A Letter from the CEO

What a Ride

Over three decades in this industry is a lifetime. In the beginning, calling it an "industry" was a stretch. We’ve watched it grow from grassroots to global, and we’re honored from our humble roots to have remained a major driver of the evolution. Thanks for your interest and support along the way.

From Philosophy to Performance

After graduating with a BA in Philosophy, and with no career tract defined, I spent a year traveling around North America in a 1972 VW Camper Bus, learning more about practical mechanics while keeping that ride on the road for thousands of miles than I ever would in a classroom.

Once the road trip adventure ended, I found myself in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. There, I rented a 100 square foot converted horse stable, with no running water and a single electrical outlet, as a hobby shop where I could keep wrenching on cars. 

Soon after, in 1991, hobby turned to vocation: I was fired from a waitering job and decided to see if my collegiate "problem-solving" classroom training actually worked. I launched a business in that old horse stable. I figured that since my interests at the time were restoring Air-Cooled Beetles and Buses and modifying Water-Cooled Mk2 GTIs, it only made sense to call the company Air and Water Enterprises.

The Alleyway Years

1993 brought my first employee, and our origins in repair and restoration gave way to our next chapter: custom performance installations and development. Our “new” 500 square foot facility, just down the alley from the original horse stable, gave us some room to start building a solid tuning reputation. We were swapping in crazy camshafts, assembling larger displacement engines, porting heads, building custom geared transmissions, and retrofitting later model fuel injection systems into older chassis.

As word spread locally, I realized that it was time for Air and Water Enterprises to start growing – the work quality was unmatched, and the demand was increasing exponentially. We were selling performance. A lot of it.

The Tech Revolution

The mid-90s brought the industry, and Air and Water Enterprises, online. Thanks to venues like GTI-VR6 listserv, the Corrado-Club of America, and several VW newsgroups, the Air and Water Enterprises name went national. Online, I met Garrett Lim, a displaced California native going to a local medical school, who had a special talent for fuel injection chip tuning. His company, GIAC, partnered with us, and we became the test facility for this new breed of tuning technology. The reputation of Air and Water Enterprises grew wildly as early successes from the partnership were publicized nationally. As the first official GIAC dealer, we helped pioneer a completely new industry segment: performance fuel injection software tuning.

Expansion and Evolution

By the late 90s, we dropped repair work entirely to focus solely on performance. We launched one of the industry’s first e-commerce sites and rebranded as AWE Tuning.

We moved to a 2,500-square-foot shop in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia and soon found ourselves at the forefront of Corrado VR6 and Audi A4 1.8T tuning. We became warehouse distributors for H&R, Bilstein, and Borla, and installed our first chassis dyno in 1999. 

By 2001, we weren't just selling other people’s parts—we were officially a manufacturer, We already had a few of our own branded products such as short shifters and lighting kits, and it made sense to continue to expand our parts offerings with products made exactly to the standards we had honed over years of “being in the trenches.” 

Movin' On Up

By 2002, we had managed to create several new AWE Tuning products, including exhaust systems for the 2.7T Audi B5 S4, and it was time to enter the discerning Porsche market. Our fanatical commitment to quality made the move to the world’s most revered marque a natural fit. Our exhausts quickly became the U.S. benchmark, rivaling the demand for our VW and Audi lines.

Success moved us again, this time to a leased 12,500 square foot facility just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in Willow Grove. We enjoyed being recognized as a household name in the VW, Audi, and Porsche tuning market. An AWD dyno test cell was created, and an installation facility was created as a paradise to anyone who has ever turned a wrench professionally. Our manufacturing process gained the square footage needed to allow a smooth and orderly flow for the production work that was now delivering almost 200 AWE Tuning branded products across the three automotive marques we served. AWE Tuning was gracing the pages of international automotive journals and forged the way for an entrance into McLaren, and then BMW.

More Space. There is No Substitute

As the demand for our manufactured lines grew exponentially, the next chapter was imminent: AWE Tuning "5.0". 

In 2015, we purchased a 33,000 square foot facility on a nearly 5 acre campus in Horsham PA, and equipped it with cutting-edge robotics, laser scanning CMMs, CNC bending machinery, rapid prototyping, vertical machining, inventory staging, four R&D lifts, and much more. High-Performance Nirvana.

Hello, America

The irony of being a made-in-America manufacturer that only serviced European vehicles was never lost on me. In 2017 we officially dropped tuning from our offerings and dove into the domestic market: Ford Mustang.

Next, Ford Focus, a market that allowed us to stretch our “domestic” legs even more in the familiar hot hatch segment. In short order, we grew into bringing our unique blend of performance, quality, and sound to the Camaro market, the Subaru market, the Corvette market, the Mopar market, the Civic market, the Toyota market, and the Cadillac market.

Then, we smashed through another barrier with our entrance into the growing offroad segment, with our successful Ford Raptor, F-150, Ranger, Jeep, Bronco, and RAM, Tacoma, and Tundra performance exhaust lines, bringing the same signature sound and performance to the dirt that we brought to the track decades ago. 

And there’s more ahead.

I’d like to thank

At nearly 1,000 part numbers in our catalog, I’m honored and humbled that the AWE name has become synonymous with quality and customer service within the multi-billion dollar automotive aftermarket industry, while remaining independently owned and operated.

I’m just a car guy who turned into a businessman, and without the unfailing commitment and enthusiasm of the AWE Team, I’d still be in that converted horse stable in Philly.

Our 'Top Workplaces' award is a testament to the talent we’ve assembled. We’ve recruited a world-class team of mechanical engineers, acoustic technicians, certified welders, metal fabricators, marketers, and managers, handpicked from some of the best corporations in the world. We couldn’t be here without them. 

And we couldn’t be here without you.

Thanks for visiting,
Todd Sager, President and CEO