For Art Morrison, owner of Art Morrison Engineering, it took a near-death experience to realize the importance of building a safer racecar. In short, Art Morrison felt he had a better idea. Laying in a hospital bed after a wicked “wheelstander” crash, Morrison felt that he could build the proverbial “better mousetrap.”

One of Art Morrison's bumper to bumper frame designs.

Making a better racecar chassis could prevent other racers from going through the agony of recovering from a racing accident or even a fatality. In 1971, Morrison hung up the firesuit and put on the welding mask. Forty years later, Morrison is still refining that “better mousetrap.”

We found a YouTube video from the crew at TUNED, featuring a visit to Art Morrison’s fabrication facility. We love the behind the scenes look at something the automotive world seems to be lacking in these days, a family owned company that is motivated strictly by a passion for cars.

The video shows Art Morrison Enterprises from the inside out, much like the style in which Morrison designs his automotive chassis. A process he calls reverse engineering. While the term reverse engineering is not new, Morrison takes it to a different level.

Reverse engineering in modern times was used by the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union to dissect captured spy planes and duplicate the technology for their own versions of spy aircraft. What Morrison does is the equivalent of taking a 1950’s F-86 Super Saber jet fighter and re-engineering it into a modern F-18 Super Hornet.

Although he claims to "reverse engineer" his chassis, there's nothing engineered reverse on these high performance chassis as seen in the engineer drawings above.

Morrison also has some impressive news for Chevy Truck fans on his website: “While we have focused on bolt-on car chassis over the last few years, we haven’t forgotten about the truck owners out there. To help us with the reverse engineering process, we recently purchased an untouched 1950 Chevrolet Truck.

This “project truck” is going to be the model for our bolt on chassis for the ’47-1954 Chevrolet pick-ups. Expect to see something available for this later in the year. For the ’55-59 fans, plans are in the works to make a bolt-on chassis for this truck as well.

With some of our new suspension designs, these trucks are going to be the hot ticket for updating your classic pickup truck with an improved ride and handling.” Of course, we’ll let the video do the explaining. If you’ve ever wanted an all-access pass to a cutting-edge facility…sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

For the hardcore Chevy fans, Art Morrison Enterprises may have some ideas to help your project car along. As the video clearly showed, the machine work at Morrison is all done in-house and by Morrison’s own team. For more information, be sure to check out their site, here.