The Jackson '55

Not Quite as Easy as 1-2-3

- Mike Self

NOT EVERYONE IS LUCKY ENOUGH TO OWN THEIR HIGH SCHOOL TRUCK STILL, BUT THOSE WHO DO HAVE A SPECIAL BOND WITH THEIR NOSTALGIC RIDES. Those formative years are filled with newfound freedom, friendship and in many cases an eagerness to start wrenching. Alas, most of us eventually move on to the next shiny thing that attracts our attention without realizing until years later that we shouldn’t have lost that lovin’ feelin’. Sorry, we just saw “Top Gun” on Netflix.

Matt Jackson of Kingsburg, California, is one of those guys who still has his first truck, a ’55 Chevy. From the get-go, he wanted to customize it, and even had it ’bagged early on. The problem was even though the truck looked nice, the work underneath wasn’t the greatest. The air ride setup was crude, and it wasn’t very reliable.

The truck remained as it was for a while before Matt eventually decided to give it a makeover, but this time he wanted to do things quite a bit differently. For one, he wanted to do away with the air ride. We get it, sometimes you just need a change. Matt wanted to take his truck a lot further than before, and that meant practically everything else about it would have to change as well.