Meet Our Gearhead Giveaway Winner: Ray and His 1970 Chevelle SS

When the winner for the Gearhead Giveaway to represent Power & Performance News at the upcoming Street Machine Nationals was chosen, we had no idea how powerful the story behind the car would be. In 1988, Ray and his dad brought home this stunning 1970 Chevelle SS. The duo worked side-by-side at times, and at other times, Ray’s dad took over the wrenching when Ray was busy. Unfortunately, Ray’s dad didn’t get to see the final form of the Father-son project Chevelle SS. Check out Ray’s story in his own words.

“My story is going to be a very difficult one to tell, it’s very dear to my heart. A true father son story. I have a passion for all cars from hot rods/low riders/muscle cars/euro’s, and all makes and models, no matter what shape. Whether they are in rough or pristine my father always told me if a person takes pride in there car, respect that.

The love of cars is in my blood passed to me from my dad, he was a diehard gearhead from the old days. He has stories of his many cars, built by him of course. Some of the earliest pictures of me as a baby was with him in his 1964-1/2 rag top Mustang he built into a very respectable street machine in the 60’s.

He bought me my first car, a 1977 Monza Spider, in which we tore down, built a good running 307, and painted it with a beautiful white with awesome flames. This was the coolest car a 16 year old boy could have. Short story long, I wrecked it a few months after I got my driver’s license, I was hot rodding it around like a idiot. I learned respect for power from that car.

With insurance money, I bought a 1974 Camaro, which was traded a couple years later for my Chevelle. I remember the night I got my Chevelle like it was yesterday. I was at a party, a friend of mine loved my Camaro and asked if I wanted to trade for his dad’s 1970 Chevelle SS — so I went home and asked my dad what he thought.

I had no idea what I was about to get myself into, but my dad sure did. It was around 7pm when I asked him, and we immediately went to my friends house to look at it. There she was on the side of his house — a beautiful 1970 Chevelle SS 396 in perfect condition, except for a blown motor.

Lance’s dad bought it new in 1970, and gave it to him for his 16th birthday — Lance blew the motor with in a week. Needless to say, within 2 hours from telling my dad about it we were pulling it home, that was in 1988. My dream from when I first saw the owner of a local pizza place’s blown Corvette, was to have a blower one day.

For the next 28 years, my dad and I built this car. Three frame-off restorations, and many many hours were put into this car by us. No matter what happened with it, my dad would never complain, we would just fix it. In 2008, I wrecked it racing, and the damage was bad. It cost $18k to get it back to the condition it was in before the crash. We both cried the day of the accident.

Well this time I could not help my dad rebuild it for the final time, due to my job, so he did it himself. At 65 years old he spent hundreds of hours rebuilding his and his sons baby by himself. It turned out beautiful again. Except it wasn’t finished. I’ve spent a lot of money over the 28 years building it to handle a blower and it still didn’t have one.

The saddest part to this story is my father passed away suddenly the day before Thanksgiving last year, devastating my entire family. So I decided to finish the car in his honor and got to installing a supercharger; it took me months to do this as I had to learn how to do things that my dad already knew how to do.

As the install progressed, I found out the whole time I was watching him, he was in fact passing his knowledge on to me; his meticulousness and perfection in everything he did was instilled in me. Finally my Chevelle is finished, I only wish he could see it.” -Ray Marion