Lord Byron, an English poet and politician once noted “the truth is always strange.” In yet another play on Strange Engineering‘s company name, we quote author KC Randall’s famous saying: “It’s amazing how easy the truth is to accept…no matter how strange.”

J.C. Cascio tells the company’s story in the lead video.

It would seem that truth and Strange are tied together in vocabulary and literature, as the company cherishes being different than the crowd. It is that uniqueness that makes this performance company stand out.

Strange Engineering has grown a lot from Bob Stange’s two-car garage operation in Evanston, Illinois, to an ultra-modern global facility in Morton Grove, Illinois. Stange was born and raised in Chicago, working as a machinist in local machine shops by day. At night he turned into a superhero, making suspension parts for drag cars in his mom’s garage.  

Bob Stange’s first business card. Photo from the Strange Engineering Facebook fan page.

Chris “The Greek” Karamesines tells the story about how back in the late ’50s and early ’60s, he couldn’t get a rearend that would survive the abuse of his Don Maynard tuned Top Fuel car. So he turned to Bob Stange for help. The relationship went from a single rebuilt rearend to a lifelong commitment. “I never broke that rearend and I still have it. I’ve never used anything else but Strange components since,” said Karamesines.

It wasn’t long after that, the hunger for Stange’s rearends grew in the region and beyond. Investing in racing and racers became a normal procedure for the business. In fact, Strange Engineering was the first to field a team that consisted of Sportsman and Pro cars when they backed the Chi-Town Hustler lead Team in the 1980s. 

Needless to say, Strange Engineering has been a long-standing respectable name in the performance industry. The company has grown from those early stages to an industry-leading manufacturing company housed on a 120,000 square foot site. In addition to building dependable performance components, the people there take pride in their continuous passion for the sport of drag racing.

For more information about the company’s line of high-performance components, visit them online at www.strangeengineering.net.