B modifieds are often popular among the working class. Filled with a variety of spec components and a less powerful but (designed to be) more affordable engine, the appeal of this class is based on cost compared to the more open regulations and more powerful engines found in the big brother A mods.
Scotty Allen relates to the working class. He is as devoted to his craft and skillset as his customers are to their careers. Allen calls himself "a grassroots guy" and "a regular-guy chassis builder" who enjoys "working with the working guys."
Allen takes this "working man" approach to building between 12 to 18 rolling B modifieds each year from his fabricating shop Allen Autosports Race Cars in Urbana, Missouri. He applies the principles he's learned in his 53 years to building quality race cars while teaching the next generation of drivers.
Learning Along The Way
Allen grew up at the race track with his father, Bill, competing and his mother playing the vital support role. "I was born in March, and we were at the race track in April," Allen said, describing his lifelong racing involvement. "I've been in this my entire life.
"Our entire family is all about racing," he said, including owning and operating Dallas County Speedway, also in Urbana. The track was built in 1997, and his father operated the track until Scotty and his wife Angie promoted it from 2019 through 2022. They earned the distinction of USMTS race of the year twice during that time. Allen had to walk away from the track regretfully only because it took too much time away from Allen Autosports, which he referred to as his "first love."
His fondness for modifieds began in his early teens when IMCA modifieds started infiltrating southwest Missouri race tracks. He found them appealing because they "looked different than anything else" due to the lack of front fenders.
Allen helped his father work on his race cars while growing up as well as in the family business, where the younger Allen pumped gas and washed windows at his father's gas station. He was already scoping out his first race car when he turned 16. While his buddies were benefitting from their fathers buying them new race cars, Allen's father instead purchased him a 1972 Mercury Montego, in which he learned to compete in a bomber class.
As a typical 16-year-old, Allen recalled, "I was mad because my dad raced all those years, and I thought I was too good to start the bomber," adding as he laughed, "even though I had never raced before.
"That ended up being the best thing he could have done. Instead of my dad going out and spending a lot of money to buy me a new race car, he went out and bought a new welder. He helped me build that car. We put a cage in it, and he let me weld part of it. I learned to weld using those welders.
"He told me, 'You want to race at a different level than I have ever raced and probably can ever afford to for you. If you want to race at that level, you better learn to be good enough to build your own cars at that level.' So my dad bought me a welder instead of a race car," Allen said.
In addition to welding with his father, Allen gained welding experience through a Future Farmers of America (FFA) chapter at his high school. "I was putting my first race cages in race cars at 17 years old," he said.
From there he bought an inexpensive bender and then added a notcher. His first customer products were cages for pure stocks and then limited late models. He purchased an old jig and tubing from a man who had to close his race car building operation when he became a truck driver for a Busch Grand National team. "I scraped all I could for that $750, but I bought it and went from there. I got good enough that I caught the eye of Mike Clark of Dirt Works, where I learned how to build cars as a professional car builder, and I was surrounded by quality people."
Allen drove the Dirt Works house car for the last three years he worked at the company. He enjoyed working with Clark but had a desire to branch out on his own. He left to start Allen Autosports, "but it was rough getting going since there is a lot of competition here. He got me to come back, but when I went back, I told him, 'I'm an entrepreneur and I'm a self-motivator. I don't want to work for somebody forever.' So we made a deal that I could keep Allen Autosports as a weekend and night business, and he would allow me to build modifieds against him as long as I didn't try to steal any of his customer base.
"It worked really good. Very few bosses would ever allow you to do that. He's the second most influential man in racing that I've ever had behind my father," Allen added. "But he knew what I wanted to do, and he knew my long-term plans. The day it was time to go was probably—in this sport—the roughest day I ever had. But he knew it was coming. And we stayed friends all the way up to his passing."
Allen began building modifieds with open type motors. In 2020 he decided to switch his focus to B modifieds—which he estimated accounts for about 98% of his current business—because he acknowledged that the technology and costs of the open A mod were "getting out of hand unless you were out pounding the tracks" on a regular basis.
He released some prototype, purpose-built B mods that year that required different tubing thicknesses and flex due to using engines with less horsepower compared to the A mods, which ultimately debuted on the track the following year. They began the season on a positive note with Jesse Morton winning the $10,000 Battle of the Bullring in Humboldt, Kansas. Other highlights have been back-to-back USRA Nationals titles, and last August he won $30,000 at Arrowhead Speedway in Colcord, Oklahoma, with driver Ryan Gilmore.
Offering His Expertise
Just as Allen's father guided him in his early years, he relishes the teaching component of his role. "I like teaching," he said. "I actually wanted to be a high school ag teacher or a history teacher and a coach. Life didn't go in that direction, but I got to do it in a different way."
Rather than resolving customers' problems, such as setup, Allen works with them closely and will have the racers work on their cars with him as he guides them on how to fix any potential problems that may arise, especially when he's not available.
"I'm not the Lone Ranger," he said, joking. "I want them to come back to the shop with me. I don't let them drop the car off and say, 'We'll be back.' No, you come into the shop, and you're going to crawl around on the ground underneath the car so I can show you where we measure everything.
"I'm showing them how we do this so they're not on a different page. When they call me on a Monday and say, 'Hey, we were pretty good last night, but my car's too tight. It won't turn in the middle.'"
Allen then asks the customer questions about the car but has an end goal in mind to ultimately instruct the customer. "I want them to tell me how I measured it so we're on the same page. It's better for me to give them a $500 free setup and for them to come in here with me where I get to teach them how to do it directly. Then I call them, and half the time they'll say, 'Hey, I went back and looked at that and it's off. I put it back where it went and it's perfect.' And that's how it happens. Half the time I don't have to do nothing. They answer their own question after we teach them the first time. So I'm big about that."
In addition to guiding his current customers, Allen is involved with teaching courses that are part of the Winning Technologies (Win Tech) seminar, organized by Kevin Rogers. They met at the 2019 PRI Show and quickly became friends.
Rogers asked Allen to lead the chassis seminar, and they joined forces in 2021. The Win Tech program covers setup information for modifieds and another class for stock cars. Topics include two-link rear suspension, front suspension, brakes, shocks, springs, tires, and even touches on sponsorship and marketing. However, Allen gets as much from these classes as the students.
"Racers are very innovative. They're going to try stuff," Allen explained. "They're going to push the rules and they're going to try things. Sometimes you wish your customers wouldn't try stuff because when they do it causes you problems," he added, laughing. "But on the other hand, there have been other times during the school when somebody asked a question, and I sit there and think about it and put it in the back of my head. And that night at the hotel I start thinking about what they said."
In fact, he provided an example from the program earlier this year. "I had a guy who said, 'I tried this, and it just don't work.' I thought about it, and I figured out the part that he was missing. I called him back and said, 'You missed this step. I've thought about it, and you need to do this.'
"He called me back about a month later and had won two or three races as a result."
In addition to fulfilling Allen's altruistic nature and utilizing his 37 years of racing experience, he also uses Win Tech as a platform for companies he works with. For example, Rex Merritt (who is also Allen's father-in-law) of AFCO shared shock tips, plus other company reps have participated to educate the racing community. But Allen relies on these partners in another way that benefits his current Allen Autosports' customers.
Acknowledging how his customers spend quite a bit of money to buy cars from him and sacrifice time with their families to go racing, "I feel like if that customer is willing to spend their hard-earned money with me and trust in me, that I need to do things back for them above just racing."
One way he promotes his customers is by posting photos of them in the winner's circle on his company's Facebook page. He acknowledged, "There is nothing a driver likes more than to see his name up there. I mean, that's part of their charisma. It's a good promotion for them."
But Allen has another reason for this promotion. "What's the most effective way to sell a car? Me sitting there telling you my car is faster, or me putting pictures on Facebook with real people holding trophies? I'm not saying we won a race, but instead, we show that picture.
"It helps me and them," he added.
Along with noting the driver who won and at what track, Allen also lists the companies he works with on the posts, which ultimately allows these drivers to reach a greater audience.
For example, on a recent post promoting customer Ryan Gillmore's dual win at Monett Motor Speedway and then at Salina High Banks Speedway the following evening in his Allen Autosports GEN XI B mod, Allen tagged several companies that he works with closely, including PEM Racing Gears & Drivetrain, Wehrs Machine & Racing Products, Performance Bodies, Day Motor Sports, Winning Technologies Workshops and several others.
When he tags these companies, they often share the post on their social media channels, with each having an even greater audience than Allen Autosports' Facebook following of more than 4,000. "When they hit that 'share' button, that puts my customer into a whole different world. He can go back to his sponsors and say, 'I got your logo out in front of all these people,' even though he didn't do anything." Allen enjoys seeing his customers reap the benefits of these shared posts.
Loyal Customers
Those relationships are what's so important to Allen. Whether it's with racing customers or suppliers.
Scotty Roberts competes in a USHRA A modified and has been a customer of Allen Autosports since Day One. "When he decided to go out on his own, I decided to go with him," Roberts said about Allen.
Roberts has been a loyal customer not just because of racing, but they became friends early in Roberts' racing career and have stayed that way.
"In 2004, I got my first brand new sports car from him, and the first night out, it got stuffed head-on into a wall, and it needed a front clip," Roberts explained. "So I stayed at his house for two days and that's all we did was tear the car apart. We put a front clip on it, and then he got me ready to go for the Missouri State Fair race, which was coming up only a couple days later. That's obviously going above and beyond by letting me come into his house and eat dinner with his family and putting in the hours and the effort to get me going."
Roberts has stayed loyal to Allen not only for the above-and-beyond customer service, but "he's honestly just a better human being. I'm glad to call him one of my best friends."
Chad Wehrs of Wehrs Machine & Racing Products in Bangor, Wisconsin, is one of Allen's top suppliers. "We provide him with the products to build the cars. A lot of suspension, different tools, different accessories to build the best cars out there. We provide some of the best parts in the industry, and he builds a super nice car. Together it's a good relationship."
In fact, Allen Autosports serves as a strong contributor to Wehrs' chassis builder development program where he "gives us feedback on how to make our product lines better. He's always open to changing the products to better suit the customer and make them better to go faster. He helps us keep our products on the cutting edge. We are proud to be one of his partners," concluded Wehrs.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Allen Autosports. "It's been a lot of fun," claimed Allen. "I've got friends all over the country. We've won some really big races with my customers. I've got to share with them. I've got to be part of their families. I've seen their kids grow up, got to see their kids race cars and win now.
"When I'm done someday, people may not like me," he admitted, "but I hope that they think I did it the right way. That's more than I used to say," he added, laughing. He referenced a saying: Young men want attention, grown men want respect, and old legends don't give a crap either way. "I'm still on the respect deal, but I hope someday I get to that old legend deal."
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