Specialty File
Jason Heffner grew up with a simple goal. "I just wanted to work on fast cars," he deadpans, which of course doesn't answer the question of how this boyish-looking 29-year-old came to be modifying six-figure sports cars like the Lamborghini Gallardo and Ford GT.
Want to see a souped-up Mustang? We could turn up 20 of them by Friday. But a souped-up twin-turbo Gallardo? Until Heffner dropped us a line last winter, we wouldn't have known where to look. In truth, after listening to him promise to deliver not only a twin-turbo Gallardo but a twin-turbo Ford GT to boot, we thought we had another crank caller on our hands. But in June, Heffner came through. You can read about the cars on the following pages, but in short, both laid down some giddy-fast figures.
Heffner's shop is in Sarasota, Florida, but he began his career in 1994 working as a wrench at a Dodge dealership in Laurel, Maryland.
Heffner spent his free time tearing up local drag strips in a 1990 Mustang. He modified that car in countless ways, with cylinder heads, turbos, and superchargers. Eventually, he had it running the quarter-mile in under nine seconds. More important, though, that car was a rolling education for Heffner, as he doesn't have a formal degree or a high-school diploma.
At 21, an age when most college students are facing the hard truth about getting a real job, the guy who didn't finish high school got sick of being a routine car mechanic and opened a 1200-square-foot tuning shop in Glen Burnie, Maryland. He called it Heffner's Performance.
His big break came in 1999 when a Viper owner liked what he saw in Heffner's Mustang and hired him to supercharge the Viper's V-10. Modified Vipers with superchargers and turbos are fairly common today, but seven years ago, Heffner says few had successfully boosted one. His blown Viper not only was fast but also didn't explode at the drag strip. That success likely could have led to a decent business hopping up domestic cars like Vipers and Mustangs, but Heffner says he has a short attention span and gets bored easily. So in 2000 he took on a job that many shops would probably have turned down — supercharging a Lamborghini Diablo.
Most tuners won't attempt modifying the Diablo simply because a mistake could mean bankruptcy — a new Diablo engine costs more than 70 grand. But Heffner made it work — 700 horsepower without a catastrophic meltdown. Word spread throughout the Lamborghini community, which seems far more open to modified cars than the Ferrari crowd, and exotics started appearing at his door. The rest, as they say, is history.
