Our Antwerp Chamber of Commerce spotlight for November is Advanced Chassis LLC. The owner of this business is Dan and Traci Bowers and it is located at 107 Victory Lane in Antwerp, Ohio.
Ken Bowers (Dan’s Dad) started the business in 1988 and moved it to Antwerp in 1997 where it resides today. Dan worked off and on with his dad for several years until BF Goodrich went on strike for six months. When they called him back to work Dan decided the factory life was not for him and followed his dream of building cars full time.
The business is a chassis shop that specializes in “door cars”. It turns out there are several types of racecars in drag racing. The long skinny ones are Dragsters, if you sit in the middle of a car it’s called an Altered, and if you set in the left side and you’re out in the open it’s called a Roadster. While they do build all of these types of cars along with mini rod tractor pullers, their core business is cars that look like regular cars. They take a fiberglass or carbon fiber body that is just the shell of car and they place it on a jig. Once they get the right distance off the ground they build the rest of the car. You can get almost any kind of shell that you want. There were all kinds of cars there when I was there. I saw a 1963 Avanti, a 2020 Mustang, a 1969 Camaro, 1970 Mustang and other cars I didn’t recognize. The prices of some of these things are astronomical if you’re not used to engines costing eighty thousand dollars or more! Dan told me the shell of the 2020 mustang was made from carbon fiber and cost almost fourteen thousand dollars just for the shell and the car would be north of a $150,000.00 by the time it goes down the track.
When they are not building cars they are building the parts for other people to build their cars from. They build custom rear-end housings for drag cars and truck pullers. They build mini rod tractor pullers in kit form and send them all over the world. They have tractors competing in England, Australia, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Germany. They supply other builders with parts along with the general public through the World Wide Web. They will also build you custom headers for your specific car or complete turbo systems and all of the plumbing.
It takes a lot of people to do all of this stuff and Dan has a great crew of young people that are super talented in this field. Most have been with him since they came out of high school, and many of them including Dan are Vantage graduates. Currently there are nine employees including Dan that work at Advanced Chassis full time. He has found it’s better to find them young with skills and teach them exactly how to build cars his way than try to teach an old dog new tricks.
Dan tells me he texts pictures of their progress almost daily. He explains that when you’re building the dream in someone’s head you have to keep constant communication with the dreamer so the build comes out like it looks in his head.
Paulding county residents don’t make up much of their customer base but they do a lot of stuff for the “locals”. They do a lot aluminum rim repair, pontoon boat welding, powder coating, and fixing of the building whatever needs done for the village.
Did you know that Dan and Traci have tried to bring the excitement of their world to Paulding County by putting on the Horsepower Holiday Weekend every year at the fairgrounds. They bring in tractor pulls, dirt drag racing, tug a trucks, and hundreds of ATV’s to come and play for a weekend every year.
Dan’s proud of the fact that in 33 years they have never had to lay anyone off and have a long list of customers waiting to get their car in the shop to have it transformed into their dream car.
If you want to learn more about their unique business look them up on Facebook, or check out their website at AdvancedChassisllc.net. The best way though is to stop in and check their business out first hand. Dan is always glad to give a little tour to newcomers that want to check it out.
The Antwerp Chamber of Commerce is pleased to have Dan, Traci and their crew at Advanced Chassis, partnering with us in the Antwerp Community.