Who is ‘No Way Guy’ Shaun Umscheid? How a Canadian Welder Turned Workshop Comedy Into Millions of Followers
Attention is the currency of our time. Get enough people to look in your direction, and it can be like winning the lottery.
For Canadian welder Shaun Umscheid, better known as the ‘No Way Guy,’ it was a wild ride from obscurity to viral social media fame. The Shaun of a past life operated a small welding shop on his acreage, keeping mostly to himself. His specialty was working on and building cars to run in demolition derbies.
“I was bored and decided to start posting videos for my welding business,” he said. “My wife and I decided to have a bet on who could get the most followers. So I started to post some stuff that wasn’t related to my welding business, one being a ‘What? No way!’ reaction video. It blew up over night and suddenly we gained tens of thousands of followers. The video went viral with a few million views. I decided to try the same thing and went viral again. From there I started a page to create content that makes people laugh and the impact has been huge.”
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Almost overnight, Shaun was getting recognized on the street and receiving hundreds of messages a day from fans. Beyond the goofy videos, Shaun is just another car guy, albeit one who has now been given some amazing opportunities thanks to the heightened profile.
“It has flipped our life upside down and been such a blessing for our family,” he said. “I’m getting to do some wild things I never imagined. People assume I am a mechanic but I’d say I’m a ‘mechanically inclined welder.’ It was funny the amount of people that didn’t know I’m a gear head and were surprised I was there at Sick Week.”
Four doors of fun and nine-second elapsed times.
Two years ago, the Albertan bought a ’71 Chevelle to use as a family cruiser. It was a true barn find with a little 307ci small block (an engine once described by Brian Lohnes as ‘kind of a downer’), and Shaun enjoyed the car for a summer before tearing it apart for an LS swap.
The plan changed, and when the car showed up at Sick Week 2025 Presented By Gear Vendors Overdrive it appeared with a BluePrint Engines 540 backed by a Stage 4.5 FTI Turbo 400. Accommodations were made for a F1A-94 Procharger, but that would not appear until 2026.
The ProCharger was a new addition for 2026, cranking up the horsepower from the BluePrint Engines 540.
“After SEMA 2023 I decided to build it into a drag-and-drive car,” Shaun said. “On the 3rd of January, 2024 it came into the shop and on the 4th of January 2025 it rolled into a trailer to head to Florida for Sick Week.”
The four-door’s chassis has been boxed and braced with a custom kit made by Shaun, with the frame notched in the rear and mini-tubs allowing for some bigger rubber. A Moser nine-inch is surrounded by Detroit Speed rear arms and Afco dual adjustable coil over shocks, while the front end has dual adjustable shocks from QA1.
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“Sick Week was the first place I wanted to take the car and prove to myself I could build a car to not only go down the track but make the miles of street driving. My number one goal was to finish the (2025) event without any major break downs and we succeeded.
“We really wanted to break into the tens with the car NA but just couldn’t make it happen. We ran a best of 11.13 on the last day. Our biggest battle came after Orlando when we blew out both passenger side shocks. That made for tough street driving as well as getting the car to launch at the remaining tracks.”
Shaun said the efforts put in by racers to stay in the event astonished him.
“You see and hear about it, but until you do it, you don’t know. Cars broke down all night and no sleep — it’s a really tough event. Also a big shout out to all my fellow content creators. It’s one thing to do all the drag-and-drive, but it’s something else adding on a couple hours after getting to your hotel to put together a video for people to watch.”
Most recently, we saw Shaun break into the nines and go dang close to the eights at Sick Week 2026 Presented By Gear Vendors Overdrive, hitting a new personal best of 9.072.
So just remember, next time you unleash some workshop comedy, make sure the camera is rolling. You never know where it could take you.
Written by Luke Nieuwhof. Photos by Dominick Damato.
