4 Door Tegger
June 11, 2024
Edit Template
THE AUTO BUILDER
Featured
Junky Genie
Have you ever seen a pictorial like this that tells where the location actually is? We didn’t think so, but don’t you just love a good mystery? Good, because that’s exactly how the owner wanted this incredible story left: unfinished. So we had to make part of it up. But which part? The interesting thing is this: Just when you think there are no old cars left to rebuild, think again!
THE HYDROGEN HIGHBOY
Enter Carl Casper, a man best known for building custom cars and promoting his huge custom car show every year in Louisville, Kentucky. Casper has long been a self-thinker and innovator with plenty of experience under his belt, and he was intrigued with the concept of alternative fuels, hydrogen in particular. During our conversation with Casper, he summed it when he said, “I feel many of the solutions will come out of the car guys. I want the mechanical wizards who have taken street rodding and auto racing to the highest levels imaginable to start putting their creativity into alternative-energy systems. I’m putting my money on them. Everyone seems to be waiting for the big corporations to pull us out of this energy crisis, and they tend to forget that from the very beginning of time it’s often the little guy with a shop behind his house who creates the next great idea or invention of our time.”
MORE THAN A CAMEO
Gil Palmer just loves cars, trucks, and motorcycles. He’s owned more than 100 miscellaneous cars, ranging from ’40 Fords to ’55 Chevys to a ’70 Monte Carlo. He’s owned a few pickups, too, and this one originally came to him as the bonus gift, so to speak, in a trade of his ’32 Ford Cobo Hall winner for a motorcycle at the Detroit Autorama. The ’57 Cameo that he received in the trade had an entire ’55 front end on it, and because of that, everyone thinks it’s a ’55. But this truck was in pretty sad shape when it arrived at Palmer’s Southern California home. Just picture this one item in your mind for a minute, and you’ll get the gist of the kind of shape the truck was in: There was a hand-painted (we’re talking 4-inch-wide brush, here) Chevy Bow Tie on the tailgate. The 10:1 compression supercharged engine would overheat in a matter of a few blocks.
Spotlighter
Destined Bel Air
A Classic ’57 Chevrolet From Hawaii, but Not Originally
Author
Bob McClurg
Story & Photography
This has to be one of the nicest looking ’57 Chevrolet Bel Airs I’ve ever seen in the state of Hawaii,” I kept saying to myself as I was photographing Keith Maeda’s black cherry ’57 tri-5 Chevrolet. I mean, this thing has all the bells and whistles.
It has a full house, Gerald Fernandez-massaged 350 small block. The 9:1 compression, Crane Cams-equipped short block sports 202 Bow Tie cylinder heads capped off with a pair of ProForm Industries Chevrolet-script cast aluminum valve covers, not to mention an Edelbrock Performer RPM Air Gap intake and 14-inch K&N XStream-filtered 770cfm Holley. It’s is also fired by an MSD 6AL ignition with MSD Blaster coil, NGK spark plugs and Accel spark plug wires. Finally, a pair of thermal-coated Sanderson block-hugger headers and Flowmaster muffler-equipped 2-1/4-inch exhaust complete the engine tune. A Griffin four-core aluminum radiator cools the package, and a polished 100-ampTuff Stuff alternator is responsible for the electrical power side of things.
Some of the equipment you don’t see on this awesome ’57 includes an Island Transmissions-prepared GM TH350. Suspension consists of a pair of McGaughy’s Classic Chevy Parts 2-inch dropped rear leaf springs, McGaughy’s 2-inch dropped front spindles, a set of William’s Classics tubular front control arms and a McGaughy’s 605 GM power steering box. This Garden Isle-based tri-5 also features Wilwood Engineering four-piston disc brakes, a set of four KYB gas-charged shocks, a set of 17×7-inch (front) and 18×8-inch (rear) Boyd Coddington Magneto billet aluminum wheels, and P215/45ZR17 (front) and P225/45ZR18 (rear) BFGoodrich g-Force KDW high-performance radial rubber.
Since the previous owner had already painted the ’57 in two-stage PPG black with a violet pearl overlay, all that was required was a little buffing and detailing. On the inside, you’ll find a Classic Chevrolet International silver and black reproduction factory interior, along with a Flaming River/GM six-way tilt steering column, Grant steering wheel, McGaughy’s billet aluminum dash insert, Classic Instruments gauges and a Kenwood audio system. The trunk area has also been fully trimmed out, and there you will find the Alpine woofers and Pioneer Amps. Now here’s an interesting story.
“The car was purchased last year in Oregon from the previous owner with only 53,622 original miles on the odometer. It was then shipped to the island. The funny thing is that when I rolled the Bel Air out of the container, it already had a hula doll affixed to the dash although the previous owner had never visited Hawaii before. Maybe the car was just destined to end up here,” Maeda says. Well, it sure seems that way to us!
