TALES ON WHEELS: The '57 Skeva Story - 1957 Chevy "Swedish Super Car" by Graham's Hot Rods

[Music] [Applause] this is a 1957 Chevrolet belir Tor hardtop it's basically a protouring appearing car this body was uh almost one of the first ones that Chevrolet put together out of the Los Angeles plant was number 847 out of about 180,000 for the year we've taken the the original original body all original sheet metal and we've refined it to a very high level uh this car retains all of its original GM styling we built a custom chassis in in Grahams hot rod shop a triangulated four bar rear suspension coil overall Four Corners power rack and pinion steering the drivetrain on this car is what makes it special uh ls-based 427 cubic in dual fuel capability where we have pump gas at about 12200 horse power that it was dyed at the race fuel on the split side of the tank uh dyed about 1,600 horsepower the customer we built this car for he named it a his super car definitely a higher level than just a protouring twin turbocharged LS motor uh very easy to drive uh but when you get your foot in it it's kind of like a wolf and sheep's clothing it comes alive my name is Mike Graham uh I'm I founded Grahams Hot Rod Shop Incorporated I've been into car my entire life I was raised in a family that that uh my father sold Chevrolets for 40 years he had 32 Fords when I was a kid uh I spent time working in the shop with him on his on his hot rods I've been involved in in the hot rods uh for just about my entire life I I raced motorcycles uh Flat Track Motorcycles for a good part of my life and uh in 1990 it was time to to get off the motorcycles so I bought a 55 shevy B Tor hard top uh my my my father bought a 57 Chevy two hard top I built a shop at the home I kind of wanted it for for me and my buddies and my dad to to do our our hobby type work built a few cars every time I built a car I couldn't keep it it never was for sale uh so I kind of figured that what I was doing people kind of like the more cars that I built the more people wanted us to do things so we started building cars for other people the more we did the more people wanted so about 15 years or so we were dedicated to doing things for other people so a decision was made and I told my wife listen I I think I want to take a stab at this it's a passion of mine we bought a we bought a larger shop uh my wife and I and I pulled together a really really good team and in the process brought in a really good partner we turned that same passion into a business and now we're building cars full-time we we start with with basically a body of a car is all we really need so we build our chassis in-house we do all the fabrication in-house uh we have body and paint assembly wiring Plumbing the first car I took to show was that 55 shevy that SP our Tut to hard top we took it to local show we're right right parked right in the middle of the show the battery went bad so here I am right in the middle of a couple hundred cars trying to get jumper cables to get the car started to get out of there got it home to my dad shop we had a little uh 20x 40 shop and I told my dad listen this car is coming apart I'm going to pull the body off I'm going to do a complete body off on this car he says listen Mike I don't recommend you do that guys get cars apart they never finish them I said well Dad I'm I'm I'm sorry but I can't live with it I I got to do it it was about a year and a half project uh to get this clear through body paint get the chassis restored the body restored new drivetrain get the car back on the road and when I was finished with it my dad said you know what you you made the right decision so from that point forward we knew that doing the full build going the full distance on it to make yourself happy and show well to be proud of what you have was was what we wanted to do the first car that we got out was a 1957 Chevy Bell to hardtop it was uh for some some friends of of the family they've had this car since probably the the mid '70s they had it put away uh I talked to them maybe 30 years ago it never came together for us to actually get involved in that car until uh they saw another car that I built was in the upholstery shop and they said listen I think it's time for us to do something with our 57 so that was the first chassis that came out of Grahams uh for a trii shevy and we finished the car and showed it to Grand National racher show in 2019 the the car garnered quite a bit of attention and in doing so I've had customers as a result of seeing that car at that show I met several several individuals who just fell in love with the car and actually wanted to buy the car on the spot so I said listen I have some cars put away if you want a car I can build you a car I had one individual I talked to uh around the car that that wanted to buy the car and he he had a very strong accent so I asked him where he's from and he said he's from Sweden so he comes over almost every year turns out he has several cars of his own has little Museum Museum he wanted to buy the car and that didn't work out so I told him listen be happy to build your car that's what we do he loved the quality you could tell that he he knew his name was Tomas bingston so I told Tomas I said listen Tomas we'd love to build your car I have a 57 shevy Builder T to hard top Builder car put away and he said give me a little bit of time so that was in in early February of 2019 later that year the in November the week of the SEMA show I'm at home uh my phone rings and I look at the number and it's a outof country number he says Mike this is Tomas I don't know if you remember me and I said of course I remember you Tomas so he says I just want to know if you're going to be in your shop tomorrow in Fresno and I said yeah we'll uh we're open tomorrow I'll be in the shop and he says okay he says well uh I'm in Las Vegas uh I'd like to come see you tomorrow I said love to have you so about 1:00 this uh this van drives in the shop parking lot and there's about seven seven guys Tomas and about six of his friends from Sweden I said uh so this is the car that you saw so what what do you want I have the 57 Chevy to the hard top he goes okay okay he says that that's what I want I want a 57 chiy Tor hard top I said okay I said so you want like this car here and he says yes yes I want I want like this car he but I have I have two two conditions SAS was a great customer I mean you couldn't ask for a better customer he knew what he wanted which wasn't much he had two requirements it was it was like 153 horsepower was one I'm sure his buddy had 1500 so he needed like you know just a few more just to you know one of them and then the other one was he needed a bench seat that was it he likes to drive with six guys in the car I gathered at that point that somebody in Sweden probably has one with 153 horsepower right now that he wants to build this car and be able to take it back and to one up this other car that's got, 1500 he says uh okay he says uh let's go that's what he said exactly he goes let's go and I said all right and he says we have it at the Grand ntional roacher show I said yeah he goes next year I said no I don't think not the level of build we're going to do here I don't think we can have it there next year but it will get to the Grand AAL rers Tomas says I'm flying back to Sweden on Monday and you call you send me what you need to get the project started my name is Shane McMullen and uh I am co-owner of uh Grahams hot rod shop with my grand uh when I started with Mike one of the first big projects I got my hands on was this car off the bat we knew we were going to build a chassis for it we started with a custom chassis on it it changed directions a few times it was like air ride at first and then we kind of talked them out of it went with just coilover suspension it's hard to redo a 57 body in my opinion you don't they already got cool lines they got big fins um there's nothing really to do to make it look better just clean it up just clean up what 57 Chevys had from the factory um it was going to be an LS based motor twin turboed um automatic we reached out to Steve Morris he did the long block for us but we did all the Custom Fabrication on it like uh uh built the headers the Turbo System intake manifold um all the components it was surprisingly a tight fit it looked like they have a lot of room from the outside you open the hood there's not a lot I would send Tomas updates uh videos uh I even made YouTube links because he was in Sweden and it was the communication was a little difficult hey is this cool and he would just send me a thumbs up just every time he never said anything other than that so I'd roll with it and it was kind of cool he left a lot of trust in me to to build this cool car for him and it turned into what he would call like superar we wanted to put a big tire under the back of it or as big as you know more pro touring look but we went with a 345 uh 19 in the back so you know 13 and 1 12 in of rubber we had to we had to mini tub it we tucked the bumpers in uh it's kind of you have to do it on the 57 they're really big and bulky they have bolts and stuff on them so um on the front we one pieced it car has three intercoolers on it and the main one is in the very front under the bumper and we wanted to direct some air to it so we thought oh it' be cool to make like a little reveal in the bumper and he kind of showed us this car that he liked and it was a it was a Pontiac build reminded me of like a compor color but it had like kind of a green Hue to it so he was kind of like hey Greens Greens would be cool I'm a green guy I love green um so we talked about doing a two-tone W 57 hearted two tone um so we were like let's just do the top a different color so we went through color chart uh and we found this green the bottom half so we went with this green and then we found this top color and we just laid them out together in the Sun and me and Mike were kind of like man we had like 10 variations of the top and 10 of the bottom and we're to standing there like which one ultimately we we just kind of laid them together I snapped a picture on my phone sent it to Ms what do you think these two top is the dark the Bottom's the light he's like do it perfect we've gotten good feedback on it like in the shows and everything everyone's like dude I like the way you to you two- tone the top and it does look cool it's got a different it's not drastic it's just kind of it's simple and then we brought Green in the interior too so it's green on green on green which is I I I like that I think it's cool we reach out to Glide engineering they the ones that built the frames for this uh the front seat uh Mark did uh the interior Elegance interior down in Upland California he did the rest of the upholstery work and um that was on Mark man he killed it uh all the door panels uh seats all that was all his idea you know wrapping the dash we leather wrap the dash he did a small little console with a floor shifter uh being with the bench seat you typically don't want a full console but he did a small one with for shifer looks really good we did like some mesh screens under the hood to like get some of the heat out he did like the speaker covers the same mesh same color it's kind of a titanium color um did a really really good job on the interior it looked really good the gauge cluster a factory gauge cluster holds five gauges this one we knew we wanted more GA more gauges I had the idea of like hey let's do um a holly Digital dash uh they had this big 12-in screen touch screen put all kinds of gauges in it and of course you know Tom's like yeah yeah do it it's got a push button start it's got a switch because it's got different tunes on the fly so you can go from a pump gas to race gas tune as you drive it it's got all the biggest baddest stuff we could throw at it's got 14-inch willwood six piston calipers um it's got twin uh transmission coolers with fans all like integrated into the bottom of the body and like I said I want to keep everything cool and alive and Heat's like the killer of all everything on a car with high horsepower it was a definitely a team effort in the shop we are so proud of the outcome of this uh and Tomas was uh very pleased that we were able to finally debut the car at the Grand National rooster show in uh 2023 that Tomas was able to be here uh from Sweden with another crew of his friends uh Tomas was just uh he had he had what they called his buddy called a million dooll smile I can't say enough about how good a customer Tomas was uh allowing us to build the level of car that we built in February of 2023 we had it show ready we had not put any miles on it we had not driven the car and we call it what is a Shakedown needed to occur with the car so I asked Tomas Tomas what do you want what do you want to do uh do you want to take the car home to Sweden he says no he says I want I want you I want you guys to keep the car here in the states for the remainder of 2023 Tomas you know flew home after the show had a great time we had a great time with him uh then after the show about 6 weeks later uh I take the car to delmare Good Guys show which was a wonderful show I had a placed in indoors so on Thursday I I texted Tomas and with a picture of the car Tomas I'm loaded I'm loaded I'm headed to delmare so I get a response of Thumbs Up from Tomas on Friday morning I text him also I said a picture of the car place where it's going to be for the show and I said I said we're all we're all place toas the show is starting so we responded back he goes beautiful beautiful and thumbs up all is well getting good attention with the car uh people love it uh so about noon on Saturday I catch a little break and I look at my phone and it's one of his friends that came with him to the Roadster Show call me so I thought well that's kind of odd so I I step outside and I call magnet his friend and I said Magnus this is Mike he says mike he says Tomas just died I said what he says Tomas he just died suddenly and unexpectedly two hours ago and I said oh my gosh yeah I mean yeah I was yeah was it was hard to hear that cuz like I had I had built that relationship up for the last 3 years you know you know it's text and emails and videos we had a relationship built up so hearing that it was it was hard to hear you know sad it's like CU I don't want to hear I don't want to get that phone call I was proud to build this car for this guy and then you know then that happened so yeah it was yeah it was [Music] unfortunate it was 2 days later after I got back from the show that I got a phone call from from his daughter Emy and she called and she says mike my name is Emy I'm tomas's first born so I said well Emy I'm I'm I have to tell you that our deepest heartfelt condolences to you and your family your mom and your sisters we're we're so sorry I I just I don't know what to say she says well I appreciate that she says but I wanted my my mom asked me to get a hold of you and we'd like you to to sell the car I said well you know Tomas actually asked for us to keep the car here for the year to show the car our best opportunity to sell the car is to show it this may take a while but in my opinion that may be best for us to do [Music] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] I a [Music] [Music]

Channel: GV Wire

Views: 18,218

Keywords: Fresno, News, Politics, Government, Central Valley, Breaking, GVWire

Id: zm5tvipesOY

Length: 18min 31sec (1111 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2024