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The Thunder Road Racing story started in the early 1970s after Mick Elcoate returned from Vietnam and convinced his wife to let him try something he had always wanted to do - go motorcycle racing.

After nearly 10 years of dragging his young family to race meetings around Australia, Mick decided it was time to settle down and concentrate on building up the fledgling engineering business he and his wife had established.

However, after a short retirement from motor sport the need for speed again won out resulting in Mick building the family's first race boat, which he called Thunder Road, after the movie of the same name.

Mick, and later son Shane, raced the Thunder Road boat with considerable success for many years.

It was through their success in powerboat racing that Mick and Shane started building specialised engines for powerboat racers around Australia. Today the father and son team continues to build engines for a select group of customers.

After entering drag racing the Elcoate family continued to race under the Thunder Road name, which is now one of the more established and better known names in Australian drag racing.

Drag racing is now an integral part of the Elcoate family life with Mick and Shane not only racing in the highly competitive and popular Top Doomslammer bracket, but also building very successful race cars.

Today the Elcoate family are kept busy with their race car engineering business, Thunder Road Race Cars, which not only builds the family's unique and successful race cars, three of which have won the coveted Best Engineered Award at national drag race events, but cars and componentry for leading Group One drag racers Australia-wide.

Visit our photo page to view our drag cars.