In the Heads Up Racing world, Tony Bischoff has done it all – from building some of the fastest engines in the NMCA/NMRA series, to driving his famous yellow Cougar. Tony started his engine building career at the age of 22 and a few years later, in 1985, opened BES Race Engines.

In the early years, BES handled stock engine rebuilds and general repair, with a few race motor builds in the mix. As Bischoff added more machine shop equipment and gained experience, he started to take on more race engine work until it eventually became the primary focus of his business. Add in a couple of NMCA and NMRA championships, and it provided the ultimate calling card for his Indiana shop. Recently the shop has been busy with a variety of builds, including several Chevy LS motors along with a variety of other projects mixed in, including: a Subaru WRX boxer engine; a 500 cubic inch NHRA Pro Stock motor; and a NASCAR Camping World Series Truck engine.

For more information about BES Racing Engines, visit their website.

(Top) BES Racing is located in a 12,000 square foot building just west of Cincinnati in Guilford, IN. (Bottom) Bischoff supervises his BES crew on one of many engine projects. Photo courtesy of BES Racing.

Not content to just work out of the shop, BES has gone head-to-head against some of the country’s best engine builders in the Jegs/Popular Hot Rodding Engine Masters Challenge. To nobody’s surprise, BES won the 2006 & 2007 competition and was runner up in 2008.

If you’re not familiar with the Engine Masters Challenge, the engine building competition consists of thirty of the best race engine builders assembling the ultimate engine for horsepower supremacy. As a credit to BES’s versatility, they won in 2006 with a Chevy Small block engine, and in 2007 with a Ford small block.

Bischoff recently retired his 2002 Cougar from competition after two crashes in the ADRL series.

For the last few years, when Bischoff was not running BES, he’s been at the wheel of his 2002 Mercury Cougar Pro 5.0 car. The big block nitrous assisted Ford powerplant in an aerodynamic body was always in contention to win.
His 2007 NMRA Pro 5.0 Championship proved his engine tuning and driving skills. In 2009, Bischoff embarked on a limited ADRL Extreme Ten Five campaign, with limited success. He wrecked the car at Martin, Michigan and again at Madison, Illinois, and has since announced his retirement from driving.

Since hanging up his helmet, Bischoff plans to focus 100% of his attention on building and tuning race engines for his customers.

Recently, Street Legal TV had the opportunity to talk to Tony about his current and future plans.

PowerTV: BES has participated in the Engine Masters Challenge in the past. What are your plans for this year?

Tony Bischoff: We are building an LS7 style motor this year. We are running a little bit behind and are just now ordering parts, so we will be kind of rushing on that. It starts on October 5th and we’ll be ready.

PowerTV: You guys have typically done Fords?

Tony Bischoff: Yeah, we won one year with the small block Ford motor. We won with the small block Chevrolet the year before that. So this year, my guys decided we wanted to do a late model engine and they decided the LS style was the way to go.

PowerTV: What’s the majority of your engine business?

Tony Bischoff: We do just about any kind of motor you can think of. Our main business is drag race motors, but we also do some street motors and a few restoration engines. We do some circle track motors for the late model cars as well. Pulling motors has been big for us too.

PowerTV: What are the challenges of competing against Jegs and Summit and the factory crate engine programs, where price is the big draw?

Tony Bischoff: We can build engines for around the same cost as those guys, but there’s not that much profit margin in it for us. You start doing engines and every one we build, we try and do the next one better. You spend so much time building engines that you can’t hardly compete with the crate motors anymore. If customers could really see the difference with the effort we put into our engines – well, people don’t realize how much more work it takes to make an engine perfect. We use our years of experience selecting parts instead of throwing a bunch of parts together. If they could spend some time here, watching us assemble an engine using the same parts as the high volume stuff, and then go throw them on the dyno, they’d see that our engine makes more horsepower and it lasts longer. They may spend a thousand dollars more for our time, but it’s worth it in the long run.

PowerTV: Tell us about the switch this year from NMCA to ADRL Xtreme Ten Five class.

Tony Bischoff: I crashed the car twice last year, and I crashed it again this year, and I’m retiring from driving. However, the main reason I did that was because the car actually handled a little bit better on the 10.5 tire. I decided to run more local stuff, and entry to the ADRL races is free. You get paid to qualify, too. I really enjoyed the NMCA races, but financially the ADRL made more sense.

PowerTV:What are the challenges of running an engine shop and racing?

Tony Bischoff: It can overwhelm you. I really enjoy racing – that’s the main reason I do it – but it does take away from my work here. That’s why I only go to about seven or eight races a year. It’s all I can handle.