Cordes Performance Racing, Arizona Shop Scorches the Competition
Little did Joe Cordes of Cordes Performance Racing know that an interest in making cars go faster would allow the Arizona State University graduate to start up a high powered shop in Tempe, AZ. Now his workmanship is in demand across the United States and beyond.
Like many, Cordes enjoyed tinkering with cars and making them faster. As he gained experience on his own car, others saw what he was doing and asked for his help. He had been involved with cars for the past thirteen years and after graduating from ASU with a business degree, his father encouraged him to start up a shop, saying “I think you are on to something.”
That something allowed Cordes to form Cordes Performance Racing in 2012, and recently expanded this year into a new shop in Tempe, Arizona with 7,135 square feet for his four full time employees. Cordes enjoys making cars go faster than stock, noting that “it doesn’t bore me.”
His exploits have gained him publicity around the World Wide Web and he works on cars from across the country. His cars, both personal and customer’s, are frequent visitors to the speedway events like the No Fly Zones produced by Omega Motorsport and at Street Car Takeover events. He also has shipped cars to the Middle East and is wrapping up working on an Escalade that will ship to the owner in Australia. Cordes notes that working with long distance customers is in many aspects easier, as they have sought him out and already respect his talents.
Presently a customer’s Cadillac CTS-V holds that state record for being the fastest with a recorded 9.12 quarter mile and a top end speed of 190 mph in the half mile. His personal car is a C5 Corvette that puts down 1240 horsepower to the rear wheels and roars out to 190 mph. Cordes has developed a great reputation among the CTS-V crowd and is sought out for power add-ons.
Cordes enjoys working on all makes and is typically booked out for three to four months on builds. The shop provides custom tuning, machine work, full race builds and of course an in house dyno to make the magic happen. He also hosts “dyno day” events for car clubs and friends.
Depending on what is requested he could do a CTS-V in a week, while his personal Corvette took three weeks to change out. Cordes notes that the newer Mustangs are easy to power into the 9’s with simple changes to the fuel delivery system, adding a blower and changing out the torque converter. Everything else can stay stock including the exhaust. Dang!
One of Cordes’ customers bought one of the first C7 Corvettes in the country and immediately brought it to Cordes to play with and use as a test vehicle to try out new parts. Now it is easy for Cordes to get performance from these new Corvettes into the low 600 horsepower range with his tweaks. Presently no Arizona car has bested the 200 mph record but he’s confident a new build “Bigfoot” will soon shatter that record as they fine tune some settings and the Arizona climate cools down.
Cordes also has developed some parts for the performance crowd that he sells on his website. We suspect as the speeds increase, so will interest in Cordes Performance Racing. Here’s hoping that Joe Cordes doesn’t get bored soon.
