Independence has been prominently featured on his YouTube channel ever since he rescued and revived it a couple years ago. It was always being closely inspected by an eager fan. At Sick Week this year, it was nearly impossible to get a photograph of his rough-and-ready, stars and bars painted 1972 Chevelle known as Independence. The fact that Motion Raceworks was willing to just throw me the keys to El Toro, gave me insight to how amazing the drag-and-drive community is.”ĭerek enjoys attending car events and engaging with his subscribers. “I’m a pretty hard guy to get excited, but I can tell you that experience blew me away. The duo ran eight-second passes all week and successfully completed the event. The casual drive was in anticipation of one more exciting to come at Rocky Mountain Race Week, where Derek was teamed with with fabricator/mechanic John Matzen in the Motion Raceworks Coyote-powered Mustang known as El Toro. He drove Tom Bailey’s ice cream truck along the route for the week, getting his first taste for the motorsport niche. His initial foray into this style of motorsport was at 2021’s Midwest Drags - albeit in a spectating capacity. Check it all out in the lengthy video below.For a man who likes racing and working on cars, and can do so in any location no matter how inconvenient, drag-and-drive was a perfect sport for Derek to get into. Thanks to an impressive set of skills, the guy manages to fix the El Camino and parks it in his shop after a very, very long trip. Not surprisingly, the El Camino gives up after a couple of hundred miles, leaving the driver almost stranded with no clutch, no oil pressure, and a dead cylinder.īut the story doesn't end here. Especially since the bed was packed with spare parts and a Suzuki motorcycle on top. And surprisingly enough, the El Camino is still solid enough to run under its own power.īut the owner had a 700-mile trip from Michigan to Tennessee ahead of him, and that proved troublesome for the old Chevy. The V8 no longer runs, but it agrees to fire up after some disassembly and a few good hours of work. But it doesn't really matter since the engine got a series of upgrades at some point, including an Edelbrock intake and carburetor. Chevrolet sold it with 283- and 348-cubic-inch (4.6- and 5.7-liter) engines back in the day, and this truck should employ the former. Definitely better than a rusty floor anyway.Īs far as power goes, this El Camino is definitely a V8. Quite unorthodox, but it actually looks solid. Now it's missing the front grille and a pair of headlamps, while the fenders show a few large rust holes.Ī look inside the cabin reveals that this El Camino used to sport a cool red paint, but it also shows that the rusty floor was fixed with a bunch of license plates. At least that's what the flame and pinstripe graphics suggest. Repainted matte black many years ago, this El Camino used to be someone's prized hot rod. It's far from original in terms of paint and drivetrain bits and shows quite a bit of rust, but that didn't stop YouTube's "Vice Grip Garage" from turning into a runner. This abandoned 1960 example might not become a Concours-winning classic anytime soon, but it got a second chance at life after sitting in storage for more than 15 years. With first-gen El Caminos costing more than $50,000 in pristine condition, it makes sense to save as many of them as possible. And they're obviously hard to find and expensive nowadays. Not only because of its bubble top and wild rear fins but also because it was around for just two model years (19). This makes the short-lived, first-generation El Camino quite special. When it returned in 1964, the El Camino was based on the Chevelle, a notable departure from the first-gen model, built around the Impala. That's when the nameplate was replaced by the Corvair Greenbrier. The latter survived until 1987, but Chevrolet took a break from offering the El Camino between 19.
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