It’s difficult to name a more iconic example of American classic car culture than a tri-five Chevy – especially a red ’57 Bel Air Sport Coupe. For Queensland’s Mike Crooks, having a bitchin’, super-clean ’57 in which to cruise the glittering Gold Coast streets was a long-held dream, and 20 years ago, he thought he was on his way when he bought a ’57 Sport Coupe out of Adelaide.

First published in the April 2026 issue of Street Machine

However, the two-door hardtop wasn’t in a state to be any kind of viable project, so it quickly became a dust-collector in a long-forgotten shed. It was only after the Bel Air had spent nearly 15 years in the naughty corner that Mike finally mentioned to Pat O’Shea, owner of gun car crafters Pat’s Pro Restos, that he wanted to do something with the car.

“Mike wanted something nice, but he wanted to be able to jump in and use it any time he felt like it,” says Pat. Looking at the completed car, the Pat’s Pro Restos crew have certainly delivered that to Mike, but it was a long road.

“It was a basket case,” Pat recalls. “It wasn’t complete; it was just a body, and it had sat in the back shed for years – I used to walk past it and would feel sorry for the bloke taking that job on! Mike chose the Brandywine paint colour and the Schott wheels, but he left everything else up to us.”

After dragging what was left of the pillarless coupe into the PPR shed, Pat and his team gave it a thorough appraisal, which quickly revealed the size of the job ahead. While there aren’t many cars from the 50s that don’t need significant metalwork as part of a ground-up build, Pat and his team would have their work cut out for them with this particular Chevy.

“We replaced the quarter panels, changed the roof skin, did the floors, and added new panels like the bonnet, guards and boot; basically we replaced 80 per cent of the sheet metal,” says Pat. “We then fitted up the Art Morrison chassis and finished converting the car to right-hand drive, as we ordered the new frame with RHD steering.”

The Art Morrison GT Sport chassis that Mike’s ’57 now sports was delivered as a ready-to-roll, perimeter-frame unit. This gave the car brand-new Strange Engineering coil-over suspension, rack-and-pinion steering, burly sway-bars, Wilwood disc brakes at all four corners, an AME four-link rear end, built nine-inch diff, and greatly improved stiffness and handling.

Once the grinders and welders had been put away, the Pat’s Pro Restos team broke out the body-working tools, smoothing the Chev’s sleek lines before laying down a rich coat of sumptuous House of Kolor Brandywine red. With freshly chromed and polished brightwork, the Bel Air cuts a stunning figure.

Although the ‘Fuellie’ V8 mills that ’57s packed from the factory produced a claimed 1hp for each of their 283 cubic inches, they’re incredibly rare these days, and finicky to maintain. And if we’re brutally honest, 283 horses in a big land yacht like a Bel Air leaves the mustard decidedly uncut.

Pat and the team cured this with modern smarts in the form of a 6.2-litre LS3. This is the Chevrolet Performance ‘Hot Cam’ engine that makes 525hp thanks to a healthy, circuit-tuned 226°/236°/110° bumpstick.

The choice of an LS3 meant that the PPR team could use a pre-tuned ECU and drive-by-wire throttle pedal package from Chevy Performance, greatly simplifying the tuning and final fit-out of the car. With an upgraded torque converter, also from Chevy Performance, the smooth-shifting 6L80E six-speed auto will provide plenty of smooth, reliable thrills on Queensland roads.

The big shoebox Chevy doesn’t only wow on the street, however; it also more than holds its own in an elite show hall. On debut at the 2025 Cairns Show Auto Spectacular, it won Top Paint, Top Interior, Top Undercarriage, spots in the Top 10 and the Spectacular 7, Car of Show and Grand Champion. And at the same year’s Yamba Rod Run, it took out Top Paint and Top American.

“Mike always wanted an iconic, chrome-laden, well-finished car,” says Pat. “He didn’t really look at it while I was building it, but then once it was right near the end and he could get a sense of what the finished machine was going to look like, he started coming around more. He loved it; he is absolutely stoked. He was doing laps of the Gold Coast flat-out over Christmas.”

With the Chev having had such a journey from sad, semi-abandoned shell to the candy-covered stunner it is today, we can totally understand Mike using the car at every opportunity. You’d need a telehandler to get us out of such an epic cruiser!

MIKE CROOKS
1957 CHEVROLET BEL AIR SPORT COUPE

THANKS
Pat O’Shea and the whole Pat’s Pro Restos team; my friends and family.