Chevy chasers
The story of one B.C. family’s love affair with all things ’57
Reg Chudyk remembers his father borrowing a new V-8-powered turquoise and white 1957 Chevrolet BelAir from a fellow Canadian National Railway worker in Kamloops to take the family to visit relatives in Vernon.
The elder Chudyk let his 10-year-old son sit on his lap and steer the car. When the family arrived in Vernon, Reg didn’t want to get out of the car and spent hours pretending he was driving while his parents visited.
Not surprisingly, Reg couldn’t wait to get his own 1957 Chevrolet. That came in high school when, as a teenager, he bought his 10-year old dream car. He took a photograph of his younger brothers Ron and Brian, aged seven, with his very own 1957 Chevy that has been an inspiration for the family ever since.
Brian remembers Reg driving him to elementary school in that car.
“I could hardly see over the dashboard but I loved the hood rockets and that dashboard,” he recalls.
More than 40 years has passed. Reg has owned and restored several 1957 Chevrolets, including a black two-door hardtop purchased in Ferndale, Washington.
Brother Ron bought his first 1957 Chevy for $200 in 1973 and over the past eight years owned a beautiful two-tone green 1957 BelAir hardtop originally from California that had travelled just 81,000 miles.
Brian, the youngest brother, really got hooked on 1957 Chevys. He bought his first while still a teenager at a car auction in Vancouver.
Then he bought a black twodoor hardtop which he drove while courting Mindy, his future wife. But that car was T-boned in an intersection and badly damaged.
Without collision insurance, he couldn’t afford to repair the car and put it away in his mother’s garage. When his new wife urged him to do something with the car, the Air Canada maintenance technician read some books on bodywork and started the repairs.
He took on the job in his mother’s old wooden single car garage, where he welded in a new rear fender and did other metal repairs. His wife was in labour with their daughter when he was painting the car. The car won several awards at the Motorama car show at the Pacific International Exhibition and Brian was hooked on restoration.
He used his airline privileges to fly to shows in the U.S. featuring the best 1955 to 1957 Chevrolets to learn about Concours’ quality restorations.
Now determined to restore a convertible, he got a lead at a show in Sacramento, California. A local car dealer with 80 cars in a barn was said to have a suitable builder car.
The car in question was a 1957 BelAir convertible that had been sitting behind one of the owner’s car dealerships with the top down and filled with old parts. Brian patiently dug out all the parts to determine the car was rust free. He made an offer which was accepted.
But the owner’s wife had met Brian and thought he was paying too much for the car. The owner subsequently threw in a factory continental kit still in its original packaging and a 1957 Chevrolet station wagon parts car to help with the restoration of the convertible.
Brian spent 2,400 hours doing an off-frame rotisserie restoration in the garage of his Surrey home. He added rare options, including power windows and seat, signal seeking Wonderbar radio and — the rarest option of them all — Rochester fuel injection.
The results are spectacular and the car scored 992 out of 1,000 points in judging at an International Chevy Club meet in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
While Brian and brother Reg were restoring their 1957 Chevys, Reg’s son Michael caught the Chevy bug.
“I think my first words were ’57 Chevy,” Michael says while looking at his beautifully restored dusk pearl 1957 Chevy BelAir hardtop. Miss Pearl, as he calls his Chevy, was purchased by his father as a partly restored car about 20 years ago. Young Michael acquired the car and finished the restoration with help from father Reg, along with uncles Ron and Brian.
It represents a love affair with an iconic North American car that now spans three generations in the Chudyk family.