Fast Friends

It was all about the ’55. But he got so much more.

- Chris Shelton

“I don’t know if this sort of thing is even interesting to other people,” Pete A. admits. We disagree. There’s more to his 1955 210 than it being just another cool car.

“My best friend in high school, Rich, had all series of the Tri-Five cars,” he continues. “We would spend countless hours—weekends, at night—under the hood of that car. Tearing it apart, putting it back together. Redoing the motor. You name it; we did it on that car. I really learned, cut my teeth, on that car.”

You could even call that car a springboard, of sorts. Because of it one friend got a 1957 and another a GTO. “Me?” Pete asks. “I got a 1970 Chevelle Super Sport. That car was really together.” In other words, he really dug it.

“But that ’55,” he reflects. “That was the car. I always had the passion for that car.”

There was only one problem: He didn’t have one. And he was in no way able to just go out and buy one, either. Pete may have learned how to wrench on his buddy’s ’55, but that was decades ago. Like when that time a president was facing a grand jury. No, not that one. You know, the other one. The hotel break-in thing.