At the factory, cars are assembled. That’s when their story starts. And every car has a unique tale woven from its journey through owner and experiences. This is the story of the 1966 Chevelle that I’ve owned for 38 years and my good friend, Mike Lane, who owned the car before me.
The Way Back Story
We grew up in Las Cruces, NM, and the story of this car started in the early 1980s. Mike was 14 years old, and the car was just a couple of years older than him. He saw this listing in the local Thrifty Nickel classifieds, “1966 Chevelle rebuilders special- rebuilt front suspension, new brakes, new American Racing wheels and BFGoodrich tires. $500.”
The Chevelle was a gutted shell, and Mike had no idea what he was getting into. But he was infatuated with it; obsessed with the vision of a Monogram model that he had built many times over the years as an even younger kid.
The guy that had listed the car said that if he didn’t sell it, he was going trade it off to a buddy who wanted to build a dirt track car out of it, which at the time was the death of many 2-door cars in our town.
Mike rode his bicycle over to the house where the car sat for sale, visiting it regularly for several months until he saved up the money to buy it. His mom even offered to give him the family Subaru station wagon and pay for the insurance, if Mike would forgot about the Chevelle. “Oh no, mom!!” said Mike, “The Chevelle is COOL! I want to keep it!”
It took years for Mike to gather the parts with a young teen’s scarce resources, but within a couple of years, the car was primer gray, small-block powered with a TH400 transmission and 3:08 open rear axle. Mike had invested a lot of effort into rebuilding the engine, while the rest of the car was pretty much like you’d expect for a high school student.
When I got the Chevelle from Mike, it was only a roof, quarter panels and frame rails. This is how the Chevelle looked as I started assembling it with the “best” pieces of two parts cars.
Mike left the car with me for a summer while he visited his dad in Alaska and also left a performance camshaft and single-plane intake in case I got bored and felt like installing them. With a stock torque converter and 3:08 rear gear, I figured that the biggest opportunity for performance improvement was to replace the TH400 for something – anything – with a clutch. I found a Saginaw 4-speed and performed the swap. I also installed the cam and intake manifold. When Mike returned from Alaska, the car was a little quicker.
Not too long after that, Mike had a disagreement with an embankment on a dirt road that left quite an impression on the quarter panel. He found another Chevelle body and migrated every single removable part from the old car to the new. Mike and I even did our version of “Caddy Hack,” drag racing the old girl one last time with everything removed that could be and still leave the car driveable. This included the inner fenderwells which meant the battery sat on the passenger floorboard with the cables going through the hole where the heater box was supposed to go.
My Turn to Own the Chevelle
The old shell was destined for the boneyard when I said I’d take it. I bought two parts cars and assembled a single, driveable car. The damaged quarter panel was filled in with chicken wire and fiberglass mesh that somehow stayed in place for 20 years. I laid a perfectly horrible paint job on it. In fact, it looked so bad when I applied the base coat that I never clear-coated it.
By the time I moved from California to Michigan, the Chevelle was a rock-solid driver and not bad looking from a 100-feet away on a dark night in the rain.
Then I moved to Los Angeles and went to work for Hot Rod magazine. The Chevelle saw some upgrades over the next 10 years. I built a 400-horsepower 350 for it and found a Muncie M-21. The suspension was upgraded and disk brakes added to the front. It became a rock-solid, reliable driver. It wasn’t pretty, it had rattles and squeaks. It was not extremely quick but was fun to drive and I could drive it anywhere. It was still that way 10 years later when I moved to Detroit to work for Chrysler.
The Most Recent Ground-Up Build
In 2010, I met Tony and TJ Grzelakowki at ABC Performance. We formed a game plan to take my Chevelle from rough-but-reliable driver to be a pro-touring contender, but it still needed to be a reliable driver. I asked Darryll Mayabb who was my go-to artist when I was at Hot Rod to do a rendering, capturing a style for the build reminiscent of a late 1960s Trans Am race car complete with low-back vintage racing buckets and deleted back seat.
The current version of this 1966 Chevelle is a Pro Touring driver.
One of the things that a former engineering at Chrysler gave me a hard time about was that the car has not had functioning windshield wipers that I can ever remember. So when Tony and TJ worked their metal-work magic on the car, I asked Tony to permanently delete the wiper arm holes from the cowl. There are a couple of other subtle changes that usually only a 1966-1967 Chevelle owner will notice.
In addition to exceptional metal work and paint skills, Tony and TJ also applied quite few ABC Performance A-Body upgrades. Specifically, they installed their firewall smoothie panel, boxed the original frame, installed their performance handling front and rear suspension and converted to Vi-King coil-over shocks at all four corners.
Even though the engine is now a modern LS3 with fuel injection, I wanted to retain a classic muscle-car look under the hood.
I’ve always built my own engines, and I wanted to do an LS swap for this car. It didn’t take much research to learn that I could have a 520-horsepower GM crate engine for far less than it would take to buy the parts, machine a factory block and build anything better. I chose a TREMEC Magnum 6-speed manual transmission, which is the best shifting transmission I’ve ever driven.
The crate engine came with a carburetor intake manifold which I retained and added FAST EZ-EFI. Chris Kill painted a pair of Holley coil covers and a 14-inch air cleaner to mimic brushed aluminum (there is no billet on this car that I’ll admit to other than the wheels). I used a fully-shrouded Flex-A-Lite Black Magic Xtreme electric fan which does a fantastic job of keeping the engine cool and also has a similar look to a belt-driven-fan shroud. A quick peak under the hood gives you the impression of a simple, traditional muscle car V8. It’s not until people start looking more closely that they realize there’s a mess of EFI wiring and fuel line hidden along with all the vehicle wiring.
Getting Ready for Route 66 to The SEMA Show 2025
I’ve wanted to create a new driving event series for years. When I decided in early 2026 to participate in Hot Rod Power Tour, I had not yet resolved to start Pavement Pounder Events, but it was the motivation needed to get my Chevelle road-trip worthy again.
The interior was the biggest departure from typical muscle-car build. Kirkey low-back vintage racing buckets combined with a rear seat delete, NASCAR inspired steering wheel, Stewart Warner gauges and aircraft toggle switches give the car a 1960s Trans Am race car feeling.
Most recently, the car had been plagued with clutch issues. Specifically, a throw out bearing failure that led to changing the master cylinder as well as the throw out bearing hastily before the car was used as a feature vehicle in the Flex-A-Lite SEMA booth in 2018. The new master cylinder mount wasn’t quite the right angle for a 1966-1967 Chevelle causing wear and engagement issues, and the throw out bearing wasn’t shimmed properly, killing off what was left of a 10-year-old clutch. Add to that the fact that the last time the car was driven was on a similar trip across country, it ended with competing in the Optima Ultimate Street Car Challenge. Add to that abuse a few years of sitting in a garage, moving households 4 times and general neglect, and the poor Chevelle needed some attention.
The transmission came out and all of the existing clutch components were tossed on the garbage heap. A Centerforce LS Dual-Friction setup complete with flywheel, pressure plate, disk, pilot bearing and fasteners upgraded everything inside the bellhousing. I also used a Centerforce hydraulic throw out bearing that doesn’t require shimming and set up. Just install it, bleed it and go! ABC Performance now offers a clutch master cylinder mount for these Chevelles that has the perfect angle as well as reinforcement to all but eliminate firewall flex. An oil change and fresh set of spark plugs completed the drivetrain revival.
The rest of the car was in pretty decent shape. It needed a thorough cleaning. And some of the brake lines were looking suspicious, so I bent all new hard lines and replaced all of the flex hoses.
I had the luxury of finishing the car early enough before Power Tour to drive it and shake it down. Power Tour came and went and the car was performing flawlessly. There’s always more I would like to do, but the car is ready to head out on its next adventure, leading the Route 66 to The SEMA Show event, starting October 27, 2025, in Pontiac, IL. And Mike will be joining me for this trip – the first time we’ve driven in the Chevelle together in more than 30 years.