1936 Chevy Pickup - Garage Scene

With just one glimpse of this in-the-works '36 Chevy pickup, dubbed A Touch of Evil, it's easy to see Bruce Comboni was struck by the proverbial lightning bolts spewed forth by show-rod builders of the day.

Describing the evolution of the truck, Bruce told us it's a combination of Rat Fink, artist Keith Weesner, and Death's Doorstep-the killer coupe built by Dave Lohr. Growing up, Bruce spent endless weekends with his dad at Dover Dragstrip with his eyes glued to the Christmas tree as gassers launched from the line. At the same time, he also worshiped the exaggerated body lines of his Hot Wheels collection and early Ed Roth plastic models.

He learned to express his own creativity as the years passed, beginning with customizing derelict old pedal cars and wagons until graduating to the real thing. Bruce now has numerous radical customs under his belt, including a pair of Buick Rivieras, a '60 Caddy, and a '55 Chevy wagon known as the Creepy Crawler, as well as a wicked '53 Chevy pickup. Taking on any hot rod or custom project for a complete build is an incredible effort in its own right; tackling a full-blown show-rod build is another chapter all together, since the creativity factors involved can leave you breathless. Make one wrong move here, and you can wind up in the Bermuda Triangle, or worse-the Little Shop of Horrors.

Having had a weathered old '36 Chevy pickup cab for a number of years in his collection of parts, Bruce decided it would be the perfect base for his current project from which to rise. A closer evaluation, however, proved that the ravaging weather of the East Coast had taken its toll on the vintage steel, so he set forth to locate a much cleaner base with which to start. Thanks to the wonders of eBay, a clean cab was readily located in Nebraska, and Bruce wasted no time snatching it up. Thoroughly researching chassis designs, there was no doubt in his mind he would contact Rick McManus at Mac's Ratz in Red Oak, Iowa, for one of his wild, heavily kicked-and-Z'd truck chassis. Bruce had the newly purchased cab delivered directly to Rick, so he could get started with all of his special voodoo.

Bruce first focused on all the fine details that would give the truck its personal signature. The new chassis came with Rick's trick friction-shock setup up front, to which Bruce added hairpins and a 6-inch dropped tube axle from Speedway Motors, complemented by a POSIES hot rod slider spring mounted suicide-style. Steering navigates through an almost invisible center-steer rack-and-pinion unit. The shortest four-link we've ever seen was matched up with an 8-inch Ford rearend and a truly killer custom friction-shock set up with a transverse POSIES slider spring to keep the bumps at ease. Adding in plenty of molding and tweaking to the chassis makes sure it has plenty of curb appeal.

Bruce didn't stop there, though; you need just the right mill nailed between the 'rails to keep the visual impact at maximum volume, so a vintage small-block Chevy 350 was added to the mix, complete with camel-hump heads, a Dyers 6-71 huffer, Cal Custom valve covers, and a host of other old-school speed parts. To give the truck a different look, Bruce opted not to chop it but to give it a few neat tweaks, including a smoothed firewall and twin peaks on the roof. The completed truck will be coated in custom-blended chartreuse metalflake, have loads of final chroming done, and roll on whitewall slicks. Judging from what we've seen of Bruce's past creations, we can only tell you this will be one badass Chevy coming full steam out of Shelton, Connecticut.