Our Story

SneedSpeed is the modern continuation of a performance story that started long before MINI Coopers, BMWs, or online parts sales.

The foundation began when Chris Sneed opened a neighborhood bike repair shop at 12 years old to make money to race mountain bikes. What started as fixing bicycles grew into mountain bike racing, fabrication, and early full-suspension bicycle frame development before suspension bikes became mainstream.

Chris later studied marketing at Western Carolina University and earned an associate degree in Race Car Technology from Forsyth Tech, combining the business side of performance with formal motorsports training.

In 2002, Chris founded Sneed’s Speed Shop. The shop began in the world of drag racing, big block Chevrolets, hot rods, and old-school American horsepower — an environment where parts either survived or failed in the real world. That became the foundation for everything that followed: fabrication, engine building, tuning, mechanical problem solving, and a belief that reputation is earned through results.

From there, Sneed’s Speed Shop evolved into import drag racing and Mazda rotary engine performance. High-RPM rotary combinations demanded a deep understanding of ignition, tuning, sealing, heat management, airflow, and durability. During this period, Chris developed his first production performance parts, including 10.4mm spark plug wire sets designed to fix the high-RPM misfires common in rotary engines, along with electric fan and shroud conversion systems for 1979–1992 Mazda RX-7 platforms.

Selling through eBay under the Sneed’s Speed Shop name, Chris expanded into remanufactured rotary engines, dyno tuning, and performance parts development. After adding an in-house chassis dyno, development expanded into Nissan Z cars, Supras, Mustangs, Miatas, and the RX-8. The dyno reinforced a standard that still guides SneedSpeed today: performance claims should be proven, not guessed.

As customer projects moved from drag racing into sports car and road racing, the work expanded into suspension development, chassis setup, aerodynamics, and complete race vehicle systems. Customers brought Miatas, MINIs, BMWs, Panoz race cars, Corvettes, Porsches, Lotuses, and other serious performance cars for development and tuning.

As power levels and track speeds increased, aerodynamics became part of the work. Sneed-developed cars not only won on track, but also went through full-scale wind tunnel testing at the A2 Wind Tunnel in Mooresville, North Carolina to validate real downforce and drag data on complete vehicles.

With demand growing beyond the local shop, Chris launched Sneed4Speed.com in 2013 as the online home for Sneed’s Speed Shop parts, race development, engine systems, and performance products.

SneedSpeed is the direct continuation of that same Sneed4Speed performance history under a cleaner, stronger brand name. Same founder. Same engineering background. Same racing foundation. Same standard. The name evolved, but the work did not start over.

Today, SneedSpeed is a performance engineering and manufacturing brand focused on premium engine and powertrain systems for MINI, BMW, and other European and American performance platforms. Over more than 20 years, the company has developed engine rebuild systems, forged internal packages, cylinder head solutions, timing systems, fasteners, gaskets, and complete performance combinations for demanding street, track, and endurance applications.

The company’s standards were not built through theory or marketing language. They were built through competition, hard use, dyno testing, road racing, and real-world results. That experience includes multiple championships, more than 100 race wins, and a 24-hour endurance victory across serious performance platforms.

At SneedSpeed, parts are not treated as catalog items. They are treated as systems that must survive heat, RPM, horsepower, vibration, and abuse in the real world. If a component cannot consistently perform under those conditions, it does not deserve the SneedSpeed name.

The platforms may evolve, but the mission has stayed the same from the beginning:

Build parts that actually work.

Not hype.
Not shortcuts.
Not disposable performance.

Just proven engineering backed by experience, competition, and a refusal to sell products we would not run ourselves.