Not Your Father's Shoebox

Pro Rides’ 1,500HP 1955 Chevrolet 210.

- Phillip Thomas

Some folks believe eye for detail is a subject of quantity, but that’s a misconception. An eye for detail sees the reason behind going to the extremes or stopping at the subtleties. Pro Rides’ Denny Terzich has that eye, and it shows on his 1955 Chevrolet 210, dubbed “X-BOX.”

No video games to be found here, just 2 tons of steel, aluminum, and horsepower. Terzich pulled from his generational cohorts and the Tri-Five “shoebox” nickname for the build’s title. The car was Pro Rides’ biggest undertaking yet, with more than 150 modifications to the venerable Tri-Five shape. “We actually wanted to bring the car out to Drag Week™ a year or two earlier than we did,” Terzich explained. Readers will recognize Pro Rides for building “Sick Seconds” for Drag Week™ 2006 (winning overall in 2007), which later became Tom Bailey’s own Drag Week™ missile. “But each year you have to step it up, so we kept revising it, and then you finally get to a point where you’re like, ‘we’ve got to stop,’ because you keep changing things and keep chasing the perfect build.” To get there, Terzich assembled a team of friends and builders in the Pennsylvania area to bring X-BOX to life.

Everything started with concept renderings by Brian Stupski of Problem Child Kustoms, who laid out the complex modifications made to the 1955 Chevy 210—which Terzich swears came out of a lake. With only the roof and a portion of the rear quarters deemed usable, the rusty shoebox was a blank canvas for Stupski’s pen. “For the major body changes, Brian really helped us on the drawings; the car was almost built to spec to his renderings from five years ago,” Terzich said.