Why We’re Building a Tube Car at Motobilt
Some ideas never really leave you. They just wait for the right season.
Before Motobilt. Before Ozark. Before the MotoDome. I was bending tube and building full chassis cars at Blue Torch FabWorks. That was the era of raw fabrication. No factory frames. No bolt-on solutions. Just geometry, steel, late nights, and rocks that exposed weak design fast. Bender was there in those early 2000s days. We learned lessons the hard way. We built cars that forced us to understand suspension numbers, link separation, structure, weight balance, and what actually survives when a driver commits to a line.
(Pic: October 2008, Blue Torch FabWorks. I would later sell the company and exit in 2009.)
When I founded Motobilt in 2012, the mission had to change. We weren’t building one-off chassis cars anymore. We were building a company. We focused on Jeep products that real builders could install in their garage. We built bumpers, armor, beds, brackets. We invested in laser cutting and press brake forming. We built a crew. We built consistency. We built a manufacturing foundation in Ozark, Alabama that could support families and push product nationwide.
More than once over the last decade, the idea of building another tube chassis came up. Hunter and I talked about it. Bender and I talked about it. Denver and I sketched ideas. Every time the conclusion was the same. Not yet. The timing wasn’t right. The company needed focus. Our customers needed us focused.
This project is not a shift away from our core. It is a natural evolution for those who want to go further.
Most Motobilt customers are building JL, JT, and JK platforms. They are pushing them harder every year. For many, that path is perfect. A well-built Jeep can do incredible things. That will always be the backbone of Motobilt.
But there is a progression in rock crawling. Eventually, factory architecture becomes the limiting factor. Frame width. Engine placement. Link separation. Belly height. Approach angles. At some point, if you want full control over geometry and structure, you have to remove the factory constraints completely.
That is what a tube chassis allows.
When you design from scratch in CAD, every dimension is intentional. Anti-squat is calculated. Roll center is chosen. Shock angle is deliberate. Engine placement is optimized for balance. Ground clearance is maximized without compromise. This chassis is being built to meet competition rule standards for structure and safety, not because we are chasing trophies, but because that level of scrutiny forces discipline. If it passes that test, it will survive serious recreational rock crawling without question.
There is also something personal about this build.
Hunter DuBose (my beautiful wife) has been part of this journey from the early Blue Torch days through the growth of Motobilt. She is not watching from the sidelines. She is putting a TIG torch in hand on her chassis. Hudson DuBose my son has been around many chassis builds as a child but this time he will be working on them. Bender has been in this story since the early 2000s, when tube cars were not a trend but a commitment. He understands the why behind every gusset and bracket. Michael and Denver bring the engineering depth and CAD precision that allows us to take what we learned years ago and refine it with modern tools and manufacturing capability.
This is not a side project. It is the intersection of experience and maturity.
Motobilt today is not the same company it was in 2012. We have in-house laser cutting. Precision press brake forming. Structured fabrication processes. A crew that understands production and custom work. The tube car becomes a rolling R&D platform. Every link bracket, every mount, every structural decision teaches us something that feeds back into the Jeep products our core audience depends on.
We are not leaving anyone behind.
We are building upward.
For those who want to stay with bolt-on Jeep builds, we will continue to design and manufacture the strongest, most capable components we know how to make. For those who are ready to step into a purpose-built chassis, Motobilt will be part of that path too.
This is the beginning of a series. You will see the CAD process. You will see the chassis come together. You will see the axles, drivetrains, and fabricated components that are already in the shop. You will see welds, structure, geometry decisions, and eventually trail testing in real terrain.
If you’ve followed this story since Blue Torch and before, you’ll recognize the roots.
If you joined us during the Motobilt years, you’ll see where it all connects.
Follow the series here on the blog as we document the build from first weld to first trail. And follow along on Instagram where we will be sharing photos, fabrication clips, and behind-the-scenes progress as it happens.
The season is right.
And we’re just getting started.
