TMCP #639: Jason Noel – Fat Fender Garage, The 20-Year Overnight Success
The MuscleCar Place
Robert Kibbe
4.5 • 702 Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2026
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jason Noel, founder of Fat Fender Garage in Gilbert, Arizona, joins us this week with a story that’s less about horsepower at the beginning — and more about perseverance. Jason didn’t grow up chasing race cars. He was a finish carpenter by trade, building doors and crown molding before the 2008 housing collapse wiped out his business and forced a complete reset. What came next wasn’t a hobby gone wild — it was a deliberate rebuild. One old truck led to another, then to customer builds, then to something much bigger than he ever planned.
Today, Fat Fender Garage is a full-scale restoration shop specializing in classic Ford and Chevy trucks, known especially for early Ford F-100s and modern Coyote swaps. Along the way, Jason learned that if he wanted the quality and timelines his customers expected, he’d have to take control of the process. That meant bringing paint, upholstery, parts manufacturing, and now even chassis production in-house. What started as flipping a few trucks for fun has grown into a 75-person operation building high-end custom vehicles and engineered components designed to compete at the top of the industry.
In this episode, Jason shares the hard lessons from early customer builds, the philosophy behind vertical integration, why he chose to compete directly with established chassis manufacturers, and how telling the real story — wins and failures alike — became the backbone of Fat Fender’s marketing success. If you’re into classic trucks, modern restomods, or the realities of scaling a business in the automotive aftermarket, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.
The post TMCP #639: Jason Noel – Fat Fender Garage, The 20-Year Overnight Success first appeared on The Muscle Car Place.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Muscle Car Place Online Podcast, episode number 639. |
| 0:05.2 | This week, a very fascinating interview with Jason Knoll from Fat Fender Garage. |
| 0:11.5 | A Fat Fender is a company that does not play in the muscle car space. |
| 0:15.1 | No, yet until the end of the interview, you'll find that out. |
| 0:18.6 | They're in the truck space, and not just the old |
| 0:21.1 | Fat Fender Ford Truck Space. They make cool custom, yet to a sort of productionized Ford trucks |
| 0:27.1 | from 48 to 97, Broncos 66 to 69, and Chevys, 47 to 87. Big wide range there, but of the popular |
| 0:34.6 | boards and Chevys. Today, they are a full-blown, full-build restoration shop, |
| 0:40.3 | and parts manufacturer as well. There's a huge push in the truck world right now that's right |
| 0:44.8 | alongside cars. Fat Fender used to, but does not anymore, take on smaller projects for customers. |
| 0:50.5 | You'll hear why that is here. Now it's just full builds. They didn't make their own chassis before, but now they do, competing with the biggest name in the industry on purpose, |
| 0:58.7 | and you're going to hear why here. |
| 1:00.5 | And this amazing overnight success story is just 20 years in the making, and you'll hear why here. |
| 1:06.0 | Even if we didn't have customers, I surely didn't want to start making a bunch of payments on equipment and put food on the table and take care of employees and pay for rent. So we had to be |
| 1:16.5 | very cautious what we did, but also very aggressive with our marketing and so that we had enough |
| 1:23.8 | work to sustain what we were trying to accomplish. |
| 1:35.7 | This is the Muscle Car Place Online Podcast, brought you by National Parks Depot. |
| 1:42.2 | This is the weekly show dedicated to people worldwide who love American muscle cars. |
| 1:47.5 | If you're buying, selling, restoring, even racing them, this is the place for you. Now here's your host, Rob Kibby. Yes indeed, I am Rob Kibby and welcome to the Muscle |
| 1:54.9 | Car Place podcast. Well, here we are over halfway through February. March is just around the corner, |
| 2:02.4 | and we have a very fun interview here with Jason Null from Fat Fender Garage. Now, fat Fender is a place that makes pretty killer Ford and |
| 2:08.0 | Chevy trucks, classics only. I'll have to admit up front, I like trucks. I've owned many trucks. |
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