1948 CHEVROLET PICKUP

Tony Hubbard has always been into cars and had some of his own from as young as 13. He started a panel beater/fabricator apprenticeship at 15 while living in Euroa but halfway through his apprenticeship, Tony moved to Melbourne. His first streetcar was an FJ Holden that was low to the ground, painted red, had a roll pan fitted and later on he raced speedway, go karts and has been involved in motor racing for 55 years. He’s still got a Camaro that he campaigns in the historic touring car series.

- AL O'TOOLE

Tony learnt engineering and how to do machining during a short stint in the army. He’s built a lot of race cars over the years starting with sports sedans with tubular chassis and three or four of them are still out there running today. He then went from sports sedans to historic touring cars, retired from mainstream work at his body repair shop in Seymour about 12 years ago and now has a nice little workshop at his home on the edge of town. When he retired he got a bit restless, not much was happening, so he built a couple of cars then decided to give this street rodding thing a go with a 1941 Chev pickup and a 1928 Chev pickup. A couple more race cars for customers followed and Tony did a bit of fabricationa work for customers just to avoid the boredom of retirement. This ended up becoming T&G Racecar Engineering but is tapering right off now as Tony’s interest in hot rodding and muscle cars evolves.

“I was looking around to see what to build and ended up finding this 1948 Chevy amongst some old trucks in a collector’s paddock in Nagambie. Turns out it had belonged to a local carrier since new. It was a four-ton truck but I just wanted the body. The truck was complete but it had been sitting for a very long time.”

A 2004 Holden Statesman was purchased to use as a donor car for the project and has provided everything from the Gen III V8 engine and four-speed auto transmission to the IRS rear end, bucket seats, instruments, wiring loom, steering column and computers. Even the air conditioning, power steering and cruise control from the Holden went into this Chevy, making it a very nice car to drive, and I can attest to it being very comfortable to ride in.