Joel W. Jackson

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joel Jackson followed his dream of competing in auto racing by building his own off-road racer when he was twenty years old.

Joel, from his very first effort performed the duties of designer, fabricator, crew and driver of his desert racer, testing himself against legendary drivers with full factory support in professional events staged by the High Desert Racing Association, SCORE International and the famous “MINT 400.”

Together with his lifelong companion and partner, Marty, Joel began designing, building and developing competition automobiles for sports car racing and oval track racing in addition to their desert racing efforts. Unified in marriage Joel and Marty left the celebration and headed for Texas World Speedway where they were entered in a race the very next day!

The knowledge and skills developed in auto racing were put to use for Chrysler when Joel took a position on the staff of the Chrysler Shelby Automobile Development Team. Directed by auto racing legend Carroll Shelby, this elite team created performance automobiles that stunned the automotive world.

Joel’s versatility was perfect for this position, performing automobile design, fabrication, development and testing, all the while creating an image for Chrysler’s automobiles that helped to carry the corporation from financial ruin to an envied success story. Along the way winning championships in professional sports car racing and respect from the competition.

After nearly seven years Joel left Chrysler Shelby and together with Marty founded their own competition automobile company in their home state of Texas choosing a conjunction of two words describing what the company did they named their company Racefab. Once open for business Marty and Joel received a contract for a series of identical road racing competition automobiles from Carroll Shelby.

“That order was the most sincere statement of confidence in my abilities that Shelby could have made,” Joel stated, reflecting back on that time in his life.

Now in 2015 Racefab, Inc. has been successfully building competition automobiles for twenty-four years and has designed and constructed over three hundred racecars, providing customers with many event victories and over twenty road racing championships all around the globe.

Together Marty and Joel, along with building a company, built a family and Racefab is owned and operated by Marty, Joel and their two sons Jefferson and Jason, who have grown up in the automobile world.

Jefferson, a degreed physicist from Stephen F. Austin University heads up Racefab’s engineering group, while his older brother Jason, a degreed artist, also from Stephen F. Austin University, manages Racefab’s styling, design and composites studio.

Joel is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc. and resides with Marty, his wife of 28 years and their two sons in Rusk, Texas.