Member: Don Way

Car: 1959 El Camino

I have a 1960 El Camino that is completely in need of a rebuild (See In the Garage Feature) and I had shown the project to a friend and he mentioned that he had a brother in Texas who built a ‘59 from 7 cars that he had purchased. I thought that was neat and since he traveled there every year to vacation and to attend the Good Guys event I asked him to get some pictures and a list of any spare parts his brother wanted to sell.

I had completely forgotten that conversation when I received an email from him in Oct 2006 poking fun at me while identifying some enclosed pictures as my next purchase. The pictures were of a gorgeous ‘59 and when I called him up to laugh he explained that his brother had decided to sell the car because of too many competing projects. It took a short conversation with his brother to understand that I could purchase this car for much less than the cost I would have to invest in the ’60. For me, it was an easy decision to purchase and import the ’59 Elky into Canada.

The car has a 350/375hp small block with a tri power set up with fender well headers wrapped in insulating tape (Nostalgic), a T10 4 speed, and 9 inch Ford rear end. The interior is White leather with a custom console, Dakota digital dash, electric windows and locks, air conditioning, Kenwood deck with remote CD changer; everything inside the interior is new. The truck rides on 15 inch real wire wheels from Cragar. The car went through 3 complete body work projects with paint until the owner was satisfied and it is very well done in 2001 Cadillac metallic red.

I shipped the car to Washington using Passport FedEx trucking who did a great job and the exporting and importing over the US / Canada border was done using my car trailer. There were no problems and I know that I’d use that carrier and go through the process again; really pretty simple.

I am presently doing some final bug fixes before I have the car provincially inspected and insured here in BC.

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