Nat Mundy - Westfair Communications

Nat Mundy has always been enthusiastic about speed, challenge and adventure. When he was a kid growing up in Bedford, N.Y., he tinkered around with his go-cart”™s engine and transmission “and it actually did 35 miles an hour on the street.” And when he was a teenager and got his driver”™s license, “I wrecked a series of cars” and collected a series of speeding tickets.

“Between my speeding tickets and totaling those cars, I thought it would be better to get into a little bit slower activity,” Mundy said. The slower pursuit was off-roading ”“ driving four-wheel-drive vehicles over difficult terrain in vehicles he has tinkered with. “I bought a 1989 Land Rover and drove it for a year, modifying everything from the suspension to putting off-road tires on it, lifting it up to make it very tall” and able to drive over trails your average family minivan couldn”™t.

“My passion is building a truck and playing with it in the woods and showing other people the experience so they can do it as well,” Mundy said. In fact, a few weekends ago, “I did a driver-education event for Land Rover Milford, playing the lead vehicle for a bunch of customers who bought stock vehicles,” he said. The dealership has built a 10-acre course in Monroe “where you get to go through water, climb up a little mountain and drive through the woods to give people the off-roading experience.”

But that”™s kind of tame, actually. “There”™s an underground network of people who get together a couple of times a summer up in Vermont, or on private property in New Hampshire or Maine, for an off-road event,” he said. “We get hundreds of vehicles at these trail-rides competitions.”

Mundy said when he was younger he went to summer camp and loved to sit around the campfire and hang out. “But where I used to go camping is now development. These trucks let you go into more remote areas, climb up a mountainside and be in the wilderness.” But driving his Land Rover over difficult trails is only part of the adventure. The other part is conservation. “We have organizations like Tread Lightly that come in and protect the land and rebuild it,” Mundy said. “They protect the trails so people won”™t make their own.”

A new chapter

When Mundy bought his first Land Rover, he discovered, “If I got parts directly from junkyards in the U.K., I could actually afford to own the car. Like anything else I did, I had to make a business out of it, as well. I constantly felt the need to make money off what I was doing.”

This entrepreneurial drive blossomed while he was at Westminster School in Simsbury and began importing parts for his all-terrain vehicle. Then “I started bringing in more than just the parts I needed, but other parts for Land Rovers and other European cars and selling them on the Internet,” he said. “Everyone thought I was a 30-something-year-old adult in business. They never heard my voice because I did everything on the Internet. I had a huge eBay business, doing about 400 items a month.

“Back then it was a cash business. I was doing such a high quantity of items that I was dropping packages direct with the FedEx distribution plant in Stamford. My mom was my shipping person. I”™d sell something, tell her where it was on the shelf in the basement, and she”™d box it up and bring it to FedEx in Stamford over the border from Bedford.”

When he went to Hobart College in upstate New York, “I wasn”™t focusing on what was going on in school, but was either building a truck or Ranger Rover or importing a car from Europe ”“ actually sourcing a car in Europe and having it sent over and helping them title it in the United States.”

After he graduated in 2004, he moved to Norwalk then to New Canaan and went to work for a Wall Street trading firm, commuting to Manhattan for two years. “In those two years I learned that corporations spend a lot of money doing things like off-roading and playing golf and going go-cart racing for customer and corporate outings and employee incentives,” Mundy said. “I went on one of those trips to an outdoor go-cart track in upstate New York, but before I went up there, I went to an indoor track in Boston to buy two go-carts” for two of his employers.

That visit opened a new chapter in Mundy”™s business adventure.

Polar opposite

“I walked into this massive, 80,000-square-foot space with two indoor go-cart tracks,” Mundy said. He was captivated, and “paid $100 for an hour and a half of go-carting,” he said. “I could actually race wheel to wheel with other people, and it didn”™t cost thousands of dollars to do it. It was one of the best thrills of my life.”

More than the go-cart wheels set Mundy spinning. “I thought, ”˜Why isn”™t there one of these in New York?”™ Here I am in Westchester, in one of the biggest corporate headquarters in the country and near Connecticut with its hedge funds, and all of them spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on corporate events. This business in Boston was the perfect alternative to golf outings, and it became what I wanted to do.”

He quit Wall Street, became a salesman at Land Rover Milford, and began working on the go-cart project on the side. After a year of looking for partners, he met two other entrepreneurs ”“ Sy Aryeh and Yury Lyalko ”“ who were looking at the same building in Westchester County and for the same reason. “We put our heads together, worked out a business plan and started raising the money to do the business,” he said.

That business is called Grand Prix New York Racing, and should open late this fall in 120,000 square feet of a 600,000-square-foot distribution center in Mount Kisco, N.Y. “It will be a corporate-entertainment and event space, with a 45,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art conference center, a restaurant and exhibition space,” said Mundy, vice president of the center. The main feature will be two quarter-mile go-cart tracks: “with hills, fake trees and elevation changes,” he said. When corporations aren”™t renting out the space, it will be open to the public and racing leagues.

Best of all for Mundy, “I”™ve found a way to make money doing what I love,” he said. “I love carting, I love racing against my friends. It”™s a real adrenalin starter to get in a go-cart and go against your friends.”

But Mundy”™s enthusiasm for speed, challenge and adventure may become a touch deflated during the next few years. “I just got married, on 07-07-07,” he said. But “Sheila”™s not an off-roader. She is the polar opposite as far as thrill-seeking.” In fact, “I sold the motorcycle before I got married,” he said. “But Sheila is worth it.”