All photos courtesy of Power Performance News

Lunati Camshafts got their start by Joe Lunati, who was a drag racer and had great success in his racing career. He started off like many racers, battling on the streets. However shortly after that, he moved into legal drag racing. He started by hand making his own drag racing car in his garage to compete in the A Modified class. Back then there wasn’t any Summit Racing or Jegs catalogs to order from. Joe had to build his own parts or buy them from other racers. This first roadster contraption caught most off guard and awarded Joe a slew of wins. 

From there, Joe built himself a funny car. Again, this was all hand built by Joe in his garage as reported from Lunati through Power Performance Online. This time he opted for a Chevy Corvair body. This Corvair was powered by the same potent 327 cubic inch small block that powered his roadster contraption. Most funny cars competing at the time were in the 2,500lb range. Joe was able to keep his fiberglass Corvair to a mere 1,700lbs. This drastic weight reduction offered a huge advantage against the competition. Again, Lunati was highly successful in racing bringing home a ton of wins. 

After running the Corvair, Joe needed to upgrade to keep up with the factory backed Mercury Comets. Going back to his garage, Joe crafted himself a 1967 Camaro funny car. This car was powered by a nitro burning 427 cubic inch big block chevy, with a 6-71 bolted on top of it. The car was wildly successful, even landing him in the 1967 NHRA Funny Car finals. Shortly after that success, the car was destroyed in a wreck. Rather than go out and build another one, Joe started to reflect. He knew that he was lucky to of made it this far, with a lot of other drivers  getting seriously hurt. At this point is when he decided to start building parts for cars instead of race them. 

From the beginning Lunati was always about customer service and helping customers one on one with their camshafts. Being a retired racer, Joe really understood that market. At first he started by re-grinding factory camshafts. With so many different characteristics of a cam, the NHRA was only checking a few things on the cams. He was able to heavily modify the specs the NHRA didn’t check for, which gave his camshafts a huge improvement. At the end of the day it boiled down to almost a half a second quicker on the strip! 

After 30 years of helping racers, Joe sold the company to Holley Performance in 1998. Holley grew the business significantly by offering “off the shelf” performance camshafts as well as the custom ground camshafts to its customers. However in 2007, Lunati was sold by Holley to new owners that continue the Lunati name and product line to this day. 

The new owners were a group of investors but understood the Lunati name and the heritage that it held. Their primary focus is on the racer requesting custom cams, along with following Holley’s growth in “off the shelf” performance cams. We are happy that the Lunati name is still around and that they are helping out racers and the average joes as well!