Julia Tomko inherited her grandfather’s 1950 Chevrolet 3100 pickup truck through his will, not through a showroom floor, which is exactly the kind of car that isn’t supposed to end up as a line item in a lawsuit. Nicole Taylor’s family connection runs through her father, Billy Taylor, and a 1957 Chevrolet Nomad he owned back in high school. Both vehicles landed in the same Troutman, North Carolina shop, and according to a civil complaint filed this week in Iredell County Civil Superior Court, both women say they’re still waiting for finished cars while a combined $243,000 sits unaccounted for.
The shop belongs to Jarit Johnson, younger brother of seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson, and this is not his first appearance in an Iredell County courtroom this summer. Backfire covered a separate complaint from a UK-based Chevelle owner claiming Johnson’s shop sat on six figures of his money for years, and that case is still working through the system. Tomko and Taylor’s filing names Johnson personally, his restoration business, and one of his workers as co-defendants, which mirrors the structure of the first suit almost exactly.
Tomko’s portion of the claim runs almost $143,000, tied to the 1950 3100 pickup her grandfather left her. Taylor’s father wants his 1957 Nomad back in the condition it was promised, and the two claims together account for the remaining roughly $100,000. Neither vehicle is a common daily driver anymore. The 3100 is Chevrolet’s first modern pickup generation, built on the Advance-Design platform that ran from 1947 through 1955, and clean Nomads from 1955 through 1957 are among the most sought-after wagons GM ever built specifically because so few were produced before Chevrolet killed the two-door wagon body style. Both are the kind of vehicles where replacement trim, glass, and body panels are scarce enough that a botched or abandoned restoration can be a bigger loss than the invoice suggests, since some of what’s missing may not be reproducible at any price.
Add up what’s now on the docket against the same Troutman address and the number stops looking like an isolated dispute. The Chevelle suit alone asked for at least $175,000 before any multiplier, and Backfire’s earlier breakdown of the North Carolina law behind that request explained why plaintiffs’ attorneys reach for the state’s unfair-and-deceptive-trade-practices statute instead of a plain breach-of-contract claim. Stack that on top of Tomko and Taylor’s combined $243,000 and there is now more than $400,000 in claimed damages tied to one shop, filed by three separate customers, in the span of about two weeks.
A Racer Turned Restorer, Building Trust He’s Now Accused of Breaking
Jarit Johnson isn’t a hobbyist who hung a shingle. He made his own NASCAR Nationwide Series debut in October 2008, driving the No. 22 Dodge for Fitz Motorsports at Memphis Motorsports Park, and he’s spent years around race shops in the Charlotte area beyond just being related to a seven-time champion. That background is precisely what makes his restoration business appealing to people shipping cars across an ocean or across the country: a NASCAR surname reads as a credential, even when the job at hand is bodywork and upholstery rather than lap times.
His most public restoration credit is personal rather than commercial: “Butch,” the 1990 Chevy pickup his brother put into a boulder during the 1995 Baja 1000 while leading and battling exhaustion, a crash serious enough that Jimmie went missing in the desert while Jarit was stuck nearby in his own truck at Coco’s Corner. Jarit did much of that rebuild, and Hendrick Motorsports later wrapped a Cup car in a matching throwback scheme for a Darlington race built around the truck’s history. None of that required an invoice, a deadline, or a stranger’s money, which is a very different job than what Tomko, Taylor, and the Chevelle owner say they paid for.
Why Three Plaintiffs Filed Three Separate Suits Instead of One
A reasonable question is why Tomko and Taylor filed jointly with each other but not alongside the Chevelle owner, and why none of this is shaping up as a class action. North Carolina lets a judge consolidate separate cases that share common questions of fact once they’re all on file, which can happen here since all three point at the same shop and similar allegations. But consolidation isn’t automatic, and a true class action requires numerosity, typically enough plaintiffs that individual lawsuits would be impractical to manage one by one. Three or four wronged customers rarely clears that bar. Each plaintiff also has different damages, different vehicles, and different timelines, which makes separate filings easier to prove than a single combined case where every element has to line up.
Winning a Judgment and Actually Getting Paid Are Different Fights
If either new claim succeeds, actually getting paid is a separate fight. A civil judgment in North Carolina becomes a lien against a defendant’s real property once it’s docketed with the clerk of court, and that lien lasts ten years — useful if Johnson owns land or a building outright, worthless if the shop operates out of a leased bay with no equity behind it. North Carolina is also unusual in that it generally bars wage garnishment for ordinary civil judgments like these; garnishment here is largely limited to taxes, child support, and a short list of federal debts. That leaves a winning plaintiff searching for non-exempt bank accounts, equipment, or other business assets and then paying a sheriff to execute against them, which is slower and far less certain than the jury verdict that gets the headline.
What This Should Change About How You Ship a Classic Car
A grandfather’s pickup and a father’s Nomad are the kind of cars that make this pattern sting more than the dollar figures do, because there’s no replacing the sentimental chain of ownership even if a check eventually clears. Before a car ever leaves on a trailer, run the shop’s name through the county’s civil court portal where it operates, not just a general web search, since pending suits and judgments are public record and take five minutes to check. Ask specifically whether the shop carries garagekeepers legal liability coverage and get the carrier’s name directly rather than taking a verbal assurance. Structure payment around inspectable milestones instead of a lump sum up front, and put a real completion date with consequences for missing it into the written agreement rather than leaving it open-ended. This isn’t the first shop Backfire has covered that turned deposits into years of silence, and a shop’s owner having driven in NASCAR himself doesn’t change any of that math.
To be clear about where things stand: these are allegations laid out in a civil complaint, which by design tells only the plaintiffs’ side before any answer has been filed. No trial date has been set in either case, and there’s no verified public response from Johnson on the record as of this writing. Backfire will follow both cases as they move through Iredell County and update this story if that changes.
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