'47 Stylemaster

What looks like granny’s family cruiser is really a hardcore four door hot rod...

The tale of this remarkable Chevy Stylemaster is an interesting read, penned by the vehicle’s owner, Tony Morrison. In the paragraphs below you will learn about Tony’s 18 year project and how it all came together, but he left out nearly all of the technical aspects of the car, so we will add them on at the end. Enjoy!

“My name is Tony Morrison and I own this beautiful piece of machinery, my Australian-built 1947 Chevrolet Stylemaster sedan. This whole project started with my brother-in-law acquiring two cars, one a sedan, the other a ute from Clematis near Emerald, Victoria. The deal was that all the parts had to go in one hit, not in dribs and drabs, so we hired a couple of trailers and off we went to get these cars for free. Well what a saga! It took us most of the day to get these cars out from where they had sat for an eternity, eight hours later we were on our way home.

Then the fun really started, as these cars are very hard to find parts for nowadays, there were a lot of family drives as dad looked for parts. Some parts were found in Ballarat, Bendigo, Kyabram and Cooma (NSW) right on top of the Snowy Mountains.

I also bought and sold cars to get the best parts that I could, as some of the jewellery is so hard to find. It took me six years to find the correct Holden badge for the passenger front door. I think I have wrecked out twelve cars in total to get the correct parts that I needed.

The hardest thing about this build was finding the parts, as Australian built cars are not the same as our USA friends, where everything is available in reproduction now. If I had built an American car it would have taken two years instead of eighteen. This car started out as a rolling chassis with four doors and that was it.