Mike Alexander said he recently moved to a bigger shop because he outgrew his former location in Belgium, Wis. His company, Alexander Motorsports, is a one-person operation which is becoming popular with members of the vintage racing community.
The “gentleman racers” who compete in vintage racing events are often busy professionals who take to road courses like Blackhawk Farms and Road America to blow the cobwebs out of their stressful lives. They want to have their cars at the track when they get there and they want the cars to be fully sorted and ready to roll.
Mike Alexander specializes in race prep work, servicing old race cars and support services. The latter can include transporting a customer’s fully-tuned car to the track and providing at-the-track servicing during a vintage event.
Alexander Motorsports evolved from a hobby into a full-time business. Mike Alexander now takes care of a 1933 Ford “Junk Formula” Indy Car, an MG TD roadster and a Mini Cooper for three customers from Chicago. Alexander has followed vintage racing for two decades and has specialized in vintage racing car services for the past five years or so.
“We’ve been growing,” said Alexander, who started out taking care of one car and now does yearly maintenance on 8 to 10 collector cars (including several vintage racing cars) on a regular basis. “Basically, doing racing cars is the same as doing street cars, except that if you work on a NASCAR or Winston Cup car they require two or three guys to do all the maintenance, and you’re talking a minimum of 40 to 50 hours of work. Our day rate for track support is $350, and business is good and getting better; every time I go to a different event, I pick up new customers and that’s what we need to grow.”
Mike Alexander sees only growth for his vintage racing business in the future. “That’s why I used to have a 1500 sq. ft. with three trailers packed with cars that didn’t fit inside the shop. Now, we’ve moved into about 3,000 sq. ft. and we expect to move on from this point.”
One customer car that Alexander trailers to races is a vintage Mini Cooper. “I love taking that car to the vintage races,” he told us. “Where else can you have so much fun? What other car would have people coming by all day to constantly inquire about what it is and ask questions about its history? It makes all the long hours, weekend workdays and small business pressures worth it.”
Photos show Mike Alexander at Road America, in Elkhart Lake, Wis., with a Stutz Blackhawk vintage racing car owned by one of his customers.
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