First published in the November 2003 issue of Street Machine

American car crafter Troy Trepanier is no stranger to receiving big awards and his latest creation has just claimed one of the most prestigious gongs on offer – the Goodguys Street Machine of the Year, awarded in July at the Goodguys Nationals in Columbus, Ohio. So settle back and revel in the sweet detail!

The car in question is a ’62 Chevrolet Biscayne and its owner is Glenn Grozich, the man behind the firm Billet Specialties. His primary instruction to Troy was that horsepower should be the key word. Now Troy knows that the best work is done in the planning stages and that when you have a tight plan, you can easily evolve it to get the results you want.

“Never start halfway to anywhere,” he says. “Your plan should be to see what really makes up the structure of the car and anything that stops you from seeing what it’s really made of needs to go!”

He started by working out how to achieve the sensational stance, the trick being to avoid nose-to-tail angling with the 22 and 19in Billet Specialties rims he was going to stuff under it. Using a modified stock X-frame with pinched rails, a new raised cross-member and enlarged tunnel, Troy designed a new three-link rear suspension.

The tower arms are boxed and retro fitted with ’65 Chevy bushings and improved torsional preload, then modified to suit the Air Ride Shockwave air bags. The third arm can be adjusted to set the pinion angle with a one-tonne ball joint mounted to the rear end housing – a simple concept that allows excellent traction control. It also put the rear suspension deep in the car so there was plenty of clearance for the massive rear rollers.

The front end is based on the original crossbar suspension design but is updated with tubular arms, which have an inch shorter inset to the ball joints. This returns the turning radius of this hugely lowered sedan to near stock. Two-inch dropped Bell spindles from a 1995 Impala provide mounting for Baer’s latest six-piston calipers, which grab 14in Baer rotors. Baer four-piston units clamp a 15in disc on the rear meaning this tank really throws out the anchors!

The body seems stock in profile and platform but it’s been nosed and decked. What’s tricky about it is that the trunk is reshaped with a 2in spoiler across the back edge and the opener is incorporated into the frenched taillights. (Just twist the right taillight and the trunk pops open!)

Both the front and rear bumpers were modified to better meld with the body form – the front bumper reformed along the bottom centre to match the top where the license plate used to be. Troy also smoothed out the lower rear with a new two-tone belly pan that reaches forward to the rear axle from under the rear bumper. A smoothed firewall, custom sculptured aluminium inner fender panels and new radiator support are hidden features, and while they were in the engine bay, they pre-fitted everything so it was ready for final installation.

Chevs from this period feature pot-metal, chromed steel and aluminium body trim and this was all refreshed and re-chromed. One little trick was to incorporate intakes for the turbos in the front turn signals before the bodyline was made true and crisp, all the openings measured and every surface perfectly aligned.

Two tones of custom-mixed PPG sage and olive greens were applied by Warren Lewis at the Trepanier shop and then highlighted with lines of greens, silver and gold graphics by Bob Thrash. The interior was done to match the exterior in olive, sage and beige buffalo suede by Jim Griffin in Bend, Oregon. Check your map, that’s about 2000 miles from the Trepanier shop, so this guy’s gotta be hot. The first thing Jim did, was to cover the bare metal surfaces of the floor and back panel with a layer of Dynamat and then cover it with a second layer of Extremeliner sound proofing. This dramatically lowered highway and wheel noise.

A pair of slick carbon fibre-coated centre consoles are sculpted around the seats, while the front console box holds the Kenwood sound/DVD system, mobile phone deck and seat harness control levers. Each seat features a four-point harness out of Boeing 777 jet with the retractors for the front harnesses mounted to the chrome moly roll cage centre section. The trick dash features an overlay panel cluster of staggered depths and gauges sizes for the 10 Auto Meter gauges.

To keep the engine bay clear and clean, all the usual hard parts you find under the hood are now hidden away. The right-hand kick panel hides the MSD ignition, ECU and fuel pump controls. The left-hand kick hides the fan relays, remote air ride module and TCI transmission modules. Other interior touches include a Billet Specialties custom-one-off steering wheel and Vintage Air airconditioning.

Hidden in the trunk is a 23-gallon custom Aeromotive fuel system with regulator, a submerged pump and an external back-up pump. It also contains a pair of Optima batteries, a remote charging station, the tank and Air Ride Pro-ride air suspension hardware and pieces of the Diamond Audio sound system.

Still wondering what all the fuss is about? Just a small-block with a dyno-proven 1200hp at 6800rpm! The monster runs Lunati reverse dome pistons, Lunati crank and custom rods. The oiling system is beefy, as you might imagine, with race-prepped oil passages, Melling racing oil pump and a modified Sef’s deep wet sump, with sight gauge. The heads are Dart Gen IIs with 18 degrees of valve cant. They’re grooved for stainless steel O-rings and use Flatout brand copper head gaskets and ARP studs. The cam is a special cut billet item from Comp Cams, matched to a full Jessel roller valve train.

The one-off aluminium intake assembly took an enormous amount of engineering to create, with hand-made polished fuel rails, Bosch injectors and a late-model Corvette throttle body. The exhaust and turbo set-up is all done in stainless 321 titanium tubing with the twin Precision PT52 turbo’s prominently mounted at the front of the engine.

The go-fast package is capped off with Turbonetics wastegates and bypass valves, MSD crank trigger ignition and a John Meany Big Stuff III ECU. Even the cooling system is all custom fabricated with a Meziere water pump with NASCAR-type XRP HS790 hoses and features special feeder lines to cool head hot spots.

So Grozich’s ’62 Biscayne is a complex and super powerful street beast with a host of suberb custom touches. I guess we should have expected nothing less from master craftsman Troy Trepanier!

HIGHLIGHTS

• Huge Billet Specialties rims
• Sensational stance
• Fabricated rear suspension
• Massive Baer brake package
• Integrated rear spoiler
• Body-huggin’ front and rear bumpers
• Twist the right taillight and the boot opens!
• Crazy smooth custom inner guards
• Genuine buffalo suede trim
• Crazy overlayed Auto Meter gauges
• Work-of-art turbo system
• Cool Bob Thrash graphics

GLEN GROZICH
1962 CHEVROLET BISCAYNE