Race-car driver and businessman Danny Nelson is living a dream.


Just in the last month, the 38-year-old owner of Sport Vehicle Specialties Inc. (SVS), of Reardan, Wash., has test-driven new Ferraris at high speeds in Wisconsin and Portland, Ore., and spent a week in Detroit giving hands-on instruction about the technical aspects of new Chrysler vehicles to that big automakers regional trainers of salespeople. Further, he also has raced his own 400-horsepower, 1995 Mustang in American Sedan competition on Inland Northwest racetracks, and, just for fun, flown to Minneapolis to pilot a racing boat.


Thats just a smattering of the activities hes engaged in through the one-employee company he launched in Seattle in 1991. In 1996, he moved SVS to Reardan, where he lives with his wife, Julie, and their three children.


Ive been racing since I was a child, and this is what I know how to do, says Nelson. As long as there is a good airport nearby, my family and I can live wherever we want to live, and the Spokane area is simply where we want to be. I like Reardan because, after shaking several hundred hands a day, its good to come home to some solitude, he says.


Nelson says he started SVS 15 years ago to provide a living for myself in motor sports and build something more stable after Im through racing. Since then, he has molded it into a company that derives revenues from staging promotional and training events for auto manufacturers and from test- driving new vehicles, as well as from racing. Currently, half of the companys income comes from promotional events, 30 percent comes from racing, and 20 percent comes from test-driving new vehicles such as the Jeep Compass that is just now appearing on the market, he says.


SVS is currently based out of a shop at Nelsons Reardan home, but he hopes before long to build an about 6,000-square-foot warehouse there in which to store his race car, three trailers, two trucks, and event equipment.


Nelson says he contracts with as many as 120 people at one time to do different jobs for SVS. Many of the contract employees, he says, are skilled drivers who can go on the road for national tours to help with product launches for such big auto companies as Chrysler Corp. and Ferrari S.p.A. He says hes been in business long enough that finding competent people to hire for specific jobs is no longer a problem.


Half the drivers I hire are previous Indianapolis 500 drivers, he asserts.


Nelson says SVS has worked for nearly every auto manufacturer, including General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., Mercedes-Benz International, BMW International, Nissan Motor Co., Kia Motors Corp., and the aforementioned Chrysler and Ferrari.


Staging events for auto dealers is the biggest moneymaker for the business, he says. He declines to share SVSs revenue figures, but anticipates that a company restructuring currently under way to add more local events, such as a possible promotion for Wendle Ford, will more than double the companys revenue in the next two years.


At such events, SVS sets up its own chairs and tents at racetracks and in large parking lots to provide training, often to salespeople. SVS employees dont teach attendees how to sell vehicles, but instead teach them about the vehicles they will be selling.


When working for Chrysler, for instance, those under contract to SVS who are skilled in the technical aspects of vehicles teach Chryslers regional trainers what the giant automaker wants them to tell salespeople about its new vehicles, Nelson says. He says the corporation provides scripts and specific information points that SVSs trained professionals are to teach Chryslers trainers.


Yet, the service SVS provides depends largely on what company SVS is working for.


In some instances, we only provide the structures and take them down, but in most cases we provide the trainers as well, says Nelson. By having the manufacturers cars at hand, the quality of the impression given (to salespeople) is much better than sitting in a classroom and preaching at them. He says a typical three-day event has between 10 and 20 SVS trainers and an audience of about 200 people.


Under a contract his company signed recently with Chrysler, however, trainers contracted by SVS will instruct a total of about 5,000 salespeople in six cities for one week, and provide product information to an additional 2,000 consumers a day, as well.


We can include flowers, centerpieces, and the works. It all depends on the size of their wallet, Nelson says of the automaker events. Our events can draw targeted people to a central location.


The drivers also are contracted to set up coned traffic courses to show off special features of hero cars, or cars selected by national auto companies to be highlighted that day to invited sales staff, media, and consumers, he says.


Salespeople, members of the media, and consumers drive the new vehicles through the coned course which must be set up so they can do that safely, Nelson says.


Another aspect of the events business, he says, is the teaching by him and his drivers of driving clinics for new owners of high-performance vehicles, such as Ferrari. Such clinics often include instances in which the owners race their cars at high speeds on racetracks, under the tutelage of SVS coaches, he says.


Much of Nelsons personal racing time comes behind the wheel of his 1995 Mustang, which he says holds the one-lap American Sedan track records at Spokane Raceway Park and at Pacific Raceways, in Kent, Wash. That car, which he likely will replace with a high-performance 2005 Mustang as soon as this fall, tops out at about 160 miles per hour, he says.


Monetary prizes reach as high as $10,000 in the 12 Inland Northwest races he participates in each year, Nelson says, and winnings from those races are split among himself and his pit crew.


To help promote its services, SVS typically sets up several television monitors in tents near any track where Nelson races for roaming spectators to view. Nelson races with a camera in the cockpit of his Mustang, and film from the camera is run on the monitors shortly after the race is completed.


The third aspect of his business, the testing of vehicles, can include high-speed trials on racetracks to demonstrate how vehicles will hold up over periods of time. SVS does that type of work for several automakers, most recently for Ferrari earlier this month in Portland where Nelson drove 2006 and 2007 Model F-430s at speeds of 150 mph on a short racetrack there.


Many of those tests are what he calls validation testing, meaning that an independent third party has been hired to confirm what the auto company claims its new cars will do, either at top speed or in a short burst of speed.


Those tests also include how long it takes a vehicle to brake from 60 mph to zero, plus water-fording tests, ground-clearance tests, and others, he says.


Nelson says SVS drivers are often called upon to drive in commercials for automakers, but adds that he doesnt employ any stunt drivers.


Contact Rocky Wilson at (509) 344-1264 or via e-mail at [email protected].