure their customers are taken care of,” agreed Michael Yeung of Honolulu, Hawaii. Yeung ordered a set of wheels from Evasive Motorsports 10 years ago, “and just went from there.” 

Yeung enjoys “tinkering with” his S2000. “It’s supercharged, has all the aerodynamics, and a custom interior,” he explained. Yeung has introduced friends to Evasive Motorsports and, while vacationing in Southern California some years ago, decided to drop in on the shop. 

“I met Tony, and he showed me around. Ever since we’ve been friends. He’s very knowledgeable, and if he doesn’t know the answer, he’ll go out of his way to find it. If anything is back-ordered, they keep me in the loop,” Yeung concluded.

Plugged In to the Future

For its 2021 Pikes Peak effort, Evasive Motorsports built a super-lightweight Tesla Model 3. “Times are changing,” observed Kwan, “and the EV market is constantly growing. We decided we needed to be a part of that movement.

“The car ran extremely well during practice with Dai driving, and we qualified second.” On race day, however, electrical issues limited the Tesla’s power, “so we didn’t get the results we wanted.” Yoshihara finished 8th in the Exhibition Division, with a time of 11:41.162. 

“It was heartbreaking,” said Kwan, “after all the work from our team and our sponsors. Thankfully, our sponsors still fully support us,” and were happy with how well the campaign engaged potential customers. “We look forward to improving the build and returning even stronger next spring.”

Meanwhile, one of the latest products from EVS is a custom wheel for the Model 3, “as a way into the Tesla aftermarket. It’s a flow-formed cast wheel, so it’s stronger than a standard casting but costs less than a forging. We think we can sell it at a good price point for a 19-inch wheel.”

Still, while Kwan foresees growing sales in the EV aftermarket, he emphasized that Evasive’s involvement in electrification is “a long-term strategy. We definitely love and appreciate our petrol-powered cars. They are still our main business.”

In the shorter term, Evasive Motorsports hoped to enter the Time Attack event scheduled with this year’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, which was in September. “In the future,” Kwan added, “we would like to run an open-wheel series. To compete at that level would be an awesome experience for our staff.

“I think our customers will be rooting for us, having seen us come from grassroots racing, and evolving up to that.”