Inside Garage Mahal, DEI is racing 'in a different way' (cont'd)

Today, although the company is a partner in EGR and the Earnhardt-Childress engine consortium, there are no race cars that compete under the DEI banner. A hoped-for Nationwide program with Jeffrey Earnhardt, the Intimidator's grandson, never materialized. The Garage Mahal remains one of the most famous shops in NASCAR, attracting about 135,000 visitors a year. But no race cars have been fielded out of the facility since 2007. In 2008, the final year that DEI had cars competing on NASCAR's top circuit, the vehicles were built across town in another shop that the Earnhardt organization acquired in its 2007 merger with Ginn Racing.

"It is still the Garage Mahal. The name is still the biggest name in racing, no matter what anybody ever says, and you still have a great sense of pride for having worked for that company and been involved with that company," said former DEI driver Regan Smith, now with Furniture Row Racing.

Dale Earnhardt's iconic No. 3 car sits inside the main lobby at DEI.

"I think it would be good to see something racing out of there on a permanent basis. I don't know what's going on. But it's definitely too nice a facility to sit there gathering dust."

Jeff Steiner hears comments like that and tries not to bristle. The executive vice president of DEI knows he's waging a battle of perception in a sport where virtually all the focus is on the race track, and where any entity without an active race program risks being forgotten.

Steiner was hired by Teresa Earnhardt in April of 2009 to reinvent a company that was moving away from direct on-track endeavors, and toward other undertakings like enhancing the Earnhardt legacy and philanthropic efforts. Along the way, he's had to shoot down rumors that DEI has gone out of business, or that the Garage Mahal has become a hollowed-out shell of its former self.

"The fans in a lot cases say, DEI was a Cup team, and it was Junior. And when Dale Jr. left, and we had the changes, and the merger in 2008, they said, 'Well, there's nothing here,' which is far from the truth," Steiner said, sitting at the same large black conference table Earnhardt once used.

"We've changed. We're in racing in a different way."

And yet, it can feel a little strange, walking down empty hallways or past closed-off rooms in a facility meant to employ many more than the 100 who work there now. Steiner, though, has chosen to gaze into that void and see opportunity.

DEI may not have as many employees, it may not field race teams, but it still has resources -- airplanes and parts-building machines and a chassis dynamometer and even a seven-post rig, the latter an exorbitantly expensive but essential simulation tool for competing at NASCAR's highest levels. Steiner looked at all that equipment, looked at how the economy was forcing teams to scale back, and envisioned DEI as a company that could provide for other organizations what they couldn't provide for themselves.

That effort, christened in July of last year as Earnhardt Technologies Group, is Steiner's baby, and it's "99 percent based" out of the Garage Mahal off N.C. Highway 3, he said. Steiner pulls out a list of 30 customers, teams ranging from a few high-profile operations on the Cup tour to others on the Nationwide, Truck, and K&N Pro series.

Walk through the machine shop, and there are rows of gear shifters and sway bars, all being built for other organizations. The group has even branched outside of NASCAR, building parts for military vehicles and the large wheels that roll in swimming pool lane markers. (Continued)