We had a lot of fun catching up with everybody at the reception at Red Rocks Cafe, in Huntersville, North Carolina last month. We got some great photos of the event from Sam Sharpe, and thought we'd put a gallery here for you to see.

Imagine one of us, someone in the racing business, putting on a car show so big it required a big blinking electric sign on the highway warning everyone about “Car Show Traffic.”

Now, that’s an event!

And that’s Motor State Distributing.

Motor State is the worldwide warehouse distributor of high performance automotive components for racing, street, and off-road use in Watervliet, Michigan. It was founded by George Lane in 1964, with the opening of parent company Lane Automotive. George and his wife Janet still maintain an interest in the company, but sons, Doug and Dave, have assumed the primary executive roles in the family-owned business. Doug Lane oversees the company’s sales, purchasing and marketing functions. Dave Lane manages the warehousing departments at Motor State which include receiving, shipping and inventory control. The third generation is now getting involved, too.

Each year, the car show attracts over 14,000 enthusiasts and their families, with all manner of classic, vintage, hot rod, street rod, race car and more showing up—mild to wild…they stop counting at about 1400. They come to Motor State from several states, and Canada each year. There’s also a huge tent (Manufacturers Midway) with displays of performance products where vendors and reps stand by to answer any questions.

The event is free to attend as a big “Thank you” from the Lane family and their Motor State team, and it’s free to bring your car. Lots of big smiles all around, and impressively, lots of children. The next generation of hot rodders and racers is welcome on the grounds of Motor State, as George will tell you, because they’re the future.

PRI Editor John Kilroy, and Sales Manager Danny Kirby, visited Motor State last week, and had great fun, in addition to getting a Motor State perspective on moving racing parts. It’s an amazing place. Our guide was Scott Wahlstrom, marketing manager.

We very quickly had to recalibrate our mental picture of the company. They have an international department, led by Lindy Dolezan, selling into 30 countries. There are over 550 product lines, with over 80,000 part numbers. The accuracy of filling orders is right close to 99%…about as perfect as it gets. And they maintain their reputation, year after year, by having the parts in stock ready to ship.

As one person told Scott, “Lock me in the warehouse for a week, and I can build a car and drive it out.”

The inventory system is amazing. Incoming stock is scanned in immediately and registers in the system as being available for sale—a process that once took the Lanes two days. Now, with handheld computer devices, an item removed from the shelf is scanned so everyone with access to the system immediately knows that it’s no longer available for sale. The system can tell you which parts are on display in the retail showroom.

The fastest movers are located closest to those filling orders. Products aren’t located in the massive warehouse according to company because it’s less efficient to do it that way.

And the showroom offers some of the best displays of hardcore racing products you’ll find. Al Gossman, showroom manager, is proud of this, and is also quick to explain that you won’t find e-commerce on the Motor State website. “We encourage people to go to their local speed shop,” he said.

Scott expands on this concept by describing Motor State’s goal to partner with smaller racing retail stores, race engine builders, race car builders and other motorsports businesses in areas that involve more than just inventory. “We’re a full-service warehouse distributor,” said Scott. “Personal contact” with their wholesale customers is key. “And our goal is to make it easier for them to do business.”

One example are flyers available on the Motor State website in the dealer/jobber section (sign-in required). The art is ready for some quick customizing by jobbers before printing them up, or sending them out in an email blast. “We try to create useful marketing tools for the jobber,” said Scott.

Throughout the Motor State team are all sorts of racers and hot rodders. “They talk from experience,” said Scott, with a pretty killer car of his own construction.

You can catch up with the Motor State team at the PRI Trade Show this December, as they exhibit every year. And a team from purchasing also heads out onto the Trade Show floor to source new racing products for the next racing season.

A great group of people. A most impressive company. We’re coming back to Motor State again.

This small portion of the big car show at Motor State Distributing gives you an idea why they need a big electric sign on the highway warning of "Car Show Traffic." Roughly 14,000 attend, and they stop counting the specialty vehicles—hot rods to race cars— at about 1400.

The showroom at Motor State Distributing does a powerful job of merchandising performance and race products.

This is an especially amazing photo when you consider there are aisles and aisles like this at Motor State, jam-packed with performance and racing products. Over 80,000 part numbers and 550 product lines.

No one thinks about it much any more, but it’s worthwhile to mention it every once in a while, we believe, as a way to show how times can change for the better….race tracks were at one time an environmental disaster. At many tracks on a race weekend, it was common to find a single place in the pits where teams would dump their oil and allow it to mysteriously disappear into the ground long after they departed. Today, we imagine all that oil heading straight for our drinking water.

Today, at major races, PRI always enjoys a trip to the Safety-Kleen trailer just to say hello to the ever friendly, ever ebullient Safety-Kleen team. The company exhibits in the PRI Trade Show every year. From cleaning equipment to waste management products and services, the Safety-Kleen exhibit is a busy place at the PRI Trade Show as racing machine shop owners find solutions to their challenges in these areas. And Safety-Kleen’s Drew Patey is just fun to talk to, in addition to his expertise. Always positive. A great energy.

Safety-Kleen is on the job in race pits at major events, and the old era of oil ponds at race tracks is over. We’d like to say, “Thanks.”

PRI’s Judy Kean makes Safety-Kleen one of her first visits when she enters the garage area of a major race. At the Indy 500, she caught up with the Safety-Kleen crew and the accompanying photo shows, left to right, Warren White, Tracy Buchanan, Crystal McFerran, Drew Patey and Judy.

Judy asked that PRI recognize and thank Drew, and the entire Safety-Kleen team, for all they do for racing. And we sure second that.

For over two decades, PRI has felt that we were somewhat of an expert in advertising, since that’s a lot of what we do every day here in working with our customers to drive new business to their doors.

In the Internet world, however, PRI is learning digital advertising in many ways just the same as you are. We’re getting schooled. And we wanted to share this point of view about two goals in internet advertising, which we also do to promote attendance at the PRI Trade Show.

It seems there are two types of advertisements. One is more institutional. It’s to remind people where they live in the worldwide web that we’re part of their world. It’s to maintain a presence in the mental landscape of racing business people. We aren’t necessarily counting clicks to the PRI website.

Another type of online advertisement should ask for more interaction from browser viewers. It should ask for an action. It should be urgent. There should be a sense of time running out. The advertisement should work hard to trigger a click on it to a page on the advertiser’s website.

For the second kind of advertisement, counting click-throughs is important.

We see a lot of online advertising that demands no action from the viewer. Many advertisements are a company logo, and that’s it. But, if you want click-throughs, it would be wise to rethink the advertisement and display an urgent call for action. Display a brand new race product, for example, and a brief statement of its advantages.

We welcome comments. Like I said, we’re all learning here.

It is the first week of May, and as it’s been for 100 previous “months of May,” preparation is beginning for the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 mile race  This is a special, important and significant racing tradition that has meant so much to so many people all these years including the person who is writing this blog item that will serve as the Publisher’s Page for the June issue of PRI magazine.


My first real recollection of the Indianapolis 500 was a very hot Memorial Day weekend in 1953 when my father took me to Corona, California, known then as the “circle city” to attend a vintage car race using the original circle around the city track. We watched the old race cars speed by as we listened to Sid Collin’s radio broadcast of the Indianapolis 500. It was on that day that Fresno, California’s hero Bill Vukovich won the Indy 500 in grueling heat, and from that moment on I was hooked. In fact, I was not the only person who became “hooked” on Indy car racing. Because of the wonderful voice and wisdom of master broadcaster Sid Collins, it is my belief that thousands upon thousands of young aspiring race drivers had dreams of racing someday at the “Brickyard.” So much of the racing “industry” was developed to support the desire of men with dreams of either driving at the Brickyard or building chassis, engines or components for the race cars as a whole.

A few years later I attended my first URA midget race at Orange Show Stadium in San Bernardino, California, where the future stars of Indianapolis were honing their skills driving the little Offenhauser and Ford V8 60 midgets at the tight, dusty 1/4-mile Orange Show track. I also imagined that many of those drivers were dreaming of someday racing at Indianapolis, which eventually many of them did. That night I saw Troy Ruttman, Rodger Ward, Don Edmunds and Bob Cortner all of whom went to “the speedway.”

My first trip to the Indianapolis 500 came in 1960 when my father surprised my brother and me by purchasing four tickets on the special JC Agajanian flight to Indianapolis and off we went for the most amazing 24-hour experience I’ve ever had. We left Burbank Airport on Saturday evening and arrived in Indianapolis on Sunday morning. We took a quick bus ride from the airport to the track and had enough time to get some hot dogs, then sat down and watched one of the greatest races ever. This is the one featuring the great duel between Rodger Ward and Jim Rathmann, when in the end Rathmann took the checkered flag and won the race.

After a few minutes wandering through Gasoline Alley after the race it was back on the DC-4 and away we went back to California. What a wonderful weekend and what wonderful memories I have today of the Indy 500 because of this special trip. I believe the Indianapolis 500 did play a key role in the development of the racing industry. So many companies were started just to service the Indy car program that are still in business today.

I am going to travel to Indianapolis later this month not only to go to the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500, but to participate in the Night Before the 500 midget race at Lucas Oil Raceway Park. I am excited to go and I am excited about the buzz in the industry and spectator fan base about attending this year’s Indy 500. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, along with Randy Bernard’s IndyCar series, has done a tremendous and spectacular marketing effort to draw attention to this very important event. There is energy developing for the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 and just think of the thousands upon thousands of young kids who will be going to the race, watching the race on television, listening to the race and reading about the race who WILL BE INFLUENCED—just like many of us were—and then formulating their dreams to someday be a part of this wonderful, special race.

We enjoyed a visit to the PRI offices yesterday from Trey McFarland, sales and marketing for Mahle Motorsport, and Ted Hughes, marketing manager for Mahle Clevite, along with Rachal Smith, vice president of strategic operations for the Martin & Company advertising agency.

We covered a lot of topics, and there’s a couple things we wanted to share here with the PRI community of racing business folks.


Most importantly, McFarland said Mahle Motorsport is working very hard to make as many race pistons as possible that they produce on a custom basis available as shelf product. He said the company has provided him with a formula where he can manufacture some fairly small batch runs of race pistons and still make them available as shelf stock.

The difference in pricing between shelf stock and custom pistons is naturally very important to a lot of professional race engine builders.

As SB2 heads make their way into the grassroots levels of racing, Mahle Motorsport will be putting together a line of race pistons available as shelf stock rather than providing them on a purely custom basis. “We’re going to be doing a lot more of that,” he said.

McFarland explained that it’s the kind of thing that’s hard to put in an advertisement, but the company wants to get the word out to professional race engine builders when it comes to small batch production runs of race pistons.

Also, if you hear that Mahle Clevite is producing a bi-metal engine bearing, it’s true but this engine bearing is for non-performance uses only. Hughes explained the demand for an aluminum engine bearing for stock purposes was so great that Mahle Clevite has put one on the market, but tri-metal is a much better product and the only bearing from Mahle Clevite for performance and racing purposes.

And for those of you curious about social media marketing on the Internet, you might want to keep an eye on Mahle’s program this year. Hughes said they’re preparing to launch a big social media presence. He acknowledged that it can get dicey on the Internet where marketers provide a forum without being able to maintain absolute control, but it’s a very effective way to make a personal connection with customers and it’s a necessary way to communicate with the up-and-coming generation of gearheads.