The wave of winter weather that crashed down on the United States this past week claimed plenty of vehicular casualties, and not all of them were on the road. More than a handful of them were in the Geeslin Family Racing shop when the roof caved in from all the ice. As of Tuesday, they’re still waiting for everything to thaw before they can extract the precious metal, which includes a Camaro Z/28-bodied Funny Car, a 1963 Chevy Corvette Pro Mod, and way more.
I spoke with Casey Geeslin, who explained to me that the shop actually doubled as his parents’ home. It was a barndominium in Senatobia, Mississippi, which was caught in a storm that brought up to an inch of ice in the state’s northwest corner. That’s pretty major considering the town doesn’t even get snow all that often.
Geeslin tells me that some of the cars seem fine, while others are trashed. “The silver 1933 Ford my dad built 20 years ago seems to be perfectly fine,” he said. “I have a tube chassis Chevy 454 SS truck and a ’63 Corvette Pro Mod in there that we think escaped any damage too.
“My dad’s Super Gas ’33 Ford racecar got the worst of the damage. We can’t get to it yet, but we know it’s really bad. There was a white ’68 Camaro that took a bunch of damage, too. My white ’91 Chevy drag-and-drive project and ’06 Silverado are actually holding the roof up currently, but I think they’ll have minimal damage.”
The plan for now is to wait out the weather so they can assess the scope of the damage. Fortunately, the family has plenty of know-how and connections to repair whatever they decide is worth salvaging. Casey’s dad, Ronnie Geeslin, runs his own speed shop called Ronnie’s Hot Rods. They build some stellar machines down there, as you can see on their site.
Geeslin told me that the racing community has been super supportive of his family in the past few days. Some naysayers have criticized the shop’s structure, but he explained, “People don’t understand that we paid good money to a company to engineer and build his shop because that’s not what we do. We’re mechanics and we restore cars for a living. The building failing was out of our control. It was never built to withstand the weather we got here.”
Anyone interested in following along with the situation can keep up with Geeslin Family Racing on Facebook. There isn’t a GoFundMe set up or anything like that, but as they find out exactly what they need to rebuild, they’ll post there. Here’s hoping that the damage isn’t as bad as it seems, and in the end, everybody is safe. That’s enough to be thankful for.
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