Precision Collision Repair and Restoration’s parking lot off Highway 44 was filled with more than 50 custom builds, originals old and new, and even some motorcycles, as the shop hosted its fifth annual Show and Shine July 13.
In a crowd of car enthusiasts, you’re bound to hear the name Gene Winfield. Somebody looking at a customized 1937 Chevy truck on Saturday saw his signature on the glove compartment, and asked the owner: “Is that his signature?”
Winfield is a car builder from the United States and anybody who has seen the movie Blade Runner has seen his work, but he also teaches classes on metal-shaping.
“He’s like Elvis for the car guys,” said Dennis Mathieu, the owner of the signed Chevy.
Mathieu is the former fire chief in Athabasca, and everybody in town knows his vehicle: he’s Pappie.
He said he’s been into cars all his life and started “pulling stuff home when I was nine or 10.”
It went on from there. He attended some of Winfield’s classes, who may or may not have said Mathieu was his favourite student.
The ’37 Chev truck “is chopped and channeled and sectioned. … I lowered it,” he said while pointing to the three different spots where he cut out about three inches each. Winfield convinced him to do that.
Some parts are out of a Cadillac, a Jeep, or a firetruck. Most of the original is preserved, but it has been modified.
“Everything from me is in this,” said Mathieu, before he showed off the 80-year-old vehicle’s signal lights.
First, he pointed to a small hole in the driver door, which used to hold the left turn signal. When you turned it on from a little lever on the roof, a flag semaphore would come up, physically out of the car, to indicate turning.
It doesn’t work quite that way anymore. Mathieu put some custom lights on the Chev, small round ones with the help of “a guy in Saskatchewan.” They double as headlights and turn signals and turn from white to orange, kind of like the new Audis.
His Chev is the poster child for the lights now.
The grill on the front, he made out of stainless steel. A passerby was drawn to it too. “That’s unique,” he said as he walked by.
It can be assumed he would know.
This particular car took Mathieu five years to finish, and the end product is a thing to behold. Fast, too as it has about 300 horsepower under the hood.
The pattern with car enthusiasts seems to be the same: they all know every detail about the car’s past. And there’s a story in every bit of metal, wiring, or detail.
This custom hotrod gained 14-year-old builder Chase Lockwood some notoriety at the event.
Chase Lockwood is 14, and he knows too. He brought with him a hot rod he built from scratch.
It started as a fun project but turned into “something serious and worth spending money on,” he said.
All the metalwork and welding is Lockwood’s own.
But “I did all the structural stuff, just because I didn’t want it to fall apart,” said father Dave.
There were some problems with the wiring and things got a little mixed up during the build, but Lockwood liked figuring stuff out as he went along.
“That was the best part,” he said.
The blinkers, brake lights, horn, they all work now.
The 100cc motor in the back is from a quad, but ask about the steering wheel, and Dave will tell you he’s had it since he was 16. It was in his first car, a four-door ’75 Chevy Impala.
Car-building is in the future for Chase too. When he was 10, he bought a ’68 GMC pickup. That’s the next project, “once he gets his welding down good,” said Dave.
Lockwood’s hot rod is among the exceptional, no doubt.
He got Mathieu’s attention as well, who was impressed with his welding skills at such a young age.
