I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Eric and Marc Kozeluh, the two brothers who make up Twins Turbo (and are better known as GRIM and KOZ), for the better part of 13 years, at least as long as I’ve been writing for Super Street. From their humble beginnings at Vinny Ten’s Performance Factory, then moving westward to join RPS and Chris Rado’s drag team, the boys have always been into something good. Always hardworking and seeking the next big project, which led them to their own venture: Twins Turbo. Put simply: these are guys who love to build cars and have a fantastic story to tell, being that it’s hard to find fabricators in the US who do work this good and are still in business. You need to know their story, too.
We came out to California not knowing what was going to happen; we just rolled the dice and took our chances. The industry was booming at that time, so we were able to make a pretty nice living for ourselves; a couple TV spots and whatnot. The economy is pretty poor for people in our industry now, but we still make a living doing what we love doing. We have a good reputation for doing good work, and our customers come from around the globe. I feel we’ve paid our dues and have set ourselves in the upper echelon of fabrication.
We don’t have time to sit around selling parts. We like to work in the shop, create something cool and go to the racetrack.
I spent the last 10 years of my life trying to improve myself, my techniques, afford better materials, basically strive to do everything better. I always try to learn something new. You can love what you do, but if you don’t offer a realistic set of skills to your customer, there’s no use in doing this. There are a lot of fabricators who I look up to that do an awesome job. There’s always a way you can learn that’s better than what you know. I’m always looking at other people’s work at the track so I can pick up ideas on how to solve problems. - GRIM
What inspires us? Hot rod stuff, man. We’ve been reading Hot Rod for years and recently they’ve been getting into turbochargers. Hot rod builders put an extreme amount of detail into their builds. Those dudes take their shit seriously; their customers take their shit seriously. Not to take away from what you guys are doing, but the import mags in general, I’ve gotten sick of. I’m tired of seeing cockpits from a F16 and these products from Japan that will supposedly make your car better or faster. I’d rather see a pile of metal turned into art, and there’s not a lot of that in our industry.
It doesn’t matter where you come from as long as your car is something that’s unique and interesting. There are people who were only around to hang out, have something to do and now they’ve moved onto something else. The love is what weeds people out.
We had the opportunity to move on, but you have to dig deep and find your own path if you’re going to make it in this world. There are months where we could’ve used more money, sure, but having complete control over your destiny and being your own boss is pretty important, and takes a lot of work.