Robby Gordon Reveals the Story Behind Speed UTV in a wide-ranging conversation with UTV Off-Road that goes far beyond the machines themselves. From his early involvement in the development of the Polaris RZR to launching Speed UTV just months before COVID disrupted manufacturing around the world, Gordon has taken an unconventional path to becoming a UTV manufacturer. We sat down with the racing legend and Speed UTV CEO to discuss the challenges of bringing his vision to production, the engineering decisions that separate Speed from its competitors, lessons learned along the way, and what he has planned next.
Robby Gordon Reveals the Story Behind Speed UTV
Humble Beginnings and Talent Recognized
Robert Wesley Gordon was born on January 2, 1969. You know him better as Robby Gordon. Before his work in the pioneering days of Sport UTV design and manufacturing he drove race cars. Lots of different race cars.
Gordon raced open wheel unlimited off-road racing machines and then factory backed trucks for both Ford and Toyota, recording three Baja 1000 wins and four Baja 500 wins. He also amassed multiple SCORE Desert Championships and Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group Championships.
After that pavement came calling with Jack Roush in IMSA Endurance events where he won four consecutive Rolex 24 at Daytona wins and three consecutive 12 Hours of Sebring wins.
Indy Car came next with stints with notable teams like A.J. Foyt Racing and Derrick Walker Racing. He notched wins in that series before moving on to a notable career in NASCAR.
During all that time Robby Gordon never stopped catching every off-road race he could when his busy schedule allowed. He even took some time and made a big splash in the Dakar Rally with multiple stage wins in the grueling rally.
Robby Gordon Reveals the Story Behind Speed UTV
Robby Meets the UTV World
His introduction to the UTV world happened in 2002. In 2002, the term “Side-by-Side” or “Utility Vehicle” was much more common than UTV. They were designed strictly for agriculture, commercial jobsites, municipalities, and managing large properties. The Sport UTV world did not yet exist.
John Menard was at that time on the Polaris Board of Directors and was utilizing his racing connections to construct a sport UTV. Something for fun rather than hauling things around a farm. Menard had Gordon drive him around in a recently acquired Yamaha Rhino and asked, with his extensive off-road experience, could he help design what would become the RZR. Here is some trivia for you readers, RZR originally stood for “Robby-Z-Ride”.
Gordon then sketched out some concepts that heavily influenced the design of the RZR. Gordon worked with, and enjoyed royalties from Polaris until September 18, 2005, when at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Michael Waltrip got together with Gordon and wrecked him. In a passionate response to Waltrip’s actions Gordon threw his helmet at Waltrip’s car. This led to some NASCAR penalties and Polaris enacting a clause that ended his affiliation with them.
After his non-compete clause period with Polaris ended Arctic Cat came calling. They wanted Gordon to do for them what he had done for Polaris. Gordon came out with the Wildcat XX, a UTV so advanced it won the UTV Action Magazine’s UTV of the Year in 2018.
Robby Gordon Reveals the Story Behind Speed UTV
Speed UTV is born
Wanting to be able to control all aspects of building his ultimate vision of what a UTV could be, at the 2019 Super Sand Show, Gordon announced Speed UTV. In his speech he promised to “out spec” everything on the market. Listing 25-inches of wheel travel and horsepower ratings between 230 to 300 horsepower out of 999ccs. And finally, a massive 120-inch wheelbase.
From 2020 to 2022 Speed UTV enjoyed massive hype, thousands of pre-orders and Gordon hosted weekly live stream updates on the progress of his dream. Those videos garnered up to twenty thousand views each.
Unfortunately, Gordon’s timeline coincided with COVID, global supply chain meltdowns, manufacturing shifts as well as regulatory and homologation hurdles. In late 2020 delivery promises slipped to late 2022. Those that stuck with Speed through the delays were rewarded with a UTV that was everything Robby Gordon promised. Although, his final horsepower rating was five horsepower shy of the 230 he hoped for.
UTV Off-Road sat down with Gordon at the UTV Takeover in the Oregon Dunes north of Coos Bay. Now, in his own words, you can read about the herculean efforts made to make the Speed UTV a reality. His reasoning for breaking free of manufacturing standards and relying on what he knew worked from decades of driving and designing off-road racing vehicles at the upper echelon of the sport. Read on and learn how to do things the “Robby Way”.
Robby Gordon Reveals the Story Behind Speed UTV
The Interview
UTV Off-Road (UTVOR): During the peak of the 2020 through 2022 production delays and the global supply chain meltdowns; can you walk me through the darkest week of that period?
Robby Gordon (RG): Yeah, so we launched the company in September of 2019. We had our corporate documents on January 15th of 2020. And we got notice of COVID on January 20th. Didn’t think that was that big of a deal, because then, we didn’t realize what the repercussions would be. The biggest repercussions was, Engineering slowed. So, at that point, we actually moved into the shop in Charlotte.
We basically worked out of the shop because we were afraid, we weren’t going to be able to work. So, I convinced all the guys to move into the shop because we had showers there and stuff, so it wasn’t a big deal.
So, we just said, let’s just stay at the shop that’ll be the best, safest place for us, and we’ll get groceries and we’ll just camp. We did that for weeks. We grilled outdoors and literally we lived there. We engineered the engine and engineered drivetrain, and that probably sped us up.
But then we were done [engineering]. Then we were slowed down because the factory would not approve parts without a visual [inspection]. You know, we did what they asked, all the visual inspections, all the computer inspections and check[ed] tolerance.
But then it came time for testing. And we couldn’t ship anything at that point because containers had gone from… I want to say at the time it was like a thousand [dollars] in 2019 per shipping container. It went to eighteen thousand dollars a container. When you only put three cars in a container, that’s six thousand dollars a car. That leaves no [profit] margin in these cars!
So, we did everything we could to survive that hurdle and got us to the point where we finally could get to Asia. The craziest thing I’ve ever done. If anybody knows, Robby Gordon, is I flew to Hong Kong and did 7-days of quarantine in Hong Kong.
After quarantine we got our stamp, we could wander Hong Kong. But we couldn’t get across into China. So, we tried going to Macau, China. Then we tried getting straight into China. We tried every angle we could. We even rented a car and for 48 hours, we couldn’t get into China. We tried all the entries, we couldn’t get in. They wouldn’t let us into the country. I finally went back to the same hotel.
Finally, we ended up getting a flight to Chongqing. First, we had to do another 14-days in quarantine before we could get to work. Getting into China was the darkest week of that period, the hardest part to get to the next level with this project.
UTVOR: Wow! That was an amazing effort to move forward. Can you keep going and explain the steps you had to take to get your first cars to the United States?
RG: Yeah, I can, I’ll continue the story. So, were originally going to bring our cars in through China to Texas, then to our facility. That was the original plan. We would get the cars to Texas, and that’s the first time we would see them. And then, from Texas, we would then disperse them to the customers. Now, this is all very early beginning stuff.
So, three weeks of quarantine between Hong Kong and Chongqing, just to be able to go over there, we started final design. Everything was done at that point, except for they’ve never been tested, they never had been driven. I spent a lot of time in China dealing with that.
We started to build cars in China. But we ended up scraping that whole program. It was about 2021, when we came across a program that Vietnam would work with us. Since 2022 all our cars have been built in Vietnam.
UTVOR: How close was Speed UTV to actually falling off the brink in those hectic early days?
RG: Well. I must say, it never got close.
UTVOR: If you could reset the clock to 2019 with the knowledge you have now about manufacturing logistics what is the first major business decision you would make differently?
RG: Wow, I got to be honest, I wish I would have had more time for testing, more time for research and development. To find out where issues we’re going to be. But at the same time, you can test, test, test, test, and eventually, you just have to get down to it and go to work.
UTVOR: Basically, it seems like you engineered this car by scaling down a full-size Trophy truck. What is the single biggest detail that worked perfectly on paper but turned into a nightmare when you tried to mass produce it at scale?
RG: I would say our biggest issue had to be how to set up the clutches.
UTVOR: We would like to ask you about some of the non-conventional engineering that Speed UTV employs. First, eliminating ball joints solves a massive structural weakness that plagues the competition, but spherical bearings are notoriously high maintenance. How did you design a bearing setup without requiring cleaning and lubrication after every weekend trip?
RG: We have designed a sealed mono ball. We built a rubber boot, it has a little bit of grease in it, making it a sealed mono ball. Which has definitely helped us with strength and reliability.
There’s not a lot of [tolerance] there, so they do get loose after about 1500 miles, so I would say that’s one small piece with a bit of maintenance. The positive side is if one ever were to pop out it’s not going anywhere, it just rattles inside on the bolt. That way it doesn’t leave you walking.
I saw yesterday alone four broken ball joints from Polaris’s and Can-Ams coming back from the night ride. We know this because after the night rides, we drive back and we look and see what the carnage is. [Are] there any Speed cars broken down out there first thing, and then see what the competition is breaking.
And so, as the CEO of the company, I’m very involved in the industry and working beyond the business aspect of it more. Working on the technology side and asking ‘what does it take to make a reliable vehicle’.
If you talk to our customers out here this weekend, I think you’re seeing a completely different program than what we ran last year and a thousand times better than what we saw in 2024. This is my third year here and in 2026 requests from customers has been basically, simple little things. You know, adjust this or adjust that. We’re not doing any major overhauls here for our customers.
UTVOR: In designing suspension components to be interchangeable side to side. Were there geometric compromises that needed to be made? So that you could make right and left interchangeable?
RG: There were no performance losses on any of it. I took some thought process to be able to make components interchangeable. I’m going to say, being a budget manufacturer that wanted to build a Ferrari on a Ford Pinto budget. We at Speed, all of us, always had in mind one question; how can we do something and share components?
So it’s not just a suspension that goes left and right. It’s the shocks. So, now, instead of having two different design shock components, I only have different pistons and inner cans on the shocks, so it runs the same exact shock front rear.
It runs the same doors on all three model cars. They’re all the same. It runs the same roll cage in the front section on all three cars. The difference between the El Jefe and the Bandit is just removing the center roll cage and the chassis is shorter, but those components are the same. So, when you make these decisions it’s good not only for the manufacturing side of it, but for the service and dealer side of it. They only have to have one component for all three models.
We’ve really simplified the build process, the one that’s tricky is they all have the same wiring harness. How do you have a four-seater with a two-seater harness? How does that work?
Literally, we just move the wire around the shifter. And we’re able to use a four-seat harness in a Bandit because all we had to get rid of was 24 inches of [wire] to be efficient and not having too many part numbers in the process. And that was the way that we were able to get to manufacturing, by being very smart and creative.
From the start we tried to use the same parts. So, example, the wheel bearing is the same wheel bearing and carrier on all four corners. The same hubs on all four corners. The same brakes are on all four corners, because with four-wheel drive it really doesn’t matter.
We’ve really, really focused on making a simplified car at the end of the day.
UTVOR: I have a quote where you’ve called radius rods, “the fuse that snaps under hard lateral loads”. In using the pure box trailing arms, you redirected all the cornering forces directly into the frame mounts. What did you do to ensure the frame doesn’t twist or crack where a radius rod would have normally bent?
RG: We have no competition in handling today. I don’t believe there’s a car in the industry that handles as good as a Speed UTV. And also, we are the only car that has zero track change throughout the [wheel] travel.
So, when you jack up any of our competition, it’ll get narrower. The Speed UTV doesn’t because it actually gains negative camber and the bottom of the tires pop out, so it stays the same track width all the way through its travel, where a Polaris or Can-Am have up to 10 inches of track change.
So, let’s just say they start out at 72 or 74 inches wide. When they pick the car up to full droop, they’re only like 62 or 64 inches, right? They’re tiny, easy to roll over. With a Speed UTV we have a much lower rear roll center by not inches. It’s feet lower, which is an amazing amount of stability control on off camber hills.
So, on a Speed UTV, the car doesn’t get higher in the rear. The tire doesn’t suck in. It actually gets a little bit lower, because as you load the tire, the geometry loads the force, and it’s going to actually squat the car instead of lifting the car.
It is opposite to any car, even the Honda Talon, the Kawasaki, the Can-Am, and Polaris. Not one vehicle in the industry has a better handling characteristic. They’re all worse.
UTVOR: Speed UTV claims 25 inches of usable wheel travel, a term that gets thrown around loosely in marketing. Can you explain what the usable means versus the competition wheel travel claims?
RG: Because the competitions track change gets so narrow, they’re chasing a number that isn’t realistic. And if you believe Polaris’s numbers, I am 100% confident that they do not have that wheel travel without counting tire squish as travel as well. They’re actually counting the squish of the tire, and so if we want to add the squish the tire, we have 30 inches of wheel travel too.
UTVOR: By raising the rear seats ten inches higher than the front seats, and lowering the rear door line, the rear passengers can see the terrain coming. How did you balance that raised rear passenger weight and roll center, so the car doesn’t feel top heavy while cornering.
RG: Well, I think that the biggest thing is, we had four people in the four seater here that we took out this morning. Even with 200-pound passengers the car was amazing everywhere, and I feel good about where we’re at with our with our roll center.
I do believe we still are lower, by head height. If you were to take a tape measure from the ground to the top of the head on any other manufacturer as, even though we’re a taller cage our overall ride height is actually still lower.
UTVOR: Can you explain in easy-to-understand terms what your roof spine roll cage design is?
RG: We are the only car in the industry today with this four-bar design of the roof portion of the rollcage. So, Polaris and Can-Am run two on the outside, and then they go down to the four chassis points.
The Can-Am doesn’t even use the fourth chassis point on their chassis. It’s just holding the bodywork, even though it looks like it’s a roll cage going back, it does absolutely nothing. Whereas the Speed UTV has a true five points of chassis connection all the way through the sidebars. A Polaris only has three. Can-Am only has a three point, so we have two more connecting points to the chassis.
As well as we have the vertical V bars in the back that keep the two by fours from falling over, left to right, and then the center sparring, which is an extra roll bar all the way down the center of the chassis as well. The center roof spine connects into the front V bars, and they connect in the front to the shock mounts. We are the only car in the industry with this.
In the rear the spine connects to the rear shock mount, so there’s a force on the right rear shock. It’s actually pushing the force all the way through the spine; all the way to the left front shock. So, it’s really tying left and right together as well as fore and aft.
The safest in the industry, by far, especially with two a-pillars built in the chassis. So, with a post plus bar and the D, and E bars connecting there’s triangles fore and aft, like building a bridge. You can look at the bridge if there’s not a connection triangle there, the bridge is going to collapse and we basically have a bridge structure through our chassis.
UTVOR: One time, you said that you have the only vehicles that have a USAC legal roll cage. Which leads to my next question. So, let’s say that I have purchased one of your models with the intention to race the upcoming Baja 400. What do I need to do to make it pass technical inspection?
RG: You can run Pro Stock, which allows you to run the stock gas tank. If you decide you want to run Pro Turbo or Pro Open, you do have to add a fuel cell into the car. You would have to add racing seat belts into the car. Even though I am a D.O.T approved seat belt manufacturer, we are not a racing approved seat belt, so I don’t have an SFI rating.
Other than that, you would need to have a first aid kit, a fire suppression system, and a water tank for drinking for the driver and co-driver. That’s it.
UTVOR: The passenger side dash as an option for a secondary display that can mirror the data, the maps, and the vehicle vitals from the driver’s side. Was this decision purely about giving the passenger a cool factor gadget? Or are you trying to train a generation of recreational riders to act as active co-drivers who can manage navigation, communication, and system temperatures on the fly?
RG: Your second part of that question is perfect. We have multiple dash channels. So, like at the King of the Hammers? Cole, my co-driver, will actually watch the front camera to make sure we’re not going to impact with the big rock because we’re climbing up stuff and we can’t see forward as well.
They can flick back and forth and watch all the engine and drivetrain diagnostics, and not only that, but you can go to screen mirror mode, and you can put the map on the dash as well in front of the driver and co-driver.
UTVOR: That first year, at the King of the Hammers race, when you entered your stock Speed UTV. What was the one mechanical failure you were secretly terrified that might happen?
RG: On the start line? Nothing. I had a lot of confidence. We’d done a lot of testing. We felt pretty good.
However, I was not ready for what happened to be honest with you, we broke a transmission due to the transmission cases being too thin. And so that was our mistake. And that’s why we had to helicopter out there to retrieve the car.
UTVOR: Creating a subsection of each model into Standard, Rock and Sand is something the big three manufacturers either didn’t think of or were afraid to try. What made you pull the trigger on such a revolutionary idea?
RG: I wanted to be able to use the same car for all kinds of off-roading. It had to be a more robust chassis. I say the bean counters at the other manufacturers are looking for ways to cut costs not to increase cost? So, for my vision, I was going to do everything I could to be the Ferrari of the off-road industry.
UTVOR: Your son, Max, is truly showing a level of maturity behind the wheel that is beyond his 18 years in every discipline of off-road racing. But what role is he playing in the development and running of Speed TV every day?
He’s very Hands-On with the car. And from the testing side of things. I don’t believe there’s anybody that is going to push this car harder than if it gets pushed by him driving it. So, it gives me the ultimate R & D tester for abuse testing.
And because we are now racing our stock cars. We are learning a lot faster, compared to having race components which the stock cars don’t have.
That’s funny, but in our last race, the NORRA 1000, we had a customer, Trey Hernquist, he qualified first. It was with a production car, and he out qualified the Spec Trophy Trucks. Which is crazy.
UTVOR: When history looks back at this era of Powersports, what do you think it will say about Speed UTV; do you think they’re going to say that you are a disruptive Boutique Builder?
RG: I would say we’re disruptive. I think that’s pretty fair. I think we need to be in the same category as Polaris. We need to [increase] to 2000cc to go head-to-head with them. And that is my main focus right now.
UTVOR: Your business career is reminiscent of the late, great Mickey Thompson who was greatly diversified. Was he an inspiration for you? Who else has been instrumental in the shaping of your businesses prowess?
RG: I would say I was very fortunate to get to know Mickey when I was a young man. Obviously, he was one of my childhood heroes.
If you look at my career I feel like I’m one of the luckiest men alive. I have worked with Mickey Thompson, back racing the Mickey Thompson series, and obviously he took on to me at a young age. It was an honor to win his championship. Unfortunately, that was the year he was murdered.
He was involved in my negotiations with Jack Roush. You know growing up as a kid and working out at Parnelli Jones’s shop with my dad and learning from guys like John Barnard and Dick Russell and Art Hale, and all those guys. And then going, you know, to the next level. I’ve worked with AJ Foyt, Richard Childress and Jack Roush.
One of my mentors that a lot of people might not know is Derrick Walker. Derek is an extremely smart technician and General Manager. I think he’s won 13 of Roger Penske’s Indy 500s. Derek took a liking to me at a young age and allowed me to get to this point.
I then worked with very successful businessmen like John Menard, who has taught me the shrewd businessman aspect of Motorsports. And how to incorporate business into racing, and that’s been probably the biggest thing, the most valuable thing I’ve learned.
With Speed, I just want to do everything. I had a goal that we would be able to build brands, and we’ve been able to do this. And we’re going to continue to work at it every day.
UTVOR: What is on the horizon for Speed UTV, or maybe I should say, the Speed brand?
RG: What’s my next Vision? So far, we’ve got the tools, RC cars, engine shop and manufacturing. My next big dream is a truck. I want to build a production street legal truck that would challenge the Raptor, and I believe that is low hanging fruit. Is this challenging? Very.
Back in September we introduced our Bambino, a kids UTV. We also are working on a dirt bike
UTVOR: Going back to the beginning of Speed UTV, after the initial announcement, thousands of people put in non-refundable deposits to be able to purchase your UTV. Did most of them keep their commitment to you?
RG: I truly believe I have the best customers in the world. That they have worked with me through this process. And we’re doing everything we can to make sure we keep the customer satisfaction at the highest level. My biggest challenge has been the people that made commitments to buy cars and didn’t. I trusted their commitment to follow through with their purchase because it was just a deposit, and I understand things change.
But we invested heavily into tooling components and accessories and items that it takes to be a vehicle manufacturer. I have a few hundred people that haven’t followed through with their commitment. And when I sell that many cars based on the number of deposits, I will refund their money. But that was never part of the deal. This was always a non-refundable deposit, and we went all in, took all my cards, and pushed them in to be able to build Speed UTV.
We have plenty of parts. I got 10 000 tires sitting in a warehouse still. There’s ten thousand wheels on those tires sitting in that warehouse to be able to fulfill this commitment to be able to be a manufacturer in the industry. It would be great if people fulfilled their commitment as well.
UTVOR: Any final words for our readers?
RG: At Speed UTV every day we wake up, seven days a week, to deliver the best product we can.
Check out the 2026 Speed UTV Lineup.
