They were out of portland, and they weren't blowing up motors. The owner had some money issues, he liked to build very expensive shop cars, I think they had a couple 1000 hp S54's in their shop cars. Anyway, one day, dude just disappeared, so did a bunch of money. At least that's how it was framed in the M3 forum back in the day when it happened. I still had my E46M back then.
Edit, looks like vivid bought their website and likenesses, it's just a front for Vivid now, but they still have the photos of that orange shop M3.