30 Year Love Affair... with A 57 Chevy

I grew up in a small resort town in central Idaho. My parents owned a business and we lived in the back. Because of frequent out-of-town customers, I was not allowed outside much and spent many hours doing crafts. My favorite hobby was building model cars. By age of 12 I could build a decent model car. My favorite models were the large beautiful cars of the 1930's, Packards, Deusenbergs, Rolls Royce, and my personal favorite was a 1936 Auburn Boattail Speedster. Having built almost every model I could find of the 1930's era, I began to expand my interest. I moved on to the 40's, Ford's, Lincoln's, Chevys etc. I had quite a collection. Modeling got me interested in the cars and soon I was buying car magazines where I further expanded my interest and knowledge.

The first time I acknowledged a 57 Chevy, I was about 14 and reading a Chevy magazine article about a restored 57. I remember as if it was yesterday. I studied the headlights, the grille, and the bumper; I thought what an ugly car. I went to bed thinking "that is the ugliest car I have ever seen".

A few nights passed, and I was reading my magazine again. I turned the page and saw that ugly 57 Chevy. I stared at it to confirm my opinion. Suddenly in the blink of an eye, I was staring at the most beautiful car I had ever seen in my life. The style, the curves, the flow and appearance of forward movement; the thin chrome strips that fit together between the front and back window of a 2dr hardtop; the way the rear quarter-wing dipped in the middle of the rear window right behind the door and swept to the rear of the car, not too exaggerated nor wanting, but just right.

Every curve and detail seemed to compliment the next. It was a work of art and I was mesmerized, it soon became all I could talk about. I drove my parents crazy with my obsession. I had to have one. Dad said if I graduated high school with all A's he would buy me one for graduation, but I didn’t want a restored one. I wanted to build my own, and I wasn't referring to a model.

I soon located a 57 4-door hardtop on a ranch out of town. I was bucking hay for the rancher that summer and he had it in his barn. He wanted $400 for it. I got my dad to come out and look at it with me. The rancher was in his 80's and he promised us it would run. He bought it new and said it ran just fine. But Dad later told me no, I could not buy it, even with my own money because it was a 4-door.

I kept searching and had found almost every old car in the county by the time I was 16. I even had a retired miner give me a 1928 Chrysler, but when I went up to his mining claim to get it, all that was left was the frame, the cowl, the radiator, and the steering wheel. Someone had stolen all the rest of it.

Then one day I was reading the newspaper at a cafe. There was an ad for a 57 Chevy 2-door hardtop about a 100 miles away. I turned to one of the locals and said, "one day I am going to own one of these cars", and I read the ad to him. When I said that he replied, "there's a 57 Chevy sitting over on the last ranch as you go out around the lake". He told me all about the car and where it was. I had never seen it before because it had bushes growing up all around it.

I left and went to school. I was so excited I couldn't wait for school to get out. As
soon as I was free, a couple friends and I drove out to find it. I knew right where to look.

I saw chrome flash in the bushes. I parked the truck and ran towards the dark shape hidden by several year’s growth of foliage. I FOUND IT! It was a Bel Air 2-door hardtop. I looked it over. It was mostly all original. All the glass was good, no dents really, all the chrome was there. I opened the door and sat inside.

I will never forget the smell. You know that smell I am talking about. The smell of an old car that has been closed up for many, many, years… that old sun-baked dust and slightly musty, old-abandoned car smell. To me on that day, it was the best smell in the world. It had bucket seats; 65 Ford Mustang bucket seats bolted to risers and welded to the floor and a hole in the tranny-hump for a stick-shift. The rest was all stock. I popped the hood and there was no engine.

I went to the back and the trunk lock was gone, so I grabbed a screw driver and turned the cam to open the trunk. I found the engine… what was left of it anyway.
It didn’t matter. The car was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in my eyes. I was sold. I ran home to tell my dad about the car. I gave every excuse, sales pitch and argument my 16 year old brain could muster regarding why I should own that car. Dad came out to look at it with me. He looked it over and then told me... NO.

WHY!?

Dad explained that I had no idea how restore or build a car. I had no experience in mechanics and no idea how much work was involved, but this time the resolve within me had changed. I had accepted his wisdom on the other cars and his "no" answer. This time I did not. I was not convinced with his reasoning; I completely disagreed silently inside myself. To my chagrin, Dad was leaving soon for a two week hunting trip.

I contacted the owner, who to my surprise was a woman about 28 years old. She was the second owner of the car. Her brother had planned to turn the car into a race car to run down in the valley at the speedway. He had a race car himself, and this was one he intended for her to race. However, he became too busy and the car sat on the ranch for 10 years.

This poor woman answered the phone and faced a barrage of a teen boy’s hope and dreams for the car she currently owned. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I think she sold me the car out of my unbelievable exuberance. I think she literally could not crush my dreams.

She told me she would take $600 for the car, which was another reason my dad said no, he felt she wanted too much, but there was no convincing me. Coincidently, I had exactly $600 saved up from working summer jobs. To me this was a sign that me and that car were meant to be together.

My dad had left for his hunting trip. I met the woman at the car and paid her my $600. She gave me the title, which I still have; with the help of some friends, I hooked up a chain and towed it home in the back side of our property. When dad came home, he looked out the back window and saw the car. He was furious. I remember what he said, but such words are not suitable here. Despite all his ranting anger he let me keep it, “for now.”

I worked on the car out in the dirt driveway everyday. I took things apart and labeled them, taped things together etc. I stripped everything. In one of my magazines, I found an ad for an original shop manual that explained how everything was supposed to go to together and bought it. I worked on my car everyday after school.

One day while working on my car, a new guy from school came walking down the street on his way home. He came up and asked me if the car was for sale. “No,” I said, “I just bought it. I am fixing it up.”

“I have a 56 Chevy I am building,” he said. This perked my interest. In short, we soon became very good friends and worked on our cars together much of the time, which probably kept us out of trouble. Influenced by classic movies like American Graffiti, and The Hollywood Knights, we started our own little two-man car gang. We bought leather jackets and gave ourselves nick-names. My friend’s mother helped us and sewed our “colors” on our leather jackets.

Later, we made another friend from high-school who had a 64 GTO. We had a lot of respect for him because he worked after school to support his grandmother whom he lived with. At 16, he paid all the bills.

The mountains of Idaho get a lot of snow in the winter. The highest mountains can get 30 feet or more. We were spoiled where we lived, we only averaged 8 feet. As winter neared, somehow, I managed to talk dad into letting me re-arrange the garage and make room for me to work on my car. Again, I spent every day after school working on my 57 Chevy, sometimes up until 11:00 pm at night. During the winter, the nights were cold, sometimes dropping down to -15 below zero. I placed a space heater under the car and kept working, I did not stop for anything.

When spring rolled around I took my car to the high school shop class down the road from our house. I had been taking shop class and the instructor let me bring it down to do some welding and such on it. One of the guys in shop class laughed at my car. “HA HA... what a piece of junk.”

I had a birthday coming up, and dad took me aside. He said, "Son I am proud of you. I misjudged you. You have worked hard on that car and learned a lot, for your birthday I am going to buy you a motor and a transmission, and hire a mechanic to go through the engine with you, the brakes and whatever it needs so that it is running right and you know how to fix everything."

I spent that spring at the mechanics house/ shop, learning and working on my car in the evenings and on weekends; whenever he had time away from his regular job. He made me do everything myself and stood over my shoulder and supervised. We completely rebuilt a 283 engine and a Munice 4-speed and put it in the car. After a couple months, I drove the car home.

When I bought the car is was several colors, which I never understood; for a third owner car, it had a lot of colors, patches of the original paint, and some of the factory primer and some I didn’t understand at all. But the car was running now and the paint job on it would no longer do. One sunny day, my friend and I decided to paint it all one color.

Since we were cool-cat, Varney and leather jacket type rebels anyway, we figured flat-black primer would foot the bill rather nicely. We went to the hardware store and bought $18 worth of flat black primer in cans. We went home, pulled off the chrome and painted my 57 all one color.

I drove the car like this for the rest of high school. I replaced the Mustang bucket seats with 1975 Camero high-back bucket-seats I got from a wrecking yard. The guy in shop class who laughed at me now wanted a ride in my 57 Chevy. I wasn’t mean about it, but I never let him.

He was a rich kid. His dad had a 57 chevy 4 door post with a blown 427. He bragged that the engine alone cost $30,000 to build. I never saw it out of the garage. I never could understand why someone would put that much money in a 4 door post anyway. I was now much more educated in being cool, and 4 doors on a hot rod were just not cool.

When I graduated high school, my parents had my car painted as a graduation present. That summer I had it in my first car show. I didn’t win anything, but it was still a lot of fun.

Years later I wrecked the car on an icy road. Not too bad, I just dented a fender, but it was bad enough that the custom flame job was ruined. I was so distraught the car sat in my back yard for seven years. One day my friend with the 56 Chevy came by my house and said, “If you’re just going to let it sit there, you should sell it to me so I can fix it up.” This snapped me out of my “57 depression.”

I realized he was right. It was wrong to let the car just sit there. I decided it was time to fix it back up, only this time I would restore it back to all original. I stripped the car down and again saw that odd patchwork, quilt paint job. I researched the paint codes and found the car was a two-tone blue vehicle from the factory. It had a light blue top and a dark blue body. I was shocked. This explained the multicolor paint when I found it. After researching the numbers, it all made sense.

Today, the car is restored to “almost” all original. I still need to re-do the interior with factory materials. I also found out my 57 is #69 off the factory floor from the Oakland, California plant. I know I am the third owner, however, because of a glitch in the states titling system 20 years or so ago the State of Idaho considers me the second owner.

I also know the salesman who originally sold my car and what dealership it was sold from. The dealership no longer exists, and the town all but disappeared when they shut down the log mills in the 1970’s.

I have named my 57 Chevy “Belle,” short for Bel-Air, which was an optional chrome and accessory upgrade available at the time.

I will keep this car until I am too old to drive it anymore. I still cruise around listening to 1950’s hits, and take it to the Drive-In movies in the summer.

 Now if I can talk my dad out of his 53 MGTD with the 327 vet engine hiding under the hood, life will be good. For some reason he keeps telling me NO. I guess some things never change.

Special thanks to Saddlerider1 on Hubpages for encouraging me to write this.