Steve Morris Is A Master Of Building 1,000HP+ Engines
Tucked away on US-31 just south of Muskegon, Michigan, in a 15,000 square foot shop in a Norton Shores industrial complex, Steve Morris Engines (SME) builds and tunes multiple-thousand horsepower engines for a host of the world’s drag racing legends.
Steve Morris has been in the drag racing scene for decades, but started his own performance shop in 2010, in a story quite similar to ours – a passion, a few hundred bucks, and a 20×20’ garage.
Even though less than 100 engines are sold each per year, with less than 10 employees at the shop – the powerplants coming out of the Muskegon-area shop have set many records and won many races, and continue to power some of the fastest vehicles on the planet in their respective categories.
One of the most notable of these accomplishments is Tom Bailey’s street-legal 1969 Camaro.
When combined with Steve’s custom-built SMX racing engine, this car was able to achieve quarter mile drag racing times in UNDER 6 SECONDS, and then drive from racetrack to racetrack, on the street.
For reference, a 2023 Chevrolet Corvette Z06, the fastest production Corvette made and a faster car than most people could handle, takes 10.6 seconds to go the same distance. A Bugatti Chiron Super Sport, the world’s fastest production car, does it in 9.1.
In layman’s terms, Steve Morris Engines can still harvest the power of the entire sun on the drag strip, without needing to be completely rebuilt after every pass, like a Top Fuel racing engine. To say they are ‘amazing engines’ would be an understatement.
Steve Morris also has a growing YouTube channel with 181,000 subscribers as of the time of writing this, and has also built engines for other YouTubers with worldwide acclaim.
One of the most recent examples of this is the engine he built for Cleetus McFarland, a wildly popular YouTuber & drag racer, which went into a 1980s Chevrolet El Camino, aptly named “Mullet”.
Steve posts regular videos about his shop and his engine building process – if you’re interested in learning about what it takes to build engines with thousands of horsepower, no one can talk shop quite like him!
Muskegon, MI Is No Stranger To Performance & Racing
Steve Morris isn’t the only Muskegon staple of going fast, as we are also home to Babbitt’s Sports Center. Home to everything powersports – motorcycles, ATVs, side-by-sides, jetskis, and more, Babbitt’s also hosted a Kawasaki-backed Arenacross motorcycle team that won seven national championships.
In addition, we’re also home to Thunderbird Raceway – a circle track that claims to have hosted over 5,000 races in the Muskegon area over the years.
If that’s not enough horsepower for you, Bike Time should take care of your fix – the annual motorcycle festival hosted in downtown Muskegon, MI has hit attendance figures north of 100,000 people and 75,000 motorcycles from across the country.
Needless to say, Steve is not alone in his love of racing & powerful engines, and we’re grateful to be stationed so close to one of the innovators of our industry!
