We’d not done a Reader’s Ride feature in a while, and then this beautiful piece of work came along. This beauty belongs to one Charles McClendon of Woodland Hills, California, and is the third restomod completed by Charles: it follows a 1959 Corvette and a 1957 Bel Air. Charles is, as you might have guessed, a Chevy fan. These previous cars are not without their plaudits. After it was restomodded by Safe and Sound of Woodland Hills, the Bel Air won awards at 17 shows, including seven best of show awards, within its first year. We have no doubt that the Chevelle will follow suit.

Although still the co-owner of a business, Charles is semi-retired, with his son, Nick, now running it. It is with this dynamic father and son duo that we begin the story of the Chevelle. Nick owned one before his father, with the pair of them voyaging out to Iowa to buy a sleek and gorgeous Tuxedo Black 1970 Chevelle that boasts an LSX engine under its hood. As a young man, Charles would take his first car, a 1965 Mustang convertible, and cruise up and down Van Nuys Boulevard on Wednesday and Satuday nights. It was there that he first fell in love with Chevys, and he tells me that looking at his son’s Chevelle, he got “that same feeling of desire I used to get back in high school.” Although he’d promised his wife he was done with restomodding after his Bel Air, he knew that he needed just one more car in his collection.

“I just had to have one more, a ’70 or ’71 Chevelle SS 454. Plus, I thought about how cool it would be to cruise with Nick and go to shows together in our Chevelles. So after coming to a mutually beneficial agreement with my wife (and that’s another story for another day!) the search began.”

Luckily for Charles, just months later, he found exactly what he was looking for. The Chevelle had already been restored beautifully. Finished in Ferrari’s Rosso Corsa paint with white SS stripes, it packed a 454 and a Tremec TKO five-speed transmission. Though fit and finish were fantastic, it was not without its problems. Most significantly, its brakes didn’t work, with the mighty 454 producing no vacuum while it was idling. After a “very scary and thankfully short drive,” Charles got it (and him) to Safe and Sound in one piece. Work could finally begin on the car that Charles had wanted since those days back in high school.