SCORE Journal - The Official Publication of SCORE Off-Road Racing
Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/555623
Fortin Jr. was back in his Jimco in 2001, winning San Felipe and a fourth SCORE Baja 1000 that season, and in 2003, he capped an incredible run at off-road's most famous race with an overall victory, beating out all the Trophy Trucks in what is still the most recent overall win at the SCORE Baja 1000 for a true buggy. Fortin Jr. then began building a new 2-seat Jimco buggy and had plans to mount a truck body on it for racing in Baja. "I was a Class 1, and starting behind all the Trophy Trucks was so dangerous," Fortin Jr. remembers. "I wasn't gonna race the 1000 again until we had qualifying. I didn't care if I started first, but I wanted to start up with the guys I was gonna be racing for the overall." The truck-bodied buggy seemed like a good solution, but in 2005, Fortin Jr.'s focus switched to his family and his business, and apart from three one-off drives after turning his single seater into a Class 10, as well as a few select appearances in friends' cars, Fortin Jr. hasn't returned to desert racing since. The Fortins As Businessmen Aside from their exploits in racing, both Fortin Sr. and his son have both held the reins of Fortin Racing, Inc., which began life as Fortin Transaxles under Fortin Sr. For much of the time that Sr. was doing transmissions in his spare time, his 35-year career in the Department of Defense saw him climb the ranks all the way from apprentice machinist to GM- 14 (senior civilian), the highest rank possible in ship repair, all without a college degree. He retired as Repair Director, Supervisor of Shipbuilding, San Diego, having administered between $300 and $400 million dollars worth of ship repair contracts per year during Desert Storm alone. Fortin Sr. said he is probably as proud or prouder of that part of his career than his career as a transmission builder, and it's not hard to see why. For Fortin Sr., his transmission business was a way to do something he loved when he was done for the day down at the shipyard. In addition, if it helped offset the cost of racing, all the better. Widely associated with bringing the Hewland DG300 road racing transmission to off-road and transforming it into a winning package that was highly-sought by many top teams, Fortin Sr. recalls replacing and strengthening nearly every component inside the DG300 before finally creating his own transmission in 1986. "The McMillins began to dominate in three classes with the Hewlands," Fortin Sr. remembers. "And they (the DG300s) could handle the 2.4-liter Porsche flat fours, even the modified 2.8s. But Corky (McMillin) wanted more power, so I had to do it. We built our first Fortin main case in '86, gave it a 10-inch ring and pinion, something to handle the 3.2-3.8-liter 6-cylinder Porsches." During all of his time running the business, Fortin Sr. operated out of his elaborate and well- equipped garage, until 1999, when his son came in and took over the leadership role. "The business was on the cusp of growing, and it needed to grow to support our increased cost of racing," Fortin Jr. says. He had spent the previous five years working for the civil engineering giant Kimley-Horn and attributes much us his business savvy to the excellent training he received there. Fortin Jr. opened the company's first real shop soon after taking over the business, and in 2006, he expanded to his current, 10,000 square foot facility in El Cajon, CA. In Fortin Jr.'s time at the helm, the company introduced off- road's first sequential gearbox, which he initially developed for Volkswagen to run in two diesel-powered buggies in the Dakar Rally. "That was probably the proudest moment of my business career," Fortin Jr. says of receiving the deposit to begin work on the new transmissions. This came in the form of a check addressed directly from Volkswagen of Germany. The new transmission, when paired with a torque converter, also allowed buggy drivers here at home to run the horsepower needed to again compete with the Trophy Trucks for the overall, after having come to the end of the line with clutch cars; "It was what off-road needed," Fortin Jr. says. In time Fortin Jr. has also introduced several components to the short course off-road market, many of which he personally develops on his own Pro-4 in the LOORRS series. Additionally, he continues to push the development of his FRST-5 gearbox in the Trophy Truck market, with Justin Lofton 066 SCORE JOURNAL