For The Tribune
BROWNSTOWN
In June 2008, Ryan Thomas built his first racecar in his 24-by-24-foot garage.
By the end of 2009, he had built four cars for local customers, all of which had scored wins.
Word soon got out that Thomas was building a quality product that was consistently getting wins for its drivers, and business began to pick up.
With 15 cars on the track by the end of the 2010 racing season, Thomas knew it was his time to shine in the motorsports industry.
Diamond Race Cars was then formed.
Since then, Diamond Race Cars has manufactured more than 200 cars for drivers in 10 different states across the Midwest region.
“It’s amazing to think that it has come this far,” Thomas said in his newly opened shop outside of Brownstown.
The new shop is complete with a jig room, a fabrication area, a shock dyno room and an office.
“We are swamped with business right now,” Thomas said. “We’ve grown to employing two full-time guys in addition to myself and one part-time.”
Thomas credits the latest surge in business to his new Diamond Select race car, which launched in 2016.
Out of the 45 feature wins thus far on the season, half of those have come with the new car.
“In this business, you sell cars by winning races,” Thomas said. “We are very fortunate to have some great people in our cars who will listen and do what we know works.”
Brownstown Speedway has been the home track for Thomas throughout his racing career, and he credits the track’s unique racing surface for some of his success in the industry.
“If you can win at Brownstown, you can win anywhere,” he said.
Seymour’s Matt Boknecht currently leads the points standings in his Diamond Race Car.
Boknecht has two wins on the season at Brownstown.
“The race track is very hard to get a hold of, and it’s a great place take a car to do research and development on,” Thomas said. “If you can get a car performing well at Brownstown, you can be fast anywhere you go.”
When Thomas isn’t building cars, he’s racing them.
On May 13, he competed at Florence Speedway in Union, Kentucky, for the first time this season with the Big C Motorsports team.
Thomas and his team went on to win that night in front of a packed house of spectators.
“It feels good to be able to go out there and get wins like that and see all of the hard work pay off,” Thomas said.
The knowledge gained on the track proves itself to be very valuable when applied in the shop.
“We continuously take that knowledge and apply it to these cars to make them faster and faster,” Thomas said.
He is always looking ahead to the future and has no plans of changing his upward trend in the market.
“We will of course still be building modifieds, but I would like to expand into other areas as well to help the racers,” he said. “We are going to start expanding our parts sales and really just get into anything and everything we see fit to become a one-stop race shop.
“My heart is in this sport, and it has really been a blessing to get this far and help others succeed within the sport.”
Diamond Race Cars is located just outside of Brownstown. Thomas calls the area a hotbed for racing and ultimately credits the growth of his business to being in a centralized location.
“We have a strong field of local racers around here, so it’s always nice to be right here in the thick of things,” Thomas said.
For information on Diamond Race Cars, find the business on Facebook.