Small-tire racer Trevor Fuqua experienced every racer’s worst nightmare when the fresh, brand new racecar he had poured his heart and soul into was destroyed in a crash less than a day removed from taking delivery.

The Fordsville, Kentucky native had spent two and a half years religiously investing all of his funds to build a sleek new 1967 Camaro for no-prep and radial-tire racing. While the goal and intent was to focus on no-prep, no-time racing, Fuque had flirted with LS hydraulic roller cam records with his Chevrolet S-10, going 4.21 at 175 mph, and had visions of challenging that mark with this new car.

Brothers Adam and Isaac Preston of NEXT Motorsports were tasked with building the entire car, lock, stock, and barrel. Fuque received support from family and friends to make the project a reality financially, and it all came to fruition earlier this month.

The Camaro sports a BES 427-inch LS with Frankenstein cylinder heads and twin 88/91 Precision turbos, backed by an RPM Turbo 400 transmission, an RPM carbon-fiber driveshaft, and a full floater rearend. “It was a nice piece,” Fuqua says. “We set out with the new car to set the hydraulic roller record — I wouldn’t say we were close, but we went pretty fast with the truck with a single turbo, and it was just way overpowered for the chassis. Isaac and Adam are like brothers to me, and we got together and came up with a plan to build a car to break the record. So that’s where it all came from.”

Fuqua picked up the car from the Prestons’ shop on the morning of Monday, March 11, and had a date to test it for the first time the following day at U.S. 60 Dragway in nearby Hardinsburg, Kentucky. Fuqua’s first hit was a planned half-track shutoff; the second run, a full pull, was plagued by “new car blues” and was unrepresentative of its potential. After squaring away a shifter issue, he went back up for a planned hit all the way to the stripe.

“It made it 300 feet and started a wheelie, which I’m not used to in a car that separates 8–9 inches in the rear. My S10, it always squatted a half inch to an inch, so I would know if the front end was up,” Fuqua explains. “It threw me forward as I launched, and throughout the pass everything felt good. At about 300 foot, I felt a wheelie and I went to go pedal it, because I didn’t want to slam the nose down and tear it up, being a new car. And with a 25 to 30 mile-an-hour headwind, that was the wrong thing to do. It just picked the car up and threw it over the wall into a light pole. It went straight up, and then the wind caught it and picked it up over the wall kind of sideways. It hit the driver’s side quarter panel first, and whatever it hit then slung it and nose-dived it into a fence. The fence actually went through the car in multiple places — it came right in between the main part of the cage and the driver’s seat. I’m so lucky to be here today.”

After rolling several times, the car came to rest near the 1/8-mile scoreboard and briefly caught fire. Fuqua climbed from the car and was whisked away from the scene, bruised but miraculously uninjured. “I didn’t see the car after the crash. They all took me away. And they said there were like two or three other poles that came through the passenger side as it was rolling,” he adds. The car had wheelie control functionality onboard, but because he didn’t yet have enough run data to dial in its parameters, it wasn’t configured and active on the fateful run. “We had the wheelie control on the run before, but had it set up wrong and so we just needed one more run to get it all set,” he notes.

I picked the car up at 8:30 on Monday and it was totaled by 4 o’clock on Tuesday. – Trevor Fuqua

“I think it was just the headwind that got ahold of it,” he continues of the ordeal. “I’ve gone through 150 different scenarios in my head since then, and I know I should’ve let off. I’ve been 4.20s, I’ve been 180 miles an hour, I’ve done wheelies. It’s just one of those things. It’s the chance you take, and you just make the wrong decision sometimes,” he says in reflection.

Fuqua visited a local hospital after the incident to be checked over, and then headed home to assess the damage. “I’ve got sort of a leg injury that I’m just too stubborn to go to the doctor for, but otherwise I’m fine,” Fuqua says. He has since met with the Preston’s to evaluate the car and the feasibility for a rebuild.

“We’ve got the car all torn apart — it’s literally just a chassis sitting there again. From the looks of it, it’s not bad. The back looks okay; the front half is obviously junk and has to be cut out. The driver’s compartment has to be cut out, too. The bottom half of the cab looks to be salvageable, but everything else might have to be redone on the inside. The motor is fine, but it broke the injectors off. The transmission and the rearend look good, and the whole turbo system somehow survived.”

Once the jig table opens at NEXT Motorsports, the chassis will be assessed in further detail and, if green-lighted, will be rebuilt. “If at least the bottom half is straight or we can fix it, then we’re going to fix it. If not, then it’s probably going be a loss. I can’t afford to fix it — I’ve literally spent everything I’ve made the last two and a half years to build this car, and so this whole situation has been really rough. I picked the car up at 8:30 on Monday and it was totaled by 4 o’clock on Tuesday.

“Building this car was a big accomplishment to me because I’ve always wanted a first-gen Camaro. My dad had a first-gen, and it’s always been a dream of mine to have one, and so I finally got where I finally got to do it. I took big pride in trying to do it by myself, but everybody needs help whenever you’re just a blue-collar guy that has a regular job, so my family helped support me along the way — my parents Tim and Kim, my wife Leslie, my kids Axton and Lillian — they all supported me in this. You can’t build a car of this caliber by yourself. It takes an army,” he notes of the large effort it took to bring the project to fruition. “But man, we didn’t even get to enjoy her — we didn’t get any good pictures of it or anything.”

Numerous friends, family, and companies have since jumped in to rally behind Fuqua’s heartbreaking ordeal and support his effort to bring his dream back to reality, extending offers to repair or replace components and purchase items to rebuild the Camaro.

“Racing to me is a hobby, and I’m not the kind of person to expect or ask for any help. But people have gone above and beyond to step in,” Trevor Fuqua explains. “I know you can wreck your car, and eventually it’s going to happen. I spent what I spent — it was a lot — but that was something that me and my family, my wife, everyone supported. Stuff happens. But I’m so thankful for all of the support that I’ve gotten from everyone and I’m optimistic that we can put this car back together by fall.”