Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/343790
FOCUS PSB UTV-Sport www.PowersportsBusiness.com Powersports Business • July 13, 2014 • 23 Performance shop to produce and distribute units with increased horsepower BY LIZ KEENER MANAGING EDITOR Chad Johnson knows his way around a RZR. He formed his Ham Lake, Minn.-based Waste- land Performance just as the first RZR was hitting the market, and he's been riding the side-by-side wave ever since. The company's original product was an RZR engine swap kit using a Weber 750 MPE motor to more than double the side-by-side's horsepower. Now the company has expanded into aftermarket products and consulting, and a new project is on the horizon. FORMING A PERFORMANCE BUSINESS When Polaris introduced the first RZR in 2007, Johnson was in the midst of his first non-pow- ersports job since the '90s, and he was itching to get back into the industry. "I just couldn't handle getting out of the industry. That's truly what drove me to start my company," he said. In the early 1990s, Johnson was a snow- mobile racer. He parlayed that into a position at Yamaha, running the OEM's snocross team. After that, he took a position with Polaris as a program leader before moving on to Redline, where he developed the single-seat Redline Revolt. Personal reasons caused Johnson to resign from Redline, return to Minnesota and take what he called a "normal" non-powersports job. "I feel fortunate to have been able to have worked with some really great people that taught me a lot. And once I got out of the indus- try, I couldn't do a normal job," he admitted. But he didn't stay gone for long. After Polaris introduced the RZR, it dawned on Johnson that he could take the Weber engine he had introduced to Redline and put it into a RZR, boosting the horsepower from about 50 hp to 120-130 hp using pump gas. "The need that I had seen was the Polaris motor had its limits. It was basically a 50-horse- power [machine], and people wanted more than 100 horsepower out of it, so I saw a gap in cost and durability in the stock motor and what people were looking for in the market. So we did our own research on the market," he said. Johnson found that turbo kits were already being produced for the RZR, but they only increased by 70-80 horsepower. So he founded Wasteland Performance and went to work creating engine swap kits for the RZR from the Weber engine. Though the kits were a vast improvement in power, they were a tough sell at first. A turbo was easier to install and at $4,000- $5,000 came at about half the price of Waste- land's engine swap kits. However, those who wanted the added power and who saw the value in the Weber motor and the warranty Wasteland was offering bought in, especially after they learned they could make up some of the difference in price by selling their original engine. "Over 90 percent of our sales were in Dubai, in the UAE at first," Johnson said. "Probably the first big sale we had was to the No. 1 sheik of Dubai, so that sent us on a really good path." Johnson and his team were soon in Dubai testing the engine kits there before signing their first dealer in the area. Following that, the U.S. began to grasp the concept, and Wasteland had two or three dealers installing the kits, along with customers across the country. Though the Weber kit was Wasteland's bread Wasteland Performance sets sights on RZR variant See Wasteland, Page 29 Wasteland Performance was founded as a company that produced engine swap kits for the Polaris RZR. Now the company has diversified to include a line of RZR belts and bearings, vehicle consulting and soon, its own branded RZRs.