There’s cool and then there is COOL and when we first saw Aaron Brown roll into an ECTA meet with “The Uncatchable” a 1939 Ford truck rat rod we knew that this was a dude with a plan. As it turns out the plan was pretty simple, become the world’s fastest street legal rat rod and over the course of a couple of meets Brown did just that, setting six ECTA records and achieving a best terminal speed of 197mph. But like all things, numbers and performance only begin to scratch the surface of the story behind this truck. It is a machine built with honor and respect to the past and it has already been used in some amazing ways.
The truck has been a part of the Vet Motorsports program which gets veterans who are still working through the effects of defending our country in combat out to the races and gives them an experience in team work and camaraderie that they are almost all universally missing. The results have been spectacular and it is all because of the vision Brown and his Garage Shop companions have for themselves and this rig.
As mentioned, Brown and his band of merry men operate The Garage Shop a hot rod and race car building outfit in North Carolina. Brown himself spent a couple of decades working as a NASCAR fabricator so that right there speaks to his skills and abilities. They are not a massive “mega-shop” but rather a small band of craftsmen creating awesome work. The video below tells the tale of the rat rod, the story BELOW the video tells the tale of the shop. This is legitimately cool stuff. Watch!
PRESS PLAY TO SEE THE WORLD’S FASTEST RAT ROD!
“The Uncatchable”: The World’s Fastest Rat RodCatawba, NC. August 19, 2015 – The Garage Shop in Catawba, NC is notorious for building fast cars and cool hot rods. Owner, Aaron Brown has dedicated his life to building some of the coolest cars and trucks the world has seen.“I wanted something unique, something that has never been done before,” said Brown “I spent weeks searching the internet and making hundreds of calls to find the perfect vehicle. Then I found it on RacingJunk.com, deep the in heart of Texas, a 1939 FORD and I knew that was the vehicle.”“The Uncatchable”, Brown’s 1939 FORD street legal, land speed rat rod was built from the ground up in his Catawba, NC shop over the course of 8 months. The concept for the vehicle came in 2013 when I was at the Charlotte Auto Fair. Brown noticed a stack of old hot rod magazines sitting in a milk crate at one of the booths and purchased the entire stack. Brown has always had a fascination with hot rods but after reading through the magazines, he had a much greater understanding for original hot rods.“I wanted to honor the pioneers of speed who built these hot rods in their garages using whatever parts they could find,” said Brown “They spent every dime they had and built these machines on their dirt floor garages. We wanted to keep that tradition alive so we went with the 39 FORD truck.”Brown had decades of experience as a NASCAR fabricator and decided he would utilize current NASCAR technology with old rodding concepts to build the ultimate street legal, land speed truck.“The Uncatchable is the first of its kind,” said Brown, “a lot of people build outdated Cup cars for land speed racing or they build hot rods but no one has combined that technology to build a vehicle like The Uncatchable.”In the spring of 1992, Brown packed up his belongings and drove south to chase his dream of working in NASCAR. Brown, left everything behind he had ever known to chase a dream in an area where he didn’t know a single person. His first day in Mooresville, NC was spent thumbing through the yellow pages, calling every shop in the area he could. After a week of calling around, the Skoal Team ran by Kevin Hamlin gave him his first job. Over the next 14 years, he would work with some of the top teams in NASCAR including Dale Earnhardt Inc. and with Ray Evernham.In 1993, his first house in the Carolinas’ was right next to Goldie Witherspoon who was Bobby Isaac’s sister. They became instant friends and would enjoy talking racing on the weekends; it was a friendship that was near and dear to Brown. Her brother, Bobby in 1970 set the world on fire by winning the Sprint Cup Championship and setting an unbelievable 28 land speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats in a NASCAR stock car in the same year. Iassac’s team used a Dodge Daytona and broke Mickey Thompson’s record of 188.173mph in the flying mile. Isaac’s speed was 216.945mph in a stock body, carbureted gasoline engine, a record that stood for 36 years.In 2006, the flying mile record would fall to a speed of 226mph. Brown had promised to Witherspoon that if the record ever fell, he would go to Bonneville and take it back. Just 3 weeks after the record fell, Dodge called Brown offering their assistance to bring the record back to the Isaac family and Dodge. The following year, in a 2007 Dodge sprint cup car that Brown built in his Catawba NC shop, Russ Wicks shattered the record with a flying mile pass of 244.9mph that still stands to this day.“Goldie and Johnny were like my family,” said Brown, “They treated me like a son and opened their doors to me when I first moved to North Carolina. It was a great feeling to bring the record back to the family.”Brown is a supporter and contributor to Vet Motorsports, an organization that is near and dear to his heart as he served in the NAVY in his 20’s. Vet Motorsports honors and empowers disabled veterans through active participation in motorsports. The company plans to place multiple veterans on the racing team and at the shop during the fall and winter months.“The Uncatchable” made its debut at the Charlotte Auto Fair in April and was an instant hit with the fans. The street legal land speed truck made a lot of heads turn with over 1,000 polaroid pictures taken in just two days for fans to take home as a memento. Since May, the truck has competed twice at the Ohio Mile and earned multiple records. The story doesn’t end here, to find out more, tune into our next installment of “The Uncatchable”.To learn more about The Garage Shop and our project cars, please visit us on Twitter @thegarageshop10 and on Facebook The Garage Shop.The Garage Shop would like to thank its following partners: Call Family Distillers, C&R Racing, Goodridge, Roush Yates Performance Products, Vet Motorsports, Glad Precision, Race City Steel, Impact, Racers Drive, Goodwin Restorations and Racingjunk.
There’s a expression we use in the UK for being without money – “On The Bones Of My Arse” – that would be a great name for this beauty as a – you’d have no money left after building it and b – with that ride height that would be all that’s left of your backside after a run!