Sumospeed is an automotive enthusiast club based out of Virginia Beach, Virginia. It was founded in 2005 by four friends as something of a joke between the founders as a representation of their views toward clubs in the area at the time.

Sumospeed continued to grow in size over the first few years slowly, but by 2008, the club had enough numbers and cars to start gaining a positive reputation locally. With that reputation, Sumospeed teamed up with Team Top End, another local car club, and held a charity car show, drawing out a large number of cars and local car enthusiasts. This show helped to shape Sumospeed’s ability to organize events and continue to reinforce a positive reputation for the club.

The remainder of 2008 and 2009 was a period of growth for Sumospeed. The club hosted two more successful car shows, held annual poker runs, toy drives, and supported the USdrift organized Driftwater events, in Moyock, NC. 2009 also saw current club member Jared Hageman’s 240sx featured in Super street magazine, a major accomplishment for any builder.

Sumospeed experienced some real highs and lows through 2010. With the success of the three Sumospeed car shows as a foundation, the club hosted the first incarnation of its current flagship event, Springfest. It was held at Harbor Park in Norfolk, Virginia, and like the three shows before it, was a huge success, allowing for the continued growth into the current version of the event. We also experienced club member Stephen James being diagnosed and battling with a cancerous tumor in his brain. Obviously his well being and treatment were paramount to anything car related, putting his 240sx drift car build on the back burner. Stephen’s close friend and fellow club member, Danny Domenech, presented the idea of the club finishing the build, without Stephen’s knowledge, and presenting it to him when his treatment was completed. Sumospeed pooled it’s collective resources, using all of it’s members individual talents on the car and organizing donations from club supporters for missing items and assistance. Stephen completed his treatment, and was presented with a complete, freshly painted car that would see many track events upon it’s completion. It was a special moment for the club and brought everyone very close through the process.

2011 brought on more success for Sumospeed as a club. Our second Springfest event saw more growth and with that, the realization that a new venue would be needed moving forward. The club also started a new monthly meet, the Sumospeed Ice Cream Socials. The socials moved to various ice cream parlors in the Hampton Roads area, and provided family friendly, automotive based, gatherings. One of the club members, Mary Williams, also received a feature on Klutch Republik’s website, with her Volkswagen Jetta. 2012 marked a few milestones for Sumospeed. Springfest was moved from its original home at Harbor Park, to a more spacious abode, the Virginia Beach Sportsplex, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The event saw even more growth and began drawing vehicles from outside the Hampton Roads Area. The club was also extremely proud to have two of it’s members, Stephen Knoop and Tim Florio, get their vehicles featured in Modified Magazine. This was a statement to the quality of vehicle the club’s members were producing and would continue to produce moving forward. The usual Sumospeed poker runs, toy drives, and ice cream socials, saw continued success.

2013 was kind of a “status quo” year for Sumospeed. Springfest was a success again, as were the usual Sumospeed events and meets. One major milestone that 2013 provided for the club was print coverage of Springfest for the first time. Import Tuner provided a great article on the event which we feel was a huge contribution in furthering it’s exposure to more non local enthusiasts. Another one of the club members, Reid Fraser, also received a feature on the website Stanceworks, for his 240sx.

2014 was a busy year for Sumospeed. Club member Danny Domenech had started his business, 945 Garage, in late 2013, and was putting together and driving his RX-7 in preparation to compete in US Drift, Stephen Knoop sold his world famous and magazine featured 240sx and was beginning to make plans for a new project, and many new faces and cars were coming into the club. Springfest achieved a new level, changing venues again, and into one that brought an indoor element to the event for the first time, The Virginia Beach Convention Center. Super Street provided the event’s second magazine feature for the event, which was a resounding success. The ice cream socials grew to a size that began to cause problems, the toy drive was a successful as usual, and the poker run began to fall off a bit numbers wise. Many long term builds were finishing up and new members/vehicles were coming into the fold, positioning Sumospeed for a big season in 2015.

The team’s first event for 2015 was Hyperfest, which took place at Virginia International Raceway in May. Sumospeed operated the car show portion of the event and club member Daniel Summers worked the drift portion of the event with his organization, US Drift. The club used the opportunity to promote for Springfest and sell merchandise. May 2015 also brought a new event under the Sumospeed umbrella, Night Moves. Acting as a replacement for the ice cream socials, which grew to the point that the normal venues at which they were normally held could not handle the quantity of vehicles, these new meets are being held at the Virginia Beach Sportsplex. The first Night Moves Meet, and all that have followed since, have drawn in 600+ vehicles, featured food, music, RC drifting, and vendors. With June brought Springfest, which has expanded into a second hall in the convention center, and featured the strongest showing up club vehicles we had been able to put forth at a single event. It was also covered in an issue of Super Street Magazine, making it the third straight year of magazine coverage.

Also gracing the pages of Super Street in 2015 were two more club vehicles belonging to Mike Torres and Andrew Bannister. Their S13 features marked the fourth and fifth club cars to make it into a print publication, which is a huge honor for Sumospeed.

In a very sad and unfortunate turn of events, club member Stephen James was once again forced into a fight for his life against cancer. In a show of support, the team, led by Danny Domenech, began to work on Stephen’s LS400 project in hopes to have it completed when he was able to return to normal life. We all pooled resources and donated parts, time, and money to get the car assembled, which included swapping a LS1 engine into the chassis. Although he was able to see the car nearly complete, sit in it, and hear it fire, he sadly passed in late 2015 before seeing it reach completion. It was a huge shot to many in the team that were very close to him The entire team cruised together to Stephen’s celebration of life ceremony in a show of support for our fallen friend and his family. Danny completed the LSLS and continued to drive it in honor Stephen and to represent what he wanted to do with the car.

We saw growth on the event side of things in 2016 and began to test the water for new events. We added a third hall for the indoor portion of Springfest bringing the total space up to roughly 115,000 sq. ft., while still maintaining the entire north side parking lots for the outdoor portion of the show. Night Moves also continued to see steady attendance and added interest from local vendors interested in coming out and taking advantage of the crowd. We also held Elite 75, a brand new indoor event held at the Chesapeake Conference Center in April of 2016. The event did see some hiccups on the organizational side but overall the event was a success and received positive feedback from those in attendance. With the uptick in events and the growing collection of merchandise and supplies to support them, we, for the first time, began renting space to act as our “HQ”. This allowed us to consolidate all of our materials in one place and gave us a place to meet together in a planning/organizational manner.

2017 was an up and down year for the club. We opened strong, with successful Night Moves meets leading up to our largest Springfest yet. We secured all four halls of the building bringing the indoor portion of the event up to 150,000 sq. ft. and added a drift demo in conjunction with close friends of the team, USdrift. The demo was a huge success with the crowd but due to some organizational shortcomings by us and complaints from the surrounding neighbors, we were forced to end it early and unfortunately not able to do it moving forward. We also attempted to put together Tracktoberfest, a proposed event that would feature drifting, road racing, drag racing, and an indoor/outdoor car show. Do to a lack of interest and registrations, we were forced to cancel the event, which was a shot to the pride for the team and a lesson in “biting off more than you can chew”.

Sumospeed went international in 2018 with long time member, Erasmo Rios, starting Sumospeed Spain. He began to build his own roster and they started to organize successful drift events near Madrid, garnering a growing reputation due to their professionalism and organization. Back in the states, Springfest, despite no longer having the drift demo, still saw record numbers in vehicle registration, spectator count, and was garnering support from large scale vendors like Toyo Tires for the first time. We also brought back the Sumospeed Yahtzee run, which we hadn’t had since 2014, with solid attendance. Night Moves began to see a drop off in attendance unfortunately, with contributing factors being upkeep issues at the venue and just an overall saturation with running them nearly once a month through much of the year.

For 2019, we shifted to an official schedule to help lessen the load on our staff and be able to let everyone know what our plan was for the entire season. This new schedule reduced the number our event counts to at maximum, one a month. We reduced the number of Night Moves meets per season, giving them more value, and added a Yahtzee run as well as a brand new show, Beach Bash. The smanller number of Night Moves increased our attendance at each and also generated more interest from vendors throughout the year. We made a major change in the outdoor portion of Springfest, shifting from the north parking lots to directly onto 19th street in front of the venue. The shift was a huge boost to that portion of the event and the feedback was overwhelmingly strong. In July of 2019, we hosted our first car wash in honor of Stephen James in conjunction with Detail Garage Virginia Beach and raised $1000 for the American Brain Tumor Association. September brought Beach Bash, our first event out of the state of Virginia. An outdoor car show sponsored by Fortune Auto hosted at the beautiful Soundside Event Site in Nags Head, North Carolina. The event had a solid turnout and positive feedback and we hope to make it a staple on our schedule for years to come. In the fall of 2019, we were approached by The Garage Brewery in Chesapeake, Virginia, in regard to hosting a monthly meet at their business. This idea developed into Pints & Pistons, a monthly meet of car enthusiasts much in the vein of Cars & Coffee. The meets were wildly successful and continue to be very popular for the local car community.

We push to move forward into 2020 with more successful events and good time! Thank you for all of your support through the years and to all of our fantastic club members!