Buyer Beware: One Customer’s Nightmare Experience with Dime Racing Development

Brian McLevis is furious, and he wants to warn others before they end up in the same situation he’s in after dealing with Dime Racing Development in Huntington Beach, CA. According to an email sent to Speed Society from McLevis himself, not only did DRD take more than five times the quoted turnaround time to complete the build ofhiss 2015 Huracan – which was to include a twin turbo kit, clutches and headers to produce 850-860 HP –  the car has been nothing but a mechanical nightmare since he got it back. To make matters worse, this is not the first story to surface about Dime Racing having similar issues with overpromising and underdelivering. Not too long ago, Parker from Vehicle Virgins sent his Huracan to DRD and had almost the exact same experience. However, Parker picked his car up before the build was completed after waiting several weeks longer than he was told, while Brian took a different approach to the situation.

McLevis wanted his car completed, and gave DRD ample time to get the build done. He says the company did stay in contact with him with “updates” (you’ll understand the quotation marks shortly) about progress on the project, but when he asked for photos, they said they would get them for him, but failed to follow through on delivering those. “I pushed harder asking for pictures and was told they didn’t want their intellectual property being leaked.” said McLevis of the excuse the shop used for not sending photos. Brian was told the delay was being caused by custom headers having to be made to allow continued use of his Vorsteiner center exit exhaust. However, it would come to light down the road that, at the point he was told that, no header fabrication had been done on the car.

Then Brian saw the Vehicle Virgins video – recounting Parker’s experience with DRD, and in his own words, his “stomach sank to the floor”, with it becoming obvious to him the shop had been jerking him around.

After watching Parker’s video, Brian called DRD and demanded the shop do a video chat and show him the current state of his car, including the headers, which had become such a point of contention. The owners of the shop obliged… sort of. The owners went back into the shop and showed him a header. The problem, and this ties back into those “updates” mentioned earlier, was that the headers they flashed Brian over Skype were for a V8 application. Eagle-eyed Brian caught the discrepancy immediately and asked for a closer look at the headers, and was able to count the number of primaries when they moved a little closer to the flange. Brian says one of the owners sent a photo to his phone, but instead of a photo from the shop, it was a photo that McLevis is certain had been quickly googled.

At that point, Brian decided to get a little more directly involved, booking a flight from his home state of Kansas to Orange County to pay the shop a visit. Upon arrival at the DRD facility, the owners came clean, admitting they had a falling out with their fabricator that had led a stoppage of work on McLevis’ ride. Brian says the owners were polite and handled the issue the best they could, but in his opinion, after fabricating updates for weeks on a build that was sitting quite literally untouched in the shop, being as nice as possible was really their only option. Upon Brian’s arrival at the shop, they began thrashing to finish the project in time for a rally that he was scheduled to attend.

The car was completed in time for the rally, but was cut so close that there wasn’t time to dyno the car, and the piping didn’t make it out to be ceramic coated. The car was delivered to LaJolla, California for the rally, the first time McLevis got to take the wheel of his newly-twin turbocharged Huracan. His excitement quickly turned to dismay as it was immediately obvious there was a problem in the transmission. “Shifts were slow and laggy. The car seemed to pull hard in 1st through 3rd gear, but then again, at this point I hadn’t driven the car in 3 months so anything would feel fast.” Said Brian of his first impressions driving the car with the turbo setup.

“When I watched Parker’s video my stomach
sank to the floor because I knew everything
I had been told by DIME was lie after lie.”

The next day, Brian actually met Parker from Vehicle Virgins and had the opportunity to line up and do few roll races. Parker’s car, which was completed by VF Engineering after his own Dime debacle, produces 800 HP at the crank, while Brian’s car was expected to produce 850-860 to the wheels, which would put the crankshaft numbers much closer to the four-digit mark. However, the cars were neck and neck, meaning McLevis’ Huracan had obviously fallen well short of the expected output. The following day, the rally snaked its way through a canyon run, and the car overheated three separate times, meaning Brian’s had to pull over and let the car cool each time. As a little comic relief, Brian grabbed a frozen Snickers bar during one of the stops to let the car cool that was perfectly fitting, in more than one way.

Finally, the proverbial straw the broke the camel’s back came when the car went in to “Gearbox Failure” mode during a third top end pull alongside Parker, who had walked Brian in the first two races. The car wouldn’t shift into any gear, leaving Brian stranded on the side of the road 60 miles outside of Las Vegas.

For Brian, the rally ended with a tow truck picking the car up and hauling it to Lamborghini of Las Vegas, not exactly the ending he’d expected for his first outing in his newly-boosted supercar. With a timeline more than 5 times longer than originally quoted and multiple mechanical issues, ultimately leaving Brian stranded on the side of the road, he is understandably upset. The automotive community is incredibly tight-knit and watches out for its own, so we are watching intently to see how this situation is resolved. At the end of the day it is always a good idea to go to the best of the best when you want to twin turbo your exotic, those guys are UGR. Underground Racing or no racing, period kevin and KC are the real deal all our cars are amazing!  Speed Society Lamborghinis are all built by Underground Racing