I'm sure many of you have noticed there are two high performance engine builders in Kingsport, TN with similar names, and this has led to a great amount of confusion.

We are Skip White Performance, NOT White Performance and Machine or Marine or any other similar name. Many customers looking for us online inadvertently find them, thinking we are the same company. Definitely not...there is no connection between the two companies. We don't have a problem with free enterprise (competition). However, when the competition builds their foundation on such things as a name similarity and their supposedly long history of being in business, then we think it's about time we set the record straight.

We have owned White Performance since 2003, with the exception of the machine shop, which was owned by Fred White at the time. He continued to operate the machine shop and build engines for us while we continued selling online under the eBay user ID of skipwhite and the eBay store name of whiteperformance1.

Due to their limited production capability and many disagreements about the engine building process and workmanship, we opted to open a full scale machine shop of our own. Fred White began competing against us even though our contract had a no compete clause in it. Fred White sold his machine shop in 2016.

 As our business grew over the years, we expanded our operation, and have become the number one street rod engine building in the nation. Due to the name similarity, many people looking for us mistakenly contacted Fred's shop. The problem continues to this day and the new owners of Fred's shop reap the benefits from this confusion between the two shops. Fortunately we stay plenty busy throughout the year, but a new problem has come up. We?re getting calls nearly on a daily basis from people that realize there are two shops in this town with very similar names and complain of serious problems in getting their engine in a timely manner from them. They think they purchased their engine or rotating assembly from us. Due to the confusion, there was an increasing amount of negative talk that is starting to reflect on our reputation within the street rod community, when in fact we have a near perfect reputation in this industry.

All in all, we have been in this business for going on 25 years. By putting heart and soul in this company, we have become the number one street rod engine builder in the country. Skip White's passion has been owning and building street rods for 54 years on a personal level. The knowledge he has gained over time has allowed him to venture into this business and succeed to a very high level.

As mentioned above Fred White sold his machine shop to an investor in early 2016. This investor lacks any knowledge of this industry. They continue to use the White Performance & Machine name. Fred White is no longer associated with the company in any way. Their main spiel in advertising is, "In business since 1979," when in fact, we purchased the White Performance company in 2003, with the exception of the machine shop. The great pretenders continued capitalizing from our success, but as mentioned, have been degrading our reputation. (Update, The people that took over Fred Whites machine shop are no longer in business as of the past couple years.) 

FAST FORWARD TO 2026...We have become the largest street rod engine builder and supplier of rotating assemblies in the nation. Our engines, rotating assemblies, and cylinder heads are built to very high standards and shipped to our customers in a timely manner. We are a premier seller on eBay with a 100% positive feedback score of well over 212,000.

Our engines are custom-built to our customers' specifications and are shipped, in general, in 2-3 weeks, perhaps sooner, depending on the season. Our rotating assemblies ship out in about one week, and our heads ship in about a week or less.