Try as fate or Lady Luck might, it really is hard to keep a good racer down.

Our pal Joe Borschke over at Stenod Performance sent us over a tip on his customer and good friend Tom Kempf, who endured a hard crash back in May at the DTS Friday Night Heads Up Racing Series event at the Milan Dragway. It seems that initial gatherings by Kempf and company that the car was totaled were premature, as the team at Skinny Kid Race Cars has already rebuilt the entire rear of the car just as it was before the crash.

According to eyewitness accounts of the crash, Kempf, in his beautiful Outlaw Drag Radial Pontiac Trans Am, got out of the groove and was unable to reel the car in as he performed a near 360-degree spin and backed the car right into the guardrail. As you can see in the photo shown here, the impact was pretty substantial.

We got our first look at Kempf’s Trans Am nearly two years ago at the NMCA Finals and LSX Shootout in St. Louis, when Kempf and car builder Borschke arrived after a last-minute thrash and unveiled their incredibly well-engineered machine to a flock of curious onlookers. This car was, and still is, one of the nicest race cars we’ve ever laid eyes on, and it’s great to hear that rumors of its demise were inaccurate.

According to the tip, Skinny Kid has just finished the rebuild of the Trans Am and the car will be off to the metal crafters this week for some final body work and primer before skipping over to the paint shop.