El Cut - Mino

Alloway’s Whacked Four Rusty ’59 El Caminos to Make This One

- John Gilbert

There comes a time when even a legendary customizer will go against his best instincts and then look back with regret. Such was the case for Bobby Alloway of Alloway’s Hot Rod Shop in Louisville, Tennessee, and the ’59 Chevy El Camino he built for himself.

The saga starts out with Bobby not wanting to cut up his super cherry unmolested ’59 El Camino with only 39,000 original miles on it, and perhaps that was his first mistake; not starting out with the best example he could find. Instead Alloway’s rounded up four of the mangiest rusty ’59 El Caminos they could find and then identified one redeeming area of good metal on each and grafted it all together.

The only silver lining to this part of our story was during the course of re-assimilating the body panels, the naturally bloated bulginess of a ’59 El Camino’s sides were flattened into a perfect surface down the fenders, doors, and bed sides, ultimately ready to go into black paint. Bobby Alloway and Scotty Troutman sprayed the ’59 Alloway Black, a proprietary color formulated using PPG 9700 Deltron black. In fact every bit of its substrate materials from the bare metal up to the finish coats were done using PPG products.

More heavy metalwork; inside the bed is where almost every ’59 El Camino in existence is rusted out, and Bobby’s compilation of four examples was the rustiest. The entire bed floor was cut out and replaced with a custom-fabricated steel bed floor from Customs by Jimmy of St. Louis, Missouri. Bobby told STREET RODDER when they received the new bed from Jimmy it dropped right in place and welded up perfectly.