Much as everyday life will, drag racing has a tendency to throw curveballs and present unforeseen challenges that force one to rise up in the face of adversity, even when quitting might be the easiest answer. For veteran racer Ray “Hollywood” Johnson, those challenges have come in both his personal life and on the race track in recent years, but for the business owner from Wallingford, Connecticut, the word “quit” just isn’t in the vocabulary.

Diehard fans of 10.5-inch tire and all-Ford racing certainly know Johnson’s name — he was a regular fixture for years in the NMRA Pro Outlaw category and at Outlaw 10.5 events in the Northeast with his menacing, all-black, twin-turbocharged 1993 Ford Mustang LX with a small block between the pipes. In 2009, he sold the car and took a hiatus from the sport to tend to his family and grow his company, RRJ Associates, which leases roll-off dumpsters for commercial and residential clients. But even as he stepped away, Johnson knew he’d be back back behind the wheel in due time.

In June of 2012, Johnson purchased the 2004 SN-95 Ford Mustang from Kenny Seeger Motorsports that Conrad Scarry had driven to the NMRA Pro Outlaw championship, and with the help of good friend Jamie Miller, set about to build a machine capable of running right at the head of the Outlaw 10.5 class.

For Johnson, his relationship with Miller goes back to his very beginnings in the sport. Like many others in heads-up drag racing, Johnson admittedly got his start racing on the street, but soon found himself at the track with some potent nine and 10-second cars. During that time, Johnson met Miller, who was operating a chassis shop of his own at the time, and the pair formed a lasting friendship and on-track partnership that centered around a Camaro that Miller was running out of his shop. As Johnson explains it, “I started driving the car, and we ended up doing some episodes on PINKS and lost a car and won a car during all of it.”

Johnson purchased his familiar Coupe in the 2000’s during the expansive growth of Outlaw 10.5, and began traveling the NMRA circuit, eventually running into the sixes and battling tooth and nail with his peers before temporarily hanging up his helmet.

“I sold the car and took some time off and had a couple of kids — life kind of took over,” he says with a laugh. “But I said when I do get back at it, I want to build a big block car — a car that can run with the fastest guys around.”

Despite the proven capabilities of the newly-purchased race car, Johnson knew it would need a fresh makeover inside and out to push it into the 4.0-second territory the class has advanced into, and it was only natural that he’d turn to Miller, who was then working for Victory Racecraft, to help with him in his quest.

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Johnson, who gained his nickname after telling Miller that “he’d make him famous one day”, bought the car lock, stock, and barrel in its NMRA-legal configuration, with a combination that he felt wouldn’t quite make the cut in Outlaw 10.5. “The car had gone the equivalent of 4.30’s in the eighth-mile, and knowing that I wanted to be competitive at Cecil [County Dragway], I needed to build a car that was capable of running the in the 4.0’s on a consistent basis. Jamie did what he felt was necessary with the chassis to get there, and Eric Dillard at Pro Line worked with us to make enough power to be able to run those numbers. We talked about it, and it was all a team decision.”

As he explains, “I went from buying a car and thinking I was going to race it the next weekend, to taking me two years to get out there.”

Without ever making a pass in it, Johnson and Miller ripped the car down to nothing but the bare chassis and body and reconfigured it as a 25.2 double framerail setup, installed a larger anti-roll bar, shifted the engine back two inches, added bars in the front subframe and moved things around to fit Johnson’s frame in the cockpit. The intercooler was also built with the water tank on top and remounted in the car to make it all look like one unit. The engine, a 550 cubic inch big block Ford mill, was sent back to Pro Line Racing to have it punched out to 632-inches of displacement. The Bruno-Lenco transmission setup was sold off in favor of a Rossler two-speed, and the Precision 88mm turbos were transformed into 94mm pieces.

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The big block Ford powerplant features a Bryant crankshaft swinging BME connecting rods and Diamond Pistons, topped with THOR cylinder heads and a valvetrain spun by a custom Pro Line camshaft. A custom sheet metal intake and Moran Injectors provide the fuel and air, with MSD 8-Plus Ignition delivering the spark. A Peterson Fluid Systems R4 pump and dry sump system provide the oiling.

The aforementioned Rossler two-speed transfers through a ProTorque converter to a Mark Williams rear end housing via a Strange Engineering driveshaft, to Strange axles and brakes, both front and rear. The car features Santhuff struts and shocks, with Mickey Thompson rubber riding on Mickey Thompson wheels.

Johnson also utilizes an MSD Power Grid ignition controller and ARC RPM control Module, and NLR AMS-1000 boost controller, and a Racepak V300 for data acquisition.

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As alluded to earlier, Johnson and company spent two full years building the car, but those two years weren’t without their major hurdles. In 2013, Johnson’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, and he made the difficult decision at that time to pull the plug on the project and put the car up for sale. During that emotionally-charged time, Miller and Rich Yale continued to work on the car, and in hindsight, Johnson considers himself thankful he didn’t find a buyer for it. As he told us in the spring, “I could have traded the car for everything but a helicopter, and thankfully it didn’t sell.” At his mother’s urging, Johnson eventually decided to soldier on with the build, and this summer, all the blood, sweat, and tears finally came together.

After a shakedown outing at Cecil County, Johnson returned a week later for the official debut of the car at the annual Yellow Bullet Nationals, where his new combination would be put up to one of its stiffest tests right out of the gate. There, he qualified 14th out of 32 entries with a solid 4.328 at 180.07 mph before rain washed out the remainder of the event, cutting the ribbon-cutting race short of a heads-up battle.

And that’s where the story takes another unfortunate turn.

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After the Yellow Bullet race, Johnson took the car to Atco Raceway in New Jersey, and had just clicked off his best run ever at 4.27 at 185 mph when a fuel rail buckled and pushed an injector O-ring out, spraying fuel onto the motor and igniting an intense fire that ultimately resulted in more than $80,000 worth of damage to the car. The fire burned all of the wiring, the plumbing, the distributor, coil, and valve covers, and melted the composite front end right off the car.

As he told us, “it’s sitting in my garage right now looking like a piece of charcoal.”

Fortunately, Johnson, knowing the volatility of such a powerful race car — he says he knew “it was a matter of if, not when, something would happen” — he had purchased insurance on the car before it ever hit the track. He’s now currently awaiting that payout to begin making repairs for that he hopes is a return to racing next season.

“At this point I don’t know exactly when we’ll get it fixed, but I definitely want to get it fixed and get it back out there, because we have a competitive race car, that’s for sure.”

Johnson will again team with Jamie Miller and a handful of friends and sponsors, including East Side Service, Santhuff Suspension Specialists, ProTorque, Fragola Fittings, The Spin Shop, Rich Yale Concrete, ProLine, and Wayne Keegan Competitive Wiring, for the rebuild process. And despite ongoing concerns for his mother and her health at home, Johnson remains driven to punch his way into the category of frontrunners in the cut-throat Outlaw 10.5 world with one of the most gorgeous race cars, inside and out, the class has ever seen.

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Johnson's machine as it sits today after incurring nearly $80,000 worth of damage in a fire at the Atco Raceway in September.