WHEN Trevor and Jordan Manton talk about family, business, and drag racing, the three threads are impossible to separate. For the brothers behind Manton Pushrods and Manton Rocker Arms, their lives have been shaped by a lineage that stretches from the lunar missions of the 1960s to the quickest doorslammers on the planet. Their grandfather, Noel Manton, and father, Terry Manton, laid the foundation of a family company that became synonymous with precision, craftsmanship, and innovation in valvetrain components. Now, Trevor, 30, and Jordan, 26, are leading the next generation, balancing respect for tradition with a relentless drive to modernize.

“ I was raised at the racetrack as one of the racetrack diaper boys,” Trevor says with a laugh.“ There’ s plenty of diaper girls too, like Krista Baldwin( a 2016 DI 30 Under 30 honoree). I just remember us all being at the track as kids because our parents or grandparents had been involved in the industry for so long.”

That early immersion wasn’ t accidental. Their grandfather drove for Chevrolet and their father founded the company that would become Manton Pushrods as a teenager, buying his first lathe from Ed Iskenderian and machining Type 1 Volkswagen pushrods.“ I just was blessed to be born into the fraternity with a seat at the table,” Trevor says.“ Grandpa and Dad had been doing this for as long as most. Essentially, since the racing industry was around.”

Even their great-grandfather, an electrical engineer for Rockwell International during the lunar program, spent weekends racing at Lion’ s Drag Strip with fellow engineers.“ So even Great-Grandpa was a racer,” Trevor adds.

Trevor’ s earliest memories aren’ t of being in the stands but in the shop.“ Maybe five years old I would come in,” he recalls.“ We’ d get large stocking orders from SCAT and CB Performance – thousands of pushrods at a time. It was a lot faster for Dad if I put the tips into the tube for him and then he assembled them. So, I’ d stand there with a step stool and my safety glasses on and be putting tips in while he’ s explaining different things about the family business and what’ s important.”

By the time he was 10, Trevor was traveling with his father to races across the country, listening to conversations with crew chiefs and team owners about what worked and what didn’ t.“ To be able to watch that from an unfiltered perspective at such a young age was something that gave you a different mindset,” he says.“ That was really cool.”

When Trevor was 16, tragedy struck. Their father, Terry, who had battled cancer and autoimmune disease for years, passed away. Their mother, Robin, had already been quietly running the business while caring for her husband and raising two boys.“ She had good control of the business while I was still finishing school and building my own business, but she didn’ t want to continue running it by herself.”

Faced with a choice between his own growing business and the family legacy, Trevor didn’ t hesitate.“ Even though the business that I had had good opportunities and was growing, the opportunities that I had in the racing industry were completely different,” he says.“ I can call a Steve Morris or a Pat Musi and they’ ll pick up and have a conversation with me without asking why I’ ve called. Because they know that I have

the industry’ s goals in mind – to make cars faster and safer for all of us.”

Trevor sold his business, joined his mother full-time, and committed to carrying Manton Pushrods and its sister company into the next generation.

One of Trevor’ s proudest accomplishments has been reviving Manton Rocker Arms, which at one point was on the brink of closing.“ The business wasn’ t self-sustaining, and the pushrod company was carrying it,” he recalls.“ I simply asked Mom to take the risk.‘ Could we buy Grandpa out of the business, and could I take control of the rocker-arm company and see what it would do?’”

What it did was flourish.“ We took the company from selling 10 engines worth of rocker systems a year to 400-500 sets a year in a matter

PHOTOS: MATT GOODWIN