History
Livernois Vehicle Development began its history as a part of a larger company, Livernois Engineering Company. Livernois Engineering began in 1950 in the areas of die design and die build.
In 1958, the company branched out with its own product line of portable transfer dies under the name of Livernois Automation. This was the world's first in portable die transfer systems. This product line was introduced into the global market and gave Livernois world wide recognition. The next area of growth began in the early 1960’s with product design opportunities in the heat exchange area for Ford Motor Company. This allowed us to grow another division that specialized in building production equipment and tooling for heat exchangers, such as, radiators, condensers, heater cores for the OEM market as well building prototypes and low volume production. As the product design needs grew, so did Livernois Engineering with the addition of another company – Livernois Design and Vehicle Company. This group had primary responsibilities for engineering and build programs related to the production of new vehicles. Livernois began specializing in chassis and power train applications. It was often asked to provide employees on site at customer locations during program launch. The facilities included an engineering center equipped with various software versions and computer aided design stations. It housed many build programs for prototype support and niche vehicle lines. The entire Livernois complex grew to approximately $100 million in sales and over 1000 employees.
Then in the mid 1990’s, Livernois Engineering began to divest its business units to other third party companies. In some cases the market changed and services were not needed in their original scope.
In 2000, Livernois Vehicle Development was purchased by one of the previous operating family members, Norma Wallis and became a new stand alone company with a renewed focus on customer services and customer needs. The newly redesigned and reorganized company embarked on a program of growth and customer satisfaction. Today, we are an ISO 9000 certified tier-one automotive engineering services supplier, having achieved both the Ford Q-1 award and received the highest customer satisfaction rating the Ford supplier commodity base, for two years in a row. In April of 2003, Livernois Vehicle Development was awarded the World Supplier Excellence Award by Ford Motor Company for outstanding performance in cost, quality and timing for the year 2002. (Only 41 global suppliers received any type of award.)
In 2001 the company also branched out into the high performance business, by creating another company, called Livernois Motorsports. This company builds complete race and street motors, builds CNC cylinder heads, operates a complete engine machine shop and offers a wide array of installations services including superchargers, turbo’s, engine tuning and other specialty performance parts. The company has two vehicle dynamometers, including one portable that is used for car shows and special events and the other built into a specially designed room. The company also houses an engine dynamometer for testing and accuracy on all motors.
In 2005, the company also added a line of retail high performance stores to sell performance aftermarket parts and offer the market place a technical marketing strategy in this industry. Three locations are in operational to date, Roseville, Livonia and Dearborn Heights. The company plans more stores in the near future.