1954 Chevrolet 210 - 210 Uncommon

Gary Morales' '54 Chevrolet Traditional Custom

From the February, 2010 issue of Street Rodder

By Tim Bernsau

Gary Morales can't remember a time when he was not crazy about cars, and credits that to the stories he heard his father tell as he grew up. As a young man in the '50s, Gene Morales had been a member of the Outcasts Car Club in San Francisco where he and his friends owned a long chain of various rods and customs. Those years triggered memories, and Gary grew up listening to his father's stories about cars, club members, shows and picnics, and early encounters with Joe Bailon, Tommy the Greek, and other automotive idols in Northern California. It wasn't long before Gary was collecting toy cars. He remembers wearing out his tricycle as if it were a hot rod. And when he was 3 years old, he cried when his dad sold the family '59 Chevy wagon with a 348, three deuces, and a three-speed.

In the years since, Gary has owned and modified many of his own cars-mostly muscle cars and a few rods, but the car he'd always wanted was a chopped custom. In 2004, he sold his chopped '30 Model A sedan and began looking for a sled. When he found this '54 Chevy 210, it was owned by Richard Esquibel from Pittsburg, California. The car had been a lowrider in the '70s, and Richard had used it as a parts car for a '54 Bel Air project before starting the rebuild to original condition. Gary bought it with the Chevy 350 engine and Turbo 350 automatic transmission already in place.

Even before Gary owned the Chevy, he'd made friends with Marcos Garcia and the rest of the builders at Lucky 7 Customs in Antioch, California. Garcia had done a little bit of work on Gary's Model A, and by the time Gary bought the Chevy the two of them had become friends. They spent several years kicking around a lot of plans for the custom before any serious work began. Finally in the winter of 2008, Garcia told Gary that if he was ready to proceed, Lucky 7 Customs was ready to get to work.

"The two of us had talked about a lot of cool ideas for the car," Gary said. "We both agreed that it should be a traditional custom, like somebody might've bought in 1954 and taken it to someplace like Barris Kustoms. But my idea of what that would be was, to my surprise, different than what Garcia envisioned. I was content with suede black paint and a red candy flaked roof. I never dreamed that it would turn out like this."

With the mechanical components in place and running satisfactorily, most of the attention could be paid to making the Chevy ride right and look right. The top was chopped 4 inches in front and 4 1/2 at the rear, and the roof was moved 3 inches forward with the B-pillars slanted to continue the appearance of forward motion. The 210 sheetmetal was stripped of side molding, emblems, ornaments, badges, gravel guards, and door handles-and front and rear bumper guards were eliminated. The grille opening was stuffed with more teeth in between the originals. The headlights were frenched using four modified '54 Merc headlight housing bottoms; custom taillights were added to the modified rear fenders. Garcia shot the car using all PPG paints. The creme basecoat was finished with a light green Murano pearl, and the metallic green graphics were mixed using PPG Vibrance paints, outlined in heavy 'stripes. The pinstriping on the deck is also Garcia's work.

On the inside, things were kept low-key and mostly stock, but dressed up enough to fit the overall concept of the custom. That means vinyl tuck 'n' roll on the stock bench and door panels, and a stock dash with and engine-turned insert in the instrument panel.

A sled's got to be low, so the front of the frame was modified by Bill and Tom Frazier at Antioch Muffler and rebuilt using a Mustang II IFS from TCI Engineering, including 2-inch dropped spindles. Garcia at Lucky 7 clipped 1 1/2 coils from the front springs to drop the front further. The crew at Lucky 7 de-arched the leafs, C-notched the 'rails, and installed 3-inch lowering blocks plus air shocks to bring down the rear. The brakes are rear drums with front discs, and a Classic Performance master cylinder.

When Gary's dad was getting into hot rodding in the '50s, building a car was a group effort, and the point of clubs like the Outcasts was that each member of the club contributed parts, ideas, and labor to each other's cars. So it was on the Chevy buildup. In addition to Garcia, Logan Stipe, Eduardo "Junior" "Gutierrez, and Vince Byrne at Lucky 7 Customs, Gary was at the shop as often as he could be to, as he puts it, "get in the way." The result of working together, he told us, was that while they were building this great traditional custom, they were also building some great friendships.