2NR: What exactly is Group-A Racing and is that the company's real name?DH: Well in Europe there's FIA and in Japan there is JIA and FIA sanctioned racing. Within theses groups the highest class were these little economy boxes [Civics and Integras] which were basically the Group-A class. So in going back to your question, yes we are still called Group-A Autosports but that is our corporate name while Skunk2 is our brand name.
2NR: Why was Skunkworks changed to Skunk2? There's a lot of speculation and rumors in the import community as to why the name changed.
DH: The name Skunkworks is actually a term used by the military. Lockheed Martin classified their secret fighter planes and jets under the name "Skunkworks" which, in layman's terms means "classified top secret project." We were notified by Lockheed Martin and given an ultimatum to either change the companies name or face a nasty lawsuit for infringement. They basically tried to bully us into changing our names and products in a three month period or take us to court. To make a long story short, we told Lockheed that we needed a minimum nine months to make our changes or gladly go to court and drag out the time we needed through a legal battle. They finally agreed to our demands and that's how we eventually ended up with the name Skunk2 in '98. Imagine that, Lockheed Martin bidding to the demands of a smaller company like Skunk2 (laughing). Think of Skunk2 as kind of an ESPN2 where the brand eventually grows out of its original ESPN name and needs to expand into something bigger and better. That's basically what Skunk2 is all about, becoming bigger and better.
2NR: So how did the company Skunkworks come about?
DH: From '94 to '98, I was engaged in selling other peoples products. Arias pistons, Crower rods, but initially what made us famous were the Z-Speed components we sold back in the '90's. Eventually I got tired of selling other companies components and decided on selling our own brand instead of selling other peoples stuff and labeled it Skunkworks. We started out selling the basic sleeve over coilover systems and since on that brand we didn't have any distribution on it we decided to just print a price on the magazine and see what kind of response we would get.
2NR: And the response to those ads?
DH: We couldn't keep them on the shelves and kept selling out. Dealers became interested and inquiring about our product when customers would go into their stores and ask, "Hey do you have any Skunkworks coilovers?" We eventually created a dealer network due to its popularity within a few months.
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