About Us

Mariah Motorsports located in beautiful Santa Barbara, California has been tuning RX-7's for 25 years. Mariah was started in the early 1980's as a division of Design Energy, Inc. We have been serving the RX-7 community in the city of Santa Barbara for those same 25 years.

Special thanks to Mr. David Lane for his contribution to this section.
Mariah Staff and Company Background
	Jim Hagerty
Principal and Head Engineer, comes from an automotive family. His father worked for GM and his sister was Zora Arkus-Duntov's (father of the Corvette) secretary. Jim earned his Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Lawrence Institute and GM Institute in 1965. He rewarded himself by purchasing a 1966, 427 Stingray roadster. One day, while enjoying the back roads, Jim happened across an overlook to Waterford Hills Race track. He stopped to see what was going on--captivated by the small sedans and sports cars on the track. Someone pulled up and asked about the Stingray. It was a particularly desirable example of the marque, and the gentleman offered to buy it. Not one to agonize over decisions, and having already decided he wanted to go racing, Jim sold the car on the spot. He used the money to buy a Honda S600. If you are not familiar with these cars, they were Honda's first sports cars. Very small and light with a 600cc engine. Jim raced the Honda for 3 years, cementing in one of Jim's core philosophies: Less is more. Working as an independent consultant, Jim took an assignment at the Santa Barbara office of AMF, which was doing government sponsored safety-related work on automobiles. Jim liked what he saw of this California region, and eventually moved there.
	Dan McCue (retired)
Principal and Head Designer has a degree in industrial design from the California State University in Long Beach. Dan has over 30 years of industrial design and fabrication under his belt. His imagination and sense of aesthetics is behind all of Mariah Motorsports body kits. Dan takes special care to get the all the details done right. No body parts leave the Mariah factory with out getting cleared by him. Besides being the resident artist, Dan trains and works with falcons (birds, not old Fords) and owns horses. He takes his birds into the field by means of a converted VW Transporter. This amazing vehicle now sports a 13B rotary conversion. See Dan's Van for full details.
	Josh
Chief Mechanic and Fabricator

COMPANY
In 1978, Jim was working as VP of Engineering for a small design/consulting firm. The VP of Design at that time was Dan McCue. Eventually Jim and Dan struck off on their own, and incorporated their new company under the name of Design Energy, Inc. Design Energy , Inc. worked on various projects--many involving injection molding and thermo forming of interior products for busses and airplanes--one of the most familiar being one of the original designs of the trams at Universal Studios. Design Energy has also consulted and worked with the U.S. Military on special projects. One of the companies latest ventures was in custom coachwork arena, converting Chevy Suburban's into luxury limousines. In 1980, Design Energy, Inc. was approached by Rotary Engineering--also in Santa Barbara--and asked to develop a wide body for 1st gen RX-7s. Dan designed the body panels, and they were produced in house. Design Energy sold them under the name of "Mariah" (a reference to the wind and, by association, aerodynamics). Rotary Engineering sold them under the name of "Image." Other "Mariah" products followed, and people started bringing their cars to Mariah for conversion. This was one of the rare cases when "function followed form," because customers started requesting performance upgrades to go with their newly gussied up cars. Design Energy decided there was a need for a separate division for motorsports only, so the Mariah Motorsports division was born. Mariah didn't want to re-invent some of the high quality products that were already out there so, Mariah made use of, and makes use of, available after-market parts--taking particular care to do immaculate work with the installation, and modifying the various items as needed. Eventually, the company started producing turn-key Mariah Automobiles--including suspension, interior, exterior, and mechanical parts sourced from other suppliers. These cars could be licensed as "Mariah's" (as opposed to "Mazda's") due to the companies status as a "Small Manufacturer." As you see, Mariah Motorsports is more than just beautiful bodies. Mariah Motorsports hasn't look back since that first year and we continue to innovate and design on the RX-7 to this day.