Cutom Painted Nordic Thor above (click to make larger)
The next day I drove down, and the more we talked the more I was taken back. To get a full understanding of their capabilities and Brian himself, you would have to start with where he comes from, and what he did before he came to Havasu. Brian owned Prostreet performance in Denver Colorado for nine years building exotic street rods, to air bagging station wagons and everything in between. It was an extremely established and recognized shop doing almost a million in sales annually! Unfortunately Denver isn't the quiet nice laid back town a lot of us West Coasters envision it as. After being held at gun point twice to have cars stolen from his shop he decided a change of venue was in order. Nine years ago he made the move to Lake Havasu City AZ and opened up Havasu Customs in 2005. (In an Interesting statistic nothing has been stolen since re-locating to Havasu.)
Havasu Customs features a 28 x 16 paint booth and is known around town to be one of the premier paint shops.
If you live here in Havasu you have undoubtedly seen Brian's Lifted Excursion running around. It's a V10 Excursion with a Kenne Belle supercharger on it that is painted to look like a woody or a what Brian calls a "Country Squire." It's a pretty cool vehicle that shows off a few of the capabilities that Havasu Customs has to offer from motor work, to paint, and custom fabrication.
While his mainstay has always been large custom projects, he is very quick to point out that they offer service at a competitive price, and almost unheard of lead times. While he's working on large scale projects he leaves some portions of his day open so that he can jump off the project and do a service in a few hours. What that means is so long as they aren't backed up, you can drop your boat off saturday morning and be on the water the same day! He also offers pick up and delivery services for an additional fee for convenience if those that aren't in town or don't want to give up half a day on the water.
(Pretty cool custom project. He added a supercharger to a Centurion Ski Boat for a customer)
Installing a set of Dana Tabs on a Nordic
In our conversation one thing that he hit on several times is pride of workmanship. Most shops the owner sits behind a desk while some guy out back works on your boat. Brian is very proud of the fact that if you bring him your boat for service or if you bring him a large scale project, it's either him or his right hand man Bob Seydler working on the project. It provides an extremely high level of quality control, and personal touch to know that you are talking to the guy that will actually be turning the wrenches, or building your custom creation.
(Additional guages for a blower upgrade on a Nordic)
Custom made billet tabs for a sea doo boat. (I'm actually going to write a seperate article on this, it's pretty bitchen)
Custom Engine work and Engine Bay in a Nordic
(Check out the wood floors!)
Bringing an old Nordic back to life with new paint.
I'm very excited to Have Havasu Customs on board as an advertiser with RDP, and we will be doing some articles on some of the more interesting and custom projects that he has done for customers to help define the scope of their talents and out of the box thinking and creations!
For more information please call 928-208-0702 and ask for Brian Newton.
For more pictures and to hear my notes and conversations with Brian click the video below.
