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The History
of Sonic Offroad by Andrew Ciasulli in his Own
Words
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Andrew
Ciasulli the founder of Sonic Offroad |
I started fabricating at a very young age. My
younger brother, my father, and my self split the
cost of a welder at the age of 12 and I never stopped
building since. I was the first person to have a
rear shock on my BMX bicycle and this is before
the mountain bike companies came out with shocks
on bikes year 1994. Throughout my youth
I went from project to project building and creating
various contraptions that could be driven. Most
of which my mom has saved in the photo album.
I even worked at the local motorcycle shop rebuilding
motorcycle and ATV engines at the age of 14 and
was told to act like I was playing when customers
entered the shop. When the customers would tell
the shop owner their bike runs great he would
wink at my brother and I, and l compliment us
on a great job done.
My parents where strong advocates of college
education but their wallets weren’t as big
as their expectations, so they pushed me to play
sports in hope of a scholarship some day. In 2000
I was accepted into Drexel University’s
mechanical engineering program with a full wrestling
scholarship.
Soon after starting my college career, I
learned of a club that designs and builds formula
race cars to be used for a competition in Detroit
against over 200 collages ever year. Some of these
teams include MIT, Cornell, and Lehigh exc.
My talents building vehicles where quickly utilized
by the team members and I proceeded to be the head
TIG welder for the seniors of the race team. In
turn they helped me understand calculus and taught
me how to run and program the CNC machine at school
(similar to the machine OCC uses to make wheels.).
I soon had a love for these style cars but
wanted something more. I wanted to be able to
drive them on my ATV trails and track.
I then decided to save my money and began building
my own car.
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Andrew
Ciasulli in one of his custom off-road
buggy's
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Andrew
also built custom Raptor with a 1300cc Suzuki
Hayabusa Engine |
The first car I designed and built was a
great learning experience. I had some set backs
in the beginning, but they were overcome and in
only 5 months I was driving my first off road
formula car. So many people loved the vehicle
that they urged me to start a business building
and selling the cars.
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