History

Building Performance Engines since 1978

Located in Berkeley, California, “Hasselgren Racing Engines” was founded in 1978 by Paul Hasselgren. Hasselgren became known for creating high performance, reliable, and competitive engines running in a variety of racing formats. This included high level professional motorsports: Grand-Am Rolex Cup and Continental Cup, Formula Atlantic, Trans-Am and Club, Vintage Racing and Formula Drift.

For a 10-year period spanning 1995-2005, Hasselgren was best known as the leading Toyota engine builder for the Formula Atlantic series, a feeder series for Champ Car. Hasselgren received “Engine Builder of the Year” award for eight consecutive years 1996-2003. In 2004 and 2005, Hasselgren was the sole supplier of engines to that series and at its peak was supplying 25 cars simultaneously. Strong ties were forged with teams and team owners who have retained Hasselgren as their engine builder of choice, even as they moved to different racing series and race cars and engine types.

In 2006 Hasselgren made its debut in the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series by supplying Pontiac engines to one of its former Atlantic teams running in Daytona Prototype class. In 2007 Hasselgren’s engine finished 2nd in the prestigious 24-hours of Daytona race. In 2008, the Hasselgren Pontiac engine finished second at Montreal in one of the closest finishes in Rolex history and won the Formula Drift Championship.  Hasselgren also supplied Porsche 997 engines which resulted in first and second place finishes for a team that was struggling with reliability issues before coming to Hasselgren. In 2009, Hasselgren Toyota Engines won the National SCCA Runoffs at Road America, the SCCA Triple Crown and the SCCA Super Sweep.

See NBC’s interview with Hasselgren in the summer of 2005: