THIS IS THE STORY OF MY 1958 CHEVY APACHE
Owner: Mark Schroeter
Mark Schroeter was never a big Old School Pick-up fan until he got his hands on his first Chevy 1957 Pickup. After that, he was hooked for life. Mark loved his 57 Pickup. It had become part of the family so it was very sad when Mark got an offer he couldn’t refuse and let the truck go. His family was so sad they ended up getting it spray-painted on a wall in Mark’s man cave. The search was on once again for a new project.
A year later Mark came across a great deal on a rusted-out cab with parts included from the US. He saw this as an opportunity to build up his dream Chevy from scratch. My son Devon and I decided to make this a passion project from the engine to the colour. Our first idea steered towards a rusted-out sleeper, which would be used as an everyday car, without fussing over it too much. However, after it came back from sandblasting, it was in much better condition than anticipated. Therefore it made us change our mind to produce a show-quality retro truck.
To start with, the chassis was a complete rebuild from scratch. We installed a Jag suspension with fully adjustable coil overs and discs all around. The Jag suspension came with the bought shell and the Jag for me was the most comfortable ride there is. The motor is a standard old-school 350 Chevy motor with dress-up kit and a T3 auto box. The motor came from a friend who had it rebuilt. The exhausts were fully custom-made with headers.
NS: Bodyworks completed the paintwork and we were fortunate that they were extremely fussy about the end product they produced. We decided on a two-tone colour which was specially mixed with pearl to highlight the lines of the vehicle. We used a spin-off of the 50th Porsche anniversary colour.
All the parts on the vehicle were imported from the US and we chromed the whole bottom of the car to keep it in pristine condition, this included the badges. Wood decking was used on the back bin and cleaned it off nicely.
For the interior, we wanted the old-school look. Therefore we kept it plain and original. It was done with a leather upholstered bench seat, decoder clocks, and a thick carpet that is fully soundproof with hidden sound. The solid wood steering wheel was imported from the US, to flatter the specific look we wanted to achieve.
Wheels are 15-inch Detroit steelies that I got from MK1 Wheels. Running 10J’s at the back and 8J’s at the front. Wrapped in a set of Hercules tyres, running on 295’s at the back and 255’s at the front.
We were fortunate that everything fell into place and the only real challenges we faced were a broken windscreen when we tried to fit it. We had to scramble to find a replacement windscreen to finalise the build. Other than that we were fortunate that all went smoothly. It took over two years to build, as we wanted to take our time and we had a very fussy builder (who wishes to remain anonymous). He believes in old-school cool and keeping things with the originality of the vehicle.
The outcome we have is a vehicle that is a dream car to drive and it has the looks of old-school with the reliability of a new vehicle.
