After 19 years in business in a tight leased space in Kennewick, a performance car service and parts shop is planning to move to a building of its own in the Horn Rapids area of Richland. 

Owner Reid Lunde launched Kaizen Speed LLC as a 23-year-old and built the business bit by bit. 

“Every time I’ve had a dollar, I put a dollar back into the business. I bought a piece of equipment or paid for some education, built a race car,” he said. 

The business’s name comes from the Japanese term for “continuous improvement,” and that’s been its aim.

“We’re trying to keep our foot on the throttle,” he said.

While the business has grown bigger in the last two decades, it’s not enormous, Lunde said. 

Hiring and retaining in the industry is difficult and with the expenses of construction, this is the first time Kaizen Speed has had the means to launch a building of its own.  

Lunde said it’s like kicking off “career 2.0 at 43 years old.”

Performance shop

Kaizen Speed focuses on performance shop work – making performance cars faster. 

“This whole game is all about who can make the most power reliably over time,” Lunde said. Most vehicles they get are newer street cars that drag race, he said. 

Their work includes putting aftermarket parts on a vehicle and ensuring they all work well together, but the company also designs and sells its own products to make cars faster or easier to work on. 

The business operates two separate brands out of the same space: Kaizen Speed, which focuses on late model domestic cars, and KS Tuned, which is more focused on part sales Honda drag racing. 

Every day, Kaizen Speed’s six employees have to push 10 inoperable cars in or out of the shop to work on anything because of the limited space.

Lunde said it’s been inefficient for them, so it’s always been the dream to build their own facility. It’s taken 20 years to get to the point where they’re able to make that dream happen.

Reid Lunde operates both Kaizen Speed and KS Tuned, servicing and making new parts for performance vehicles.

| Photo by Rachel Visick

New building

Construction on Kaizen Speed’s new building at 2589 Robertson Drive kicked off in 2025 and the company hopes to move in by May or June, with operations up and running by July. 

The new building costs almost $2.1 million, according to city building permits, and will total around 13,000 square feet. But it’s not just for Kaizen Speed. Lunde dubbed the new building a “performance complex.”

Kaizen Speed will operate out of a 10,500-square-foot space, while two 1,300-square-foot spaces are available to lease to other tenants, hopefully to related businesses. There are already several services that Kaizen Speed outsources, including tires, alignments and detailing. 

Welcoming one of those businesses to a leased space in Richland improves efficiency for Kaizen Speed and helps offset costs, while the businesses leasing spaces will have guaranteed business and reduced risk. 

The leased spaces will only offset some costs, but Kaizen Speed is able to build the new space thanks to a Small Business Administration 504 loan with a 25-year term. 

The new space also will have other features, including a separate room for the dynamometer, which gauges a vehicle’s horsepower in a process which can be very loud. A separate room will allow a better work environment for technicians. 

Kaizen Speed will also be able to put more focus on its prototyping and product design. 

It needs to increase business at the new location to make the investment worth it, and Lunde said he’ll likely hire three more people in the new space. 

Meanwhile, Kaizen Speed will work with Twin City Metals, the owner of the Kennewick space, to find an automotive tenant to replace them so that lifts and other specialized improvements won’t have to be removed from the building. 

World class

While Lunde said there are other performance shops in the Tri-Cities area, it’s a difficult industry to survive in, and he’s seen many shops come and go in his time. 

Their dynamometer remains a key tool – it was the second in the Tri-Cities when they got it, Lunde said, and now it’s one of several. 

Kaizen Speed also excels at calibration, or telling the vehicle’s computer how all of the aftermarket parts work together. 

“Just like anything, you can do it right or you can do it wrong, and there’s few people that know how to do it right. We’re one of those people,” Lunde said. 

Kaizen Speed also sets itself apart with a big-picture goal. The shop isn’t just a local business, but a regional one, with 60% of business coming from Seattle and Portland, Lunde said. 

And their reach doesn’t stop at the boundaries of the Pacific Northwest.  

“We want to continue to make products and make more products that are used by all the shops around the world,” Lunde said. “That’s what we do to a small extent now and we intend to grow that significantly. That’s the ultimate goal, is to be known as a reliable supplier of aftermarket parts worldwide that are designed in-house.”

Go to: kaizenspeed.com.