Today we’d like to introduce you to Hussain Boxwala
Hi Hussain, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I’ve always had a passion for cars – inspired by my older cousins when I was young. While I didn’t have much money growing up to mod my own cars, I always liked adding a personal touch to the cars I did have. My first car was a 2000 Vogue Silver Metallic (VSM) Acura Integra, with the 4AT and non-VTEC motor for those that know. I loved that car to death and added little things like LED cluster lights, under-dash lighting, and aftermarket wheels. I had so many plans for that car and was an active member on clubintegra.com forums back then. When I graduated, I made the financially responsible decision to sell the car since I didn’t need one as I’d be living in downtown Montreal, and I didn’t have the money to modify that and pay for school at the same time.
I studied aerospace engineering and forgot about cars for awhile. I still had an interest and all, but the idea of buying a car and modifying it was out the window. I had no time and was focused on networking and building my career. I ended up working for Pratt and Whitney and saw how different school vs the real world was very quickly. I did not want to end up sitting behind a desk all day and moving up every 5 years after “putting in my time.” The reality of the commercial aerospace industry is very slow moving with very little innovation.
I ended up taking a job in Houston working as an applications engineer. While working, I bought my very first “new” car off the lot – a 2018 Infiniti Q50, and that’s where it all began. I very quickly got into modifying it, guided by my good friend Musa and my cousin Yusuf. I upgraded the heat exchanger, intakes, exhaust, and very quickly was wanting more power. So then I purchased a JB4 which allows you to trick the ECU into making more boost, and started playing with the custom settings on that. Soon after, my car was performing better than my friends that had similar mods but were fully custom tuned, and that prompted me to dive into the world of tuning myself. My cousin Yusuf helped me with the funds for the initial tuning software purchases from EcuTek, and I soon found myself on their list of “Master Tuners” after submitting my results and datalogs from my personal vehicle and a few close friends that I had tuned.
I also saw a need for a tuning service that prioritized customer service and satisfaction above all else. The norm across the industry, even now, is to wait weeks or months for a reply or revision because “good things take time.” I challenged that notion with 24-48 hour response times, while also having some of the fastest customers and best performing calibrations. And thankfully, along the way, I grew a team that shares the same goal and we’ve kept that promise ever since.
From the handful of customers I started with, the word spread and through good customer service and word of mouth marketing, my business grew until I was able to leave my job and take it on full time. It has now been 5 years since then and I can’t believe the insane success we’ve had. We tune about 1200 VR30s a year, and several hundred more across other engine platforms we support.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Absolutely not. I had so many growing pains trying to establish a system that worked for my employees and my customers. Having 3-4 new custom tune requests a day, and maintaining a 24-48 hour response time to all customers new and old, is a huge challenge in itself. We combat this by having very strict SOP and guidelines for my team to ensure that customers are always taken care of on time, and we stay in constant communication to provide updates whenever possible.
When I opened our physical shop location in 2021, I took on a huge monthly fixed expense, and had to somehow maintain the customer service and quality we provided for tuning with a whole new side to the business – service and maintenance. And that to this day has been a headache.
With so many different options for parts vendors and modifications, and the vastly different conditions in which customers bring their cars to us – it’s hard to keep a solid timeline and system. Often times, customers have attempted “DIY” mods before bringing the car to us, and it is hard to estimate the timeline of repair when we don’t know what issues we will uncover from previous work. Other times, customers provide their own parts and bring incomplete or jerry-rigged kits and we have to work around those issues. We avoid taking on work when we are back-logged and always provide updates to customers so that no one is left waiting weeks without progress or updates.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Racebox is the #1 performance tuning shop for Infiniti Q50 and Q60 in the world. We tune the most of these cars by volume and hold several platform records. To date, since first providing tuning services to customers in 2019, Racebox has tuned over 3000 individual Q50/Q60 or Z owners with the VR30DDTT engine in their cars. In 2024 alone, we are on track to tune 1200+.
Over the years we have expanded our services to offer tuning for the BMW B58 platform (Gen 1 and Gen 2 TU), S58 platform, S55 platform, and various Audi engines including the EA824 and EA839. We pride ourselves on our customer service and satisfaction which sets us apart from all of our competitors. We maintain a 24-48 hour response window and offer long revision periods and flexibility with our custom tune customers. And of course, with the fast responses comes best in class quality and performance. We don’t sacrifice the quality of our tunes for faster turn arounds – we’ve just created a system that allows us to maintain both. We are truly a well-oiled tuning machine.
Pricing:
- Custom Gasoline Tunes starting at just $500
- Competitive $175/hr shop labor rate
- VR30 Off-the-shelf mapping starting at just $380
- Flat-rate VR30 turbo labor at $2800 a swap
Contact Info:
- Website: https://goracebox.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/goracebox
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/goracebox
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@goracebox
Image Credits
Property of Racebox taken by my employee Alex Ye
