DEEP BLUE C
HOW DO YOU BUILD A THOROUGHLY MODERNISED ’35 CHEVROLET COUPE BUT KEEP ALL OF THE ORIGINAL STYLING CUES? JUST LIKE THIS
THIS stunning ’35 Chevy coupe is what happens when the owner has complete trust in who they’ve chosen to build the car for them. Now, we’re not going to get into the whole ‘built not bought’ argument here, because the two people we’re talking about are deadset legends in the car scene. The builder doesn’t really need too much introduction to regular SM readers: it’s Peter Fitzpatrick, SMOTY winner and multiple Summernats Grand Champion, so we know that he can put a car together.
The other bloke is Kees Weel. You may not have heard of him, but you’ve probably heard of Paul
Weel, his son, and their business Paul Weel
Radiators, aka PWR. Kees is a car guy through and through, with a pretty decent collection of cool rides, but he does like to drive them – show ponies aren’t his thing. And when Kees first spotted this Chev, it was far from a show pony.
“I bought it out of a wrecking yard in Gunnedah in northern NSW,” Kees says. “It was just sitting in the yard and
I drove past and saw it. Because it was right-hand drive, I got a bit of an inkling that it was something special.”
That was around 2003-4, and the car sat around for a number of years gathering dust before Kees approached Fitzy about doing the build. “We were at Motorex in 2014 and Kees asked me if I would build the car for him,” Fitzy says. “He said: ‘You know the one,’ and I said: ‘Yeah, the one I wanted to buy off you.’ I saw it up at his factory on the Gold Coast and I thought it would look shit-hot with a set of Center Lines, painted black with an LS in it.”
Kees then asked the obvious question: “Do you have an idea of what it will cost?” To which Fitzy replied: “Nup, how good do you want it?” That would normally be a pretty open-ended question, but with Fitzy you’ve got some pretty good material you can reference. “Kees said to me: ‘If it’s as good as your ’34 Ford I’ll be happy, but I don’t want it anything like the FC.’ My next question was: ‘Do I get the use of the five-axis CNC?’”
Of course, the answer was yes, and as a result, there is quite a bit of custom-machined billet on the car, although you wouldn’t know to look at it. All of the CNC work was carried out by Ryan and the team at PWR.
It’s pretty obvious Fitzy’s initial plans of a down-anddirty hot rod got thrown out the window for a build that involved changing practically everything on the car yet still manages to be very sympathetic to the original styling. Even the paint colours were inspired by the duco that the Chev originally left the factory with, but this particular blue is a custom colour that Fitzy developed with Tony Naughton from PPG. “The black is a straight tinter, but for the blue I said: ‘I need a nice clean blue; make it for me, Tony,’” Fitzy says.
The choice of an LS2 powerplant is no massive surprise, but it’s what’s connected to it that is a bit different from most hot rod builds. “I bought a 2006
Corvette chassis and running gear out of the States; it was like brand new,” Kees says. “We measured it up and figured we could make it work under the ’35, but we did have to widen the guards, and made the chassis from the ground up to make sure we could fit all the suspension from the Corvette. As we got along the road a bit, we said: ‘Oh well, if we’re going to do this, let’s do that,’ and as you know things get more expensive as you go. We just figured we would do it once and do it properly.”
For the chassis, Fitzy turned to Paul Sant at Proflo Performance, who masterfully blended the Corvette suspension into the boxed chassis rails before tying it all together with tubular crossmembers. The chassis was then sent to Capital Precision Coating to be powdercoated satin-black, while the engine and driveline were painted in a pale grey for a period look.
The six-litre LS2 would have worked just fine with the factory intake and injection but would’ve been a bit of a letdown when you opened the bonnet, so Fitzy combined the best of both worlds: the tuneability of EFI with the rugged good looks of a Rochester 2G Tri-power set-up. “Autotrend EFI in the States did the throttlebodies and it won Best New Product at SEMA a few years ago,” Fitzy explains. “I sent Kees a photo and said: ‘Man, look at these!’ We were talking about a supercharger, but it wasn’t the right thing for this car,
FITZY COMBINED THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS: THE TUNEABILITY OF EFI WITH THE RUGGED GOOD LOOKS OF A ROCHESTER 2G TRI-POWER SET-UP