custom car
Every creative endeavor, from fine art to mechanical invention, requires some type of high-wire act—a unique and delicate balance between vision, creativity and capability. When the cogs align, and the elusive look rises to the forefront, there’s no questioning the purity of its origin.
Everyone is talking about old-school-this and old-school-that, but we here at The Auto Builder don’t really care about old school, true school or new school. What we do care about is bringing our readers the best damn cars from around the world. Whether we are featuring drift, show, street or drag cars, one thing is certain: we will bring you the best cars that are out there. And sometimes the best is simple and to the point, as if you built the whole car in your garage.
“I started building this car a little over 15 years ago after completing a Pro Street ’70 Camaro RS for my then-16-year-old son, Brad,” says overhead door installation specialist Jim Meltzer of Ventura, California. “I always had the urge to build a ’59 Pro Street Chevrolet El Camino (hence the nickname “U.S. Pro-1”), having owned one of those cars when I was just 21 years old,” he says. “Forty years later, the ’60 came along, and I figured that was close enough. The El Camino project was a joint collaboration with my sons Brad and Rod, and it got off to a great start. We made plans for a big motor and even built a full rollcage for that huge hunk of steel with the intentions of actually racing it.”
When Jim Anderson builds a car, he really builds it. Other than paint and a few of the more intense aspects of the interior, he takes on the task of reconstructing the entire car into what he thinks it should be. And when asked what he thinks a vintage car should be, he responds that it should be fast and handle well.
