AUTOWEEK

Osh Minelian says he's 43 going on 18, which is about the right age to be if you're souping up BMW's for a living.

Osh got his start, like most great tuners, working with his dad in the family garage project car.

"My dad engineered chrome plating fixtures. That was his day job, and his hobby was cars," said Minelian. "My first 
experience working on cars was at 13 when I helped my dad rebuild a Porsche cabriolet. We restored the whole car."
Osh liked it, not only the mechanical pricess of the restoration, but the lure of German cars. "When I grew up they 
were very obscure. There weren't a lot of Porsche and BMW's. We were the only family in the area [North Providence, 
R.I., 'You know that show, Providence? That's where I grew up'] that had a VW and a Porsche."

So the die was cast early. The Minelians moved to California in 1976 and opened an automotive repair business, specializing in, you guessed it, European cars. That included an occasional Italian job. "We worked on Brian Wilson's first Ferrari once. He just came in right off the street with a fried fuse box. We put a Porsche fuse box in it and it ran great. He kept coming back after that."

Minelian worked there until the early '80s, when, lured by the BMW 2002, he went to work at a BMW dealership's service department as a shop foreman and service adviser. Within two years he opened his own shop. Keeping with family tradition, he called it Eurotech Automotive. That worked out well--so well that he was bought by Disney. Sort of.

"Back when [Michael] Eisner took over, BMWs were so popular in the entertainment business that Disney had 70 BMWs among its executives. Our shop was invited to open a shop right on their lot."

Hollywood, go figure.

Eurotech Automotive garnered a lot of experience working on Disney bimmers., from Eisner's E30 convertable ("He was so tall he couldn't fit in is, so we fabricated special sear mechanisms for him.") to Roy Disney's M6.

"It was a cool, neat thing. It was a lot of fun. I met a lot of people in the entertainment industry. I remember Darryl Hannah, she had just finished that movie, SPlash, and she came in to pick up her car. I didnt't know it was her. As she was walking away I asked one of the guys i my shop who that was and just shook his head and laughed."

 Disney deal lasted five years, and they will send their cars to Minelian. But as much fun as it was working on them, Minelian finally saw it as a distraction from his ultimate goal.

"I wanted to have a European tuning house, I wanted a high performance tuning shop. There weren't any around at the time."

So four years ago he opened Race Marque Systems.

"I changed the name from Eurotech to Race Marque. There were a lot of Eurotechs around the country, and we needed something you could attach a product to."

Now, finally, Minelian is doing what he always wanted to do: BMWs. Race Marque specializes in BMW engines, supercharging in particular. He worked with Vortech to develop superchargers for a wide variety of BMW powerplants, from six-cylinder M3s to the new V8, with several applications for the older M cars, both for the street and track use. He says he used some Dinan parts "a long time ago" but doesn't any longer.

"I have my own ideas about how to do things,and my own ambitions. We do all our own software, eveything. Now I guess you could say I'm a competitor [to Dinan]. We're all still friends, but now it's difficult to get into a conversation with one of them because we can't talk about  how we do things and how they do things."

The way Minelian does things is power, lots of power.

The Race Marque Systems M Roadster we borrowed for an afternoon started out with a nice 3.2 liter motor. Race Marque stroked it to 3.5 liters and reinforced it throughout to handle the added twist. Compression was lowered to 8.5:1 and the engine benefits from the supercharger and cools it before forcing it into the manifold.

 The resulting 482 horsepower is routed through the stick five-speed manual, but a six-speed is on its way. Between the engine and the transmission is a dual disc clutch assembly, a Race Marque product that can handle 800 lb-ft of torque. Getting that to the wheels evenly is a Quaife differential, an automotive torque-biasing differential that routes up to 75 percent of the torque to the sticky wheel.

How does that feel on the road? Like an M Roadster, only more so. With it's race-carlike engagement, the dual disc clutch is mighty tough to master, especially in the short time we had the car, but Minelian says it's a faster, better system than stock. The rear differential meant we never spun the tires on our tenure, except when they spun together as we learned the clutch. A more manageable unit  is available, of course. Just about anything you want is available.

The power is indeed, impressive, especially as the tach climbs past 4500 rpm, and the car surges forward. The short wheelbase of the M Roadster means a slighty skittish yaw rate, but we expected that. Tweaks to the shocks, springs and anitroll bars can make your car meet your own needs.

Minelian has plans for Race Marque Systems BMW race car for the 2000 World Challenge. He's considering a European M3 with a GT3 motor almost 400 hp, or maybe he'll supercharge an M5 motor, or maybe the U.S. version of the M3 engine. It's still up in the air. He has decided one thing.

"The driver would not be me"

Why not, we asked

"Leo Fender made the greatest guitar in the world, but depended on Jimi Hendrix to play it"

--Mark Vaughn, photography by Bill Delaney