The founder of Callaway Cars, Reeves Callaway, will be remembered for his passion for cars, and his innovation in performance kits, writes Chris Perkins for Road & Track.

Callaway, a native of Bryn Mawr, passed away recently at the age of 75 at his home in Newport Beach, California.

Ely “Reeves” Callaway III was born in November 1947 in Bryn Mawr, but was raised in Darien, Connecticut. His father, Ely Callaway, founded the Callaway golf company.

Early on racing was in Reeves’ blood. He would race go-karts as a kid, and in 1973, he won the SCAA Formula Vee championship.

When he realized a professional racing career wasn’t in the cards for him, he decided to use his passion in other ways.

He turned to modifying cars, and his first product was a turbocharger kit for the E21-generation BMW 320i. He started Callaway Cars in 1977 from his garage in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Not long after, he began offering performance kits for other cars. Alfa Romeo was the first to commission a turbocharger kit for the GTV6. The twin-turbo kit he developed for Chevrolet Corvette upped the car’s horsepower from 240 to 382, making it one of the most powerful cars being sold at the time.

Callaway didn’t like to be referred to as a “tuner.” He told Road & Track in 2017, “A tuner takes an aggregate of parts that already exists, bolts them on the automobile, and calls it a customization. Everything we make is made specifically for the car. And we manufacture it ourselves.”

Read more about Callaway in Road & Track.

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