AUGUSTA — Ask Jeremy Davis why he does what he does, and you get a shrug.

“It’s the best way to not have a real job, and be able to do what you like to do,” he said.

Ask Mickey Green, and you get a similar response.

“We just love short track racing,” he said. “We raced ourselves, got out of it for a little bit, and missed it.”

After growing up behind the wheel, the two men found ways to stay in the sport they love, building and providing chassis for competitive drivers throughout New England. Green, a South Paris resident, runs Crazy Horse Racing, which deals car frameworks and assembles the sorts of vehicles that win Super Late Model, Pro Late Model and American-Canadian Tour races. Davis, from Tamworth, N.H., is the owner of Davis Chassis Works, a largely one-man operation that builds cars from the ground up, then sells them to a growing customer base.

Both had their shop’s work on display at the Northeast Motorsports Expo at the Augusta Civic Center on Friday.

“We’re all racers, so we want to go fast and win,” Green said. “But it’s nice to see stuff you built, and your customers go out and have success. It’s nice when they call and tell you how their weekend went.”

Green has an extensive background in racing, competing as a driver until 2004 and then serving as the crew chief for current NASCAR racer Austin Theriault when he was still on the ACT from 2010-12. Green then started working for Crazy Horse, which his father, Mitch, started when he bought Race Basics in 2010. In March, Green was part of a team that bought the company, and he took the lead in constructing cars that could win short-track races all over the area.

“We didn’t have the big money (growing up), so we had to do everything ourselves. That’s kind of why we are where we are now,” Green said. “We grew (the company), and some years were better than others. It’s been getting really good the last three or four, growing uphill, and I expect it to grow that way.”

One reason Green can be confident is a deal he worked out in September with Gary Crooks, the owner of Port City Racecars in Mooresville, N.C., where some of NASCAR’s biggest operations are based. Port City builds the chassis, and Crazy Horse does the dealing and some assembling. It’s a symbiotic relationship; Green gives Crooks a foothold in the ACT and other series up north, and Crooks allows Green’s company to grow.

“If you’re going to win races in this day and age, you’ve got to have everything 100 percent. Because if you don’t, someone else does,” Crooks said. “You don’t worry about your product not being represented well. It’s been a good fit, they do a great job, they’re good with their customers.”

Green said the move has allowed Crazy Horse to dream bigger.

“To gain new customers and help the existing customers we had, it was an almost necessary step,” he said. “The sport changes every day. With just a one- or two-man shop, it’s hard to keep up with it. Now we’ve got all their knowledge plus ours, and it just helps everything snowball and get things rolling.”

It’s a smaller operation at Davis Chassis Works, where Davis for five years has done most of the work himself building cars for Super Late Model, Late Model Sportsman and PASS Models. His work speaks for itself; Spencer Morse won the PASS Modified championship last year driving Davis’s car.

“It’s more inclusive, it’s just one deal with me,” Davis said. “Fabricating stuff, just the chassis themselves, and coming up with new ideas and making stuff look cool and function right and be strong and safe and all those things, that’s what I like most.”

Davis, 29, has raced since he was eight, but has competed less to focus on his customers. Working out of a shop in Tamworth, Davis said the year consists of a lot of inactivity in the later months of the season, followed by intense demand right before the season starts as everyone looks for a car.

If they come to him, Davis said, they can expect reliability above all else.

“Making stuff go fast is good, but it’s not all just about going fast. It’s about being consistent,” he said. “A lot of our races are long races, and having the fastest car for one lap doesn’t pay off at all. My cars aren’t usually the fastest on the speed chart to start the race, but they’re usually definitely toward the front at the end of the race.”

Davis would like to see the company grow, but is cautious about losing sight on his mission.

“I’m not necessarily looking to go huge with it or build a billion cars,” he said. “I want to build good cars for more of a select group. Smaller numbers, but have the quality.”

It’s a lot of work to deliver that product, but Davis doesn’t look at it that way.

“It beats the hell out of a real job,” he said, smiling. “I don’t know how else to put it.”