Some 35+ years ago, David Wilson, currently group vice president and president of TRD USA, was a considerable expert of feminine hygiene products. It comes off as one of those charming “interesting facts about yourself” that you’d share as an icebreaker — more on this in a moment.
But this conversation was more than just an introduction, even if it was the first time the two of us were able to sit in a room (or rather in the Lexus mobile race center) together. We were here to talk about Wilson’s career before his retirement in December, and his legacy in helping to build the TRD USA (Toyota Racing Development) program, across multiple series, over the last three and a half decades, beautifully bookended here by the IMSA finale at Road Atlanta.
With the sounds of a very active Petit Le Mans, with nearly eight hours left in the 10-hour season finale race, we sat in the cozy confines of the Lexus trailer and started at the beginning… .
Irresponsible decisions can get you places
Wilson prefaces that his journey began with a ‘really irresponsible’ decision, which he emphasizes a few times at the start of our conversation. In his first few years of adulthood, he served four years in the US Army 101st Airborne Division before seeking a degree in mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech. Post graduation, he began working with Johnson & Johnson, placed on a fast track management program for leading one of its plants in New Jersey — the one that specialized in feminine hygiene products. And 18 months in, his brother called him out of the blue with an interesting job offer.
“My brother ended up getting into racing in Southern California, working for this little, what amounted to a speed shop at the time, called ‘TRD,’” Wilson shared with Motorsport. Mike, his brother, said the shop needed someone like Dave, with mechanical engineering experience. But for Wilson, sure, he had the degree, but his experience was working with cars in his youth, not building racing engines. Mike reassured him that wasn’t an issue — “Just come out here.”
“It was a big fork in the road for me because I was leaving a Fortune 500 company,” Wilson recalls. “Stability. It was stability. Security. I could see my life in my vision and I made what at the time, was a really irresponsible, stupid decision. Because I went, I left all of that, and signed on to this rinky-dink company that had little or no benefits. They offered…
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