A Crowning Achievement
Tucson’s Crown Concepts Rolls Out Unique High-Performance Autos
Located in Tucson’s northwest corridor sits a warehouse-type building home to a performance auto enthusiast’s dreamland. With 21,000 square feet of clean space and sharp features, Crown Concepts houses almost all of its business in one spot. The building’s front half includes a front lobby and retail area, a showroom, and a hospitality area. The back half hosts Crown’s one-of-a-kind Superperformance inventory, engine room, management offices, service bays, All-wheel dyno, powder coating room, and a machine shop where mechanics tinker on cars with sufficient detail and precision.
Born out of the collective enthusiasm for racing, working under the hood, and an appreciation for restoring classic American muscle cars, Crown Concepts is simply a place for fanatics to bask in the inventory of mint cars and handcrafted workmanship, including current projects like a 1968 Shelby GT500 resto-mod, a 1974 Ford F-100 resto-mod and a Tesla Model 3 Performance track car.
The three partners that started Crown met when they were growing up as kids at school and on the race track. As they continued racing, they worked on the same race teams in different roles, explaining Crown’s Christopher Loa. They crossed paths throughout the years in racing and business and always had an idea to start a performance speed shop in Tucson.
“Curtis Brown grew up in many aspects of racing starting as a kid doing midget and sprint car dirt track racing. Joey Martin made a name for himself in racing as an engineer for different companies including a prominent wheel manufacturer. Along the way they have built a team that consists of people who have managed professional race teams, raced professionally themselves, and have worked on race teams,” adds Loa.
Those dreams and experiences have accumulated over the years to what Crown is today. Instead of just focusing on custom builds and performance enhancement, Crown has become more outward-facing, doubling as a public gathering place for people with similar penchants for all things auto to come together. After people in the Tucson area responded well to events like Cars and Coffee, which returns this month, Crown entirely became a transformed car spot, turning from a hobby shop to the multi-purpose sales, restoration, service, and event space it is today.
“We have been refining and refocusing our business from the beginning, always finding the best way to serve our customers and enable us to do our best work on the type of projects we want,” says Loa. “This year we will continue to push our track-side and track car services for our customers at INDE and Apex. This includes setup and maintenance of new and existing cars as well as building new cars for tour track customers. We will also continue to push our custom build and resto-mod capabilities to build even better one-of-a-kind cars that meet our high-quality standards.”
Crown is also the only authorized Radical service center in the southwest offering transportation to and from the track from the Crown facilities along with pre-arranged scheduled maintenance. This highlights the performance shop’s dedication to quality service and focused determination to be the premier Superperformance dealer and installer in the southwest.
Another feather in Crown’s cap, Loa points out, is its updated online experience, which highlights the shop’s expanding inventory of project autos, ready-to-go buys, and merchandise. Here, guests can browse what the team is working on, including a 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air, a 1965 Superperformance Cobra, a 1932 Ford Roadster, and a 2003 Ferrari 360, among other cherry rides.
Crown is growing at an exponential rate, but it’s its steady focus on meticulously restoring cars and dedication to precision that has made it stand out in a state that has become the country’s go-to racing and custom car destination.
“We believe Arizona is one of the hubs of motorsport and car culture due to our great year-round weather and abundance of well-preserved vehicles,” explains Loa. “We also have a great mix of people that come from around the country and world that are all car enthusiasts. We are also in such close proximity to southern California which is a pillar in the custom car and motorsport world.”
Join them for a monthly “Cars and Coffee” event at Crown Concepts on the first Saturday of each month from 7 am-9 am.
Crown will be sending their “White Abyss,” an all-white, custom-built 1955 Chevrolet Bel-Air, to the Barett-Jackson Auction on Thursday, March 25th, between 6 pm-8 pm.
Crown Concepts is located at 3930 West Costco Drive, Tucson, Arizona 85741. Call them at (520) 900-7586, email sales@crownconceptsusa.com, or visit their website at www.crownconceptsusa.com
