Illinois racer Judd Coffman has been circling the Pro Mod ranks for a couple of years now, most recently in a Mustang that’s since been sold off to fellow race Kayla Morton. The reason? So Coffman could take delivery of this awesome new Jerry Bickel Pro Mod Mustang and transplant his current powertrain.

Coffman owns JRC Performance in Illinois, where he and his small team build custom chassis and perform general race car work, including engine building, powdercoating, and ceramic coating. When the decision was made to put the old car out to pasture, he realized he couldn’t duplicate the car, quality, and speed that the Bickel team would be able to put into the chassis construction, so the call was made and the car was ordered.

“Every other car we’ve had we’ve built from the ground up here at JRC. After seeing the results of the new chassis Jerry has come up with, since they don’t sell it in kit form, we just had them weld up the chassis and we went and picked it up to finish it. We took it from there, brought it in-house here to JRC, mounted the body, did all the plumbing, did the front and rear ends, all that. He built the chassis in four weeks,” says Coffman.

“Our business and racing is a family deal with my dad, mom, and wife, Stormie. My dad is a huge part of the deal – he’s the head fabricator, and I couldn’t do this without any of them.”

The car is destined to run Outlaw Pro Mod races all over the Midwest and South, as Coffman regularly races it in Huntsville, Alabama, Lawrenceburg, Tennesee, Cordova, IL, and Eddyville, Iowa. He’s also looking to make a move into the PDRA‘s Pro Boost class once the car’s all sorted out.

The powertrain consists of what’s quickly becoming the Pro Mod standard; a 481X spun up by a pair of 94mm Pro Mod turbochargers rests between the framerails and provides plenty of motivation when the tree drops. All the parts for the new car were in the old car, as everything from the engine and fuel system from the old car came out for installation into this new beast.

Coffman has proven its performance over the last two years of competition with the help of Travis Quillen, who has been instrumental in assistance with fuel system design and general tuning knowledge. In fact, Coffman’s old machine was the guinea pig for the mechanical system that’s now offered by Quillen Motorsports Engineering. The team has been down for eight months getting the car wrapped up since its completion at Bickel.

But Coffman does things a bit differently than the majority – instead of the typical two-speed “Turbo Glide” that’s become all the rage in Pro Mod these days, Coffman gets it done with a manual transmission from B&J Racing Transmissions and an 11-inch triple-disc clutch from TF Performance.

“We’re probably one of the only twin-turbo 481X deals with a clutch out there, and it’s because the setup allows us to go down some of these Outlaw racetracks a little bit easier – we race on as many challenging tracks as we do good tracks,” he says.

The design work was done by Ian Hawkins (aka Sketch of 660 Concepts), and one of JRC’s customers, Nelson Custom Paint and Autobody, laid down the color on the car. It was airbrushed by Greg Stallmyer of Stallmyer’s Custom Paint and Studio. Coffman says that the pictures we have don’t do the car justice whatsoever, and it really needs to be seen in person.

One of the biggest challenges the team faced during the car’s construction was maintaining its light weight, and in order to achieve that careful consideration was given to each component placed in the car, its location, and how those issues would affect weight balance.

It’s a beautiful car, Judd, and we can’t wait to see you running 3.80s with it at the track. Thanks for sharing it with us!