12 minute read
Next stop 1000bhp
A vehicle in Custom Car that’s barely over a quarter of a century old, or the fact that much as you want to hate it, it ticks every other box and try as you might, you have to admit that yeah, actually, it’s pretty cool? Hard to know which is naughtier, really…
Words and pics: Dan Fenn
Your typical Custom Car feature vehicle is old and modified. Old and modified, probably faster and lower and almost always prettier. One of the most common things we hear from people is along the lines of ‘I’m not much into the newer stuff’ – though when they say it, as often or not they’re talking about anything made since WWII.
So this here Chevy S10 SS pick-up breaks one of the big rules. But it also answers most of the big questions with a big yes. A big hell, yeah, actually. It’s definitely post-war (the first Gulf War, let alone WWII) but it’s also more than a quarter of a century old, even if not by very much. It’s definitely lower and very definitely faster, it’s been given a new look and it’s ruder than Cherie Deville doing overtime on the night shift.
Mainly, it’s a confirmed crowd-pleaser on the strip. But it’s also its owner’s preferred way of picking up his kids from school, which makes it a crowd-pleaser everywhere else too. ‘I’ve had people say to me that they don’t like new cars, but they like this,’ he tells us, which kind of goes to show what we’re on about.
‘He’ is James Dean. That got your attention, didn’t it? James Dean Evans, in actual fact, but it’s not a coincidence. He was indeed named after the James Dean – so perhaps it was inevitable that he was going to grow up with cool cars in his blood.
Actually, as it turns out, he could have been called Slowy McSlowface and he’d still have grown up with cool cars in his blood. ‘My parents, uncle, aunty and family friends used to run the original Bomber County Cruises in Manby back in the 1990s and early 2000s,’ he says, ‘holding large events with cars massed on the airfield and meet-ups at the White Horse in Marsh Chapel. From that point onwards, it was pretty much set that cars was the life I was going to take.’
It was already running in the family even before that, actually. James’ grandad, Alan Evans, was the founder of Bamby Cars – a Hull-based company which, for a spell in the mid-1980s, manufactured single-seat city cars under its own brand name. A very different sort of vehicle to the Granada V6-engined Cadbury’s purple and bright green T-bucket his stepdad used to tool around in, but you get the idea.
’As far back as I can remember,’ he continues, warming to what’s clearly a subject he loves, ‘cars were the main priority in our lives. I know, ruined from such a young age! But hey, it was the way of life – and not a bad one at that.
‘For me, that T-bucket was the coolest thing I’d laid my eyes on. Going for drives and days out was the best thing I could ask for in my early years, and it’s memories that I will forever hold with me. Simple drives out were the best thing to happen – the excitement and feeling of hearing it start up and rattle my ears.’
There were various other rods and customs in the family too, as well as things like ex-military troop carriers. And so the die was cast. As James got older, he
It’s not chromed and it is an LS2, but mainly it’s purposeful as all hell. The highly upgraded 6.0-litre V8 bungs a click over 600bhp through a built 4L80E and into a narrowed 9-inch Ford axle with an upgraded 3.30:1 LSD. Plans for the winter are to pull it apart and rebuild it with twin turbos: it’ll be in the 1000bhp range after that, but no it still won’t be chromed
became a regular at car shows, searching out ‘the most obscure things I could find – the loudest, the most radically painted, everything ranging from your bog stock Morris Minor to your top-spec Lambo.’
The road to ruin
But then one day, he clapped his eyes on a ’69 Camaro SS in burnt orange. And a light bulb went on in his head. ‘From that point on, I was adamant that I would own one someday. I realised that American cars was what was going to ruin my life and bank…’
We can’t comment on the latter. But he’s keeping up with the family tradition of passing the passion on to his own kids, so far from ruining his life American cars are enriching it.
‘I finally managed to buy a purple and blue 1970 Camaro SS housing a mild-built 454 big-block Chevy and a TH700R trans. The joy I felt purchasing it was utterly amazing – finally, I’d made it to where I wanted to be. The way the car shouted and drove was an experience I’ll never forget – moments and memories I could finally make with my own children.
‘My son Jackson, who’s currently 5, and daughter Luna, 6, spent countless hours with me in the garage, doing oil changes, servicing, polishing and enjoying the car, while my fiancée Sammy supported us, slowly trying to pass my love of cars on to my own family and the next generation.’
You’d have to say that selling the Camaro doesn’t sound like the best way of doing this. But there was a plan, and it’s one that led James to where he is today. Yes, the 1970 Camaro made way for a vehicle 25 years its junior. Cue tutting and wringing of hands, though if this is enough to make you stop reading you probably weren’t reading in the first place.
ong tube headers from tainless orks fl ow into twin e hausts. e t to these, as war wounds go the has a pretty cool one on the trailing edge of its offside rear wing. he truck might only’ be running high s right now, but ames is no stranger to winning burnout competitions so emphatically that his bodywork melts. e’s got a feel for the vibes, this guy. he truck’s interior is like the engine bay in that it’s all about function, not form but he’s had enough traditional customs in his life not to need to answer to anyone
A vehicle from 1995, in Custom Car? As someone may already have said, hell yeah. And it may be more modern than you’re used to, but this here Chevy is every inch a custom car.
It’s also every inch a rarity. The S10 was built in the sort of volumes that make your head spin, but the high-performance SS model shifted less than 12,000 units in its four-year production run from 1994 to 1998. So if you think modern classics are vulgar, take comfort in the fact that this is one which has had the sort of stuff done to it that would make modern classic purists grind their teeth the same way the tweed-jacket brigade come over all sniffy when they see a rodded Pop.
High-performance, did we say? Yes, the S10 SS was the fast one. So fast it had a 4.3-litre V6 putting out about 180bhp. Er, yes. They did lower the suspension a bit and put a limited-slip diff in the back, but you need to have quite a liberal interpretation of the phrase ‘high-performance’ not to find that all a bit comical.
There’s nothing comical about this one now, though. Hilarious, perhaps, in a whoawah-lairy kind of a way, but laugh in its face and you’ll soon discover that he who laughs last laughs longest. ‘I have driven some fast and scary cars in my life,’ says James. ‘But the S10 is in a league of its own.’
It replaced the Camaro in his life after its builder and owner, a chap from up in Newcastle, reached out to offer him a deal. ‘Of course I was curious,’ he says, and he was clearly right to be because here we are savouring the aroma of hot rubber after our photo session has come to an end and he’s set off for home with a flourishing burnout.
and
proper engine
The 4.3 has long since been fetched out for a proper engine. Several proper engines, in fact. Just one at a time, don’t worry, but they’ve culminated in a 6.0-litre LS2 chucking about 600bhp through a built 4L80E into a narrowed 9-inch Ford rear with 3.30:1 gears.
This sounds a bit like the story of a man who bought a truck, but it’s not. James has nothing but praise for the guy who sold it to him (‘the build was everything I wanted in a car,’ he says) but he’s done loads to improve
ho among us hasn’t done something to alter the way their car looks bviously, fetching the bonnet off it one way of doing this, but the looks newer than it really is. t’s all relative, but this is a model with a front end. ne of the only things about it that could ever be accused of being subtle, that
it himself since becoming its owner – and he has big plans for the coming winter, too.
More of that shortly. For now, James has improved what was already an extremely strong engine by upgrading to DSS Racing FX forged pistons and rods and fitting a BTR Stage 3 racing cam. A session on the rollers followed, which showed that it was running a little rich, so he adjusted the map on the Canems ECU and now it’s bang on the money.
Already a strong engine? You could say. The ECU had been installed by the guy who first built the S10 (which he did from scratch on a rust-free California truck), and that wasn’t all. The fuel system runs a custom tank, braided lines and twin aero-spec Bosch 44 pumps, and the big LS breathes through a smoothed inlet manifold and 1 7/8” Stainless Works long-tube headers, the latter going into twin 3” stainless exhausts. Spal fans pull air through an oversize custom radiator, and to help keep it cool (in every sense of the word) James tends to view a bonnet as an item that belongs on other people’s cars.
Matey also fitted the 4L80E, again with uprated cooling and with a performance TCI to get it shifting as fast as it was going to need to. The narrowed Ford axle contains Moser shafts and an uprated LSD, and very wisely it’s been converted to disc brakes. Caltrac links and single split leaves hold it in place, the latter also keeping the vehicle up with the aid of adjustable shocks.
Result? It goes, it stops and it goes again. Repeat. But mainly, it goes. ‘Some may call it a sleeper, as it looks like a stock S10 minus the 3-inch exhaust exists and the 275 radials in the back. But it was what I wanted – a truck that I can use regularly to pick the kids up from school but then run serious times down the strip.’ Which it does – high 11s and low 12s so far, but that was ‘still with some setting up needed’ and by the time next season comes around James’ plan is to have given it a lot more than just that.
‘Hopefully through the winter we are aiming to have a strip down and rebuild,’ he says, ‘as well as heading over to forced induction. I’m hoping to run a large twinturbo set up.’ The price of the supercharging options has a lot to do with that; anyway, his aim is simple: ‘the magic 1000bhp mark.’
That ought to get him down the strip a good bit faster, all the while without making the truck any less of a tool for kid-shifting and general daily duties. Which is, after all, the kind of custom car we all respect, even if we’re more used to knocking about with older stuff. After all, to quote that muchloved phrase, no man with a good car needs to be justified. And that’s exactly what this S10 is to James: his car.
‘What more could you need?’ he asks. ‘The truck turns heads everywhere it goes. Kids smile at it, blokes take pictures and love it. You can’t drive anywhere in it and not be noticed.
‘But hey, that’s why we have these things. We were all that kid at one point, staring at the loud cars and jumping when they revved that V8… so why not carry the passion on to the next generation?’ You may or may not think his ride is old enough to be in Custom Car – but if you’re reading this magazine, the guy behind the wheel is very much a kindred spirit.
