THE 57 CHEVY PROJECT-A 50S LIFESTYLE IN THE 21ST CENTURY PART 4

Trevor had his first car adventure with the 57 Chevy in record time “ I had the car ready to roll by the Fathers Day weekend. That weekend we hooked on to the tent trailer and went camping west of Rocky Mtn. House. On Sun (Father's Day) we headed back home, so we are cruisin’ down Hwy# 11 doing about 85kms with 4 adults and 3 kids in the car, all of a sudden I felt the right rear wheel give way. Thinking all the time it was a flat. When I got pulled over to my horror I discovered that the wheel studs had broken. The rear wheel was jammed up inside the quarter so much that it bowed out the quarter enough to pop off the tail fin stainless trim. It also wore off about 1 inch of the brake drum as we skidded to a stop. What was a guy to do?”

Trevor is a true blue car guy so he did the natural thing car guys do-he started walking towards a solution.

Read more: THE 57 CHEVY PROJECT-A 50S LIFESTYLE IN THE 21ST CENTURY PART 4

THE 57 CHEVY PROJECT-A 50S LIFESTYLE IN THE 21ST CENTURY PART 3

Two years later, Trevor was in a position to upgrade the 57 Chevy but it wasn’t open season on his bank account. Like everything he did on the car this was a realistic approach that worked within the constraints of a young guy with a young family.

In the mid 90s the hobby began to gravitate toward the “resto-mod”. Resto-mod is a new term for something that hot rodders have been doing for 70 years-adding and combining car parts like engine, brakes and suspension to give a car better handling and a lot more power-

Trevor is a “young” old-school guy, so he dug up the 1976 Chevy Nova clip to give his 57 Chevy a new road feel and much better braking power-"A rebuild of the original front end would be expensive and still not have power steering! I still had the 76 Nova body that had all the good stuff = power steering, power brakes, and a anti-sway torsion bar. so in the winter of 1996 in my 20 ft x 20 ft garage I tore off the front sheet metal and grafted on the Nova clip"...

As most car guys know, this is a fairly standard swap and a number of guys take a ‘cost is no object’ approach.

Not Trevor.

Read more: THE 57 CHEVY PROJECT-A 50S LIFESTYLE IN THE 21ST CENTURY PART 3

THE 57 CHEVY PROJECT-A 50S LIFESTYLE IN THE 21ST CENTURY PART 2

Like most car projects there is always a post mortem after the purchase and in some cases this comes as a huge shock-particularly when the problems are hidden behind tons of filler and new paint.

In Trevor’s case this wasn’t an issue.

The car was visually wide open and Trevor was an up and coming apprentice auto body technician so there were no heart-stopping moments found in this 57 Chevy. But the knowledge that come with experience in something like a restoration project also spells out how much actual work is involved-in other words ignorance can be bliss until you get the bill for work like that.

For Trevor Comfort, that wasn’t a problem because he was paying in sweat equity-but he sure knew where his precious spare time was going to be spent for a long, long time.

Read more: THE 57 CHEVY PROJECT-A 50S LIFESTYLE IN THE 21ST CENTURY PART 2

THE 57 CHEVY PROJECT-A 50S LIFESTYLE IN THE 21ST CENTURY PART 1

Trevor Comfort is a guy who was born a decade late-he’s a 1950s guy who was born in the 1960s. Trevor is a huge fan of the Elvis decade-especially the automotive side. He likes the classic 50s hot rod look and he also happens to like the ultimate 50s icon-the 1957 Chevy.

And he liked the 50s holiday trailers-as a symbol of the carefree 50s vacation.

His fascination with the 57 Chevy came from an unusual source in the form of a local stock car that dominated Crossroads Speedway-the local dirt track raceway.

This was crude early 70s racing, but Trevor clearly identified with a blue and white 57 Chevy 2 door sedan that won-a lot.

That’s all it took for an impressionable kid to make a lifetime commitment to a legendary “bow tie”.

Read more: THE 57 CHEVY PROJECT-A 50S LIFESTYLE IN THE 21ST CENTURY PART 1