1970 Chevy Pickup is big winner at Performance World show
Four years of hard work brought home the hardware for Adam Broderick last month - the first time he showed his classic Chevy truck.
The Lindsay man, who is also co-chair of the annual Classics on Kent show won six awards after he showed his fully-restored 1970, short-box Chevrolet pickup truck for the first time at the prestigious Performance World show in Toronto on March 14.
“I was blown away; it’s the first time I’ve showed it, and I certainly didn’t expect to do that well,” the Lindsay resident said.
Mr. Broderick spent four years restoring the truck, which he said was “in pretty decent shape” when he bought it. It is a ‘flatside’ model, which is prized by collectors.
But, he said it had no motor, no transmission and needed what’s known in the hobby as a ‘rotisserie’ restoration - nuts and bolts from the ground up.
“It’s completely rebuilt; down to the screws,” he said.
Mr. Broderick said the toughest part of restoring old vehicles of any kind is “finding a good body man.”
“It’s expensive, especially the paint job, and really difficult to find someone who knows how to to it properly,” he said. “It’s almost a dying art.”
Such vehicles require a two-step process in priming, Mr. Broderick explained. While the chassis can be sandblasted, the body panels must be soda blasted, which cleans them but doesn’t do any damage.
His search for a good body man was long and frustrating; at one point, the truck sat in a garage in northern Ontario for almost two years with almost no work done on it.
“It’s pretty frustrating, because it costs a lot of money to do this,” Mr. Broderick said.
When he finally had the work completed, he decided to take it to the show, “just to see how it would do.”
He came home with the GM award for Best Truck in Show, Class Champion, Outstanding Classic Truck, the rookie award for Best Truck in Show, the Special Olympics Choice award and took first place in the Performance World Full Size Truck class.
Mr. Broderick, who has worked on old cars as a hobby for most of his adult life, said he plans to drive the truck occasionally, but not often, as he plans to continue showing it.
In the meantime, asked if he plans to take on another project, he said he’d like to restore a muscle car or a “30s hot rod.”
“But, a lot of that depends on what my wife says,” he laughed.
