Kenny Bumbera, now 58, has been working on cars since he was 15 years old and taking automotive repair classes at Bellaire High School. He repaired and customized his own vehicles with his wife and Bumbera’s Performance co-owner, Cheri Bumbera, and they have raised their three children to do the same. Bumbera’s Performance is a full-service mechanic shop that offers a variety of automotive customization and restoration services. The shop can rebuild a 1960s muscle car from the frame up or do simpler jobs, such as tune-ups and engine repairs. The Bumberas’ children work in the shop and race, Kenny said. His daughter, Kristin Bumbera-Jester, has raced in NASCAR, but she is currently taking a break to spend time with her family. Her younger sister, Kendall Haechten, races as well and handles marketing for the shop. The Bumberas’ youngest child, Boyd Bumbera, set the world record Jan. 13 of 11.25 seconds to drive a quarter mile in a 2018 5.0 Mustang, then beat his own record Jan. 30 with a 11.19 second run. He was 19 at the time. Kenny started racing in high school and was noticed by a shop owner who offered him a job in the late 1970s. “I like to go fast and started working on going fast, and people noticed it and decided to let me work on their cars,” Kenny said. The Bumberas opened their own 24-bay shop off Hwy. 6 just south of I-10 in 1992. In time they decided they wanted to slow down and relocated to Katy. Cheri said that notion backfired on them, though. “We opened April Fools’ Day 2010 and we outgrew this facility that day with the overwhelming support of Katy,” Cheri said. The current facility in downtown Katy usually has 90-100 cars on the property. To make more room for the basic mechanic services and off-road division, the family is opening a second location this summer at 6513 SE I-10, Sealy. Bumbera’s Performance will run its high-performance division out of that location. “The high-performance division is going out to I-10, but we are staying here, and this is our off-road and general automotive division,” Cheri said. Five years from now, the Bumberas said they hope to be setting up their children to take over the shop, but they are not walking away from the industry yet. Kenny said he wants to keep building the business. “We’re the best-kept secret in Katy as far as the fact that we work on general automotive and family cars,” Cheri said. “We don’t just work on hot rods.”