Putting that glorious list of parts together for a new project car is one of most enjoyable steps in the car building process. The potential realities of the cost and actual cost of the total build haven’t sunk in yet. You’re not thinking about the months it may or may not sit in a shop waiting for parts. You’re just imagining what it would be like to drop the hammer behind the wheel of your ideal street machine, race car, show car—whatever it is your imagination is toying with at the moment.
Thankfully most of the time, the end result of winning the car show, race, or just being able to cruise your ride anywhere is worth what it took to create. Take George Harrison’s impeccable ’70 Chevelle SS for example. George’s initial list of parts for his SS turned out to be a bit too radical for his liking, but what he ended up with, thanks to Troy Martin of Full Scale Hot Rods & Customs and Paul Bartlett of Little People Customs, both in Ventura, California, was a beautiful version of one of GM’s coolest muscle cars.
Although this wasn’t the car owner’s first hot Chevelle, it was the first project where he could get every aspect of a car exactly how he wanted. “I have had about five Corvettes and several Chevy trucks, but I always wanted a Chevelle like the one I had in high school,” George says. In both 1975 and 1978 he had big-block Chevelles, but he was on the hunt for one again in 2010.
From the rafters of Saticoy Auto Body in Saticoy, California, where George found it, sat the unbuilt version of the car you see on these pages. With the dark blue paint already finished, it waited for someone to give it life again. This is where Full Scale Hot Rods & Customs comes into the story.
“Troy [Martin] put this car together and spent long nights building a shell of a Chevelle into a showstopper. He put in a ton of work to get it where it is; it wouldn’t be such a nice car without him,” George says. At Martin’s shop, an Edelbrock-topped 427 was lowered into place with the Richmond five-speed, the Hotchkis suspension was bolted up, and in a year, George’s car was ready to cruise. “I enjoyed building it, we got to put some nice parts on a good car,” Martin says. “It’s cool to see it get some ink in CHP.”
George also recruited Little People Customs (LPC) to fine-tune his combination, as upon driving the pristine ’70 SS, he realized the cam was too big for his liking. LPC shop owner Bartlett said, “The cam [George] had, with the gearbox and tire height he was running ended up being too aggressive, so we stepped it down so it wasn’t rowdy on the street. The car came out real nice and once we toned the engine down, it could drive anywhere.”
Today, George’s Chevelle is in the hands of another lucky owner; he auctioned it off to start a new Chevy project, and if it ends up half as nice as this dark blue beauty, we’ll have to check it out.