1948 Chevy Motorama "Concept car."

[MARTINSR]

A little history, I bought this truck in Dec 73 a few weeks before my 16th birthday with $200 paper route money. It was owned by a family friend and had been used on a farm since new until he got it as his first car. His brother made the flat bed (it was like a piece of furniture, very well done) and he drove it to the same highschool my mom graduated from in 1936. He made the intake and headers with my brother in metal shop class and was quite ingenious if you ask me. The first photo is from the day I came home with it. Now mind you, I didn't have a license yet, only a learners permit so my mom was riding shotgun that day.







There was a two other trucks like this at school and I wasn't going to have one like everyone else's......so I chopped the top about two months after my 16th birthday.



And drove it to highschool looking like this as this photo was taken in the school parking lot.



I painted it orange, "Competition orange" or so I thought. I picked the color out of the 76 Corvette color chips, one problem it ended up being the only year the Corvettes were painted "Omaha Orange" a Chevy fleet color since 1936 and the color of the Cal Trans dept trucks! But after spending $33 dollars on that gallon of paint and with it masked up and ready to shoot in my garage, I went ahead and shot my second paint job ever Aug 1st 1977.



And off to my first rod run, Andy's Picnic Aug 7th 1977 with my brother and his Model A, the my first paint job ever.



And no, I was not taking this picture of the guy in the short shorts, did we really wear those in the seventies? YEOW
Nope, this was inside Andy's picnic and I was digging the attention MY little truck was getting.



Ok, that was the first "incarnation" of my truck, it looked like this up until 1979 at some time. This was the last photo of it before the big metamorphosis.



It was a 3/4 ton originally (with a foot or so cut off the rear of the frame behind the rear axle) when I got it. A replacement 1/2 ton frame was found and it would change forever.