Plaster City, California - (January 7, 2006)

Amongst the slight breeze, the quiet desert floor and while in the midst of one of off road racing’s premier events, the Dakar Rally, Jimco Racing unveiled the latest in off road racing technology on Friday morning.

Jimco Racing’s owner – Mike Julson commented, “We are pretty damn excited about today’s testing, we’ve been waiting a very long time to put this truck in the dirt.”

Julson, his crew chief - Matt Loiodice and the Julson family, gathered at the familiar Plaster City proving grounds for what later would be described as “a great test session.”

The gorgeous Jimco Racing Trophy Truck rolled out from the race hauler and glistened in the morning sun as the crew busied with the last minute preparations for the truck’s first run in the desert.

As the crew fueled the truck with a dual dry break system, it was easy to determine that the bright blue race fuel pouring into the truck was none other than Sunoco racing fuel. Rumors have been bouncing back and forth throughout the industry that CL Bryant, a large distributor of off road racing fuel, no longer distributes VP Racing fuel and is now distributing Sunoco. Their website indicates the same, however they have yet to publish an “official” press release.

The sweet smell of race gas preluded the eruption of the Jimco Trophy Truck’s 800 horsepower Chevy V8 motor as the crew warmed up the rocket ship for its first run in the dirt. The 127 inch wheel base truck features suspension by FOX Racing Shox that includes a set of 4.3” Bypass coupled with a 3” coil over on the rears and 4.3 Bypass with a 2.5” coil over on the fronts. Combined with the engineering performed by Jimco Racing, the rear wheel travel is 30 inches and the front is 26 inches. The 800 horsepower V8 motor is coupled with an XTrac 383 6-speed racing transmission box for the ultimate in reliability.

Once warmed up it didn’t take long for Julson to get excited about putting the truck through its first phases of testing.

Julson pulled away from the Jimco Race hauler and gave a short wave blasting off into the desert for the first of a handful of test sessions.

The roar of 800 horsepower in a brand new race truck is always a pretty cool way to start your day and today was no different.

But what we didn’t know was that Julson had been itching to rev this baby up for quite a long time and he didn’t waste much time in smashing the pedal to the floor.

The contrail of dust from the BFGoodrich 39 inch Baja TA K/R rubber could be seen over a mile away and viewed with the naked eye the trophy truck appeared to be, let’s just say really damn fast.

From a distance the roar of the truck was slight, but soon became thunderous as the lightning fast truck blazed a trail. Running along the “test road” of SR 80, Julson put the hammer down recording a whopping 135 miles per hour on the GPS in the first run.

Crew Chief Matt Loiodice closely watched and after Julson came off the pedal, Loiodice grinned and said, “She looks pretty good.”

Wheeling the truck in front of the hauler, Julson smiled and said, “Let’s get to work, she’s running great but we’ve got some fine tuning to do.”

The crew removed the gorgeously designed body (by Barraza Designworks) from the truck as Mike climbed out and chatted with Matt about a few slight changes.

FOX Racing Shox Kingpin John Marking and Manager, Todd Tenbrok, were at the test session with the FOX Racing Shox trailer, which is a fully equipped race shock mobile facility, and the fine tuning began almost immediately.

Each time Julson tested the truck the handling improved when finally he arrived back to the race hauler at about 3:30 p.m. and his eyes were as big as round saucers and he was smiling ear-to-ear.

Julson said, “Let’s go racing boys.”

Jimco Racing is 7th off the line at the upcoming 2006 SCORE Laughlin Desert Challenge. The event begins with race related festivities on Thursday evening, January 12 through Sunday, January 16, 2006.

Visit Jimco at www.jimcorace.com

Jimco Race Trophy Truck Specifications: