Poffenberger's Pearl

Three Amigos search for The perfect Chevelle

- John Gilbert

You meet the nicest people at custom car shows. The 2016 Car Craft Summer Nationals was the first time out for Denis Poffenberger and his 1967 SS396 Chevelle, and it was a very enjoyable debut for a successful project that took only 18 months to complete.

“I was at the Car Craft Summer Nationals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, mid-July 2016 and met the nicest family from Cudahy, Wisconsin,” recalls Denis. “Mike Perkins and his three sons, with their wives took me in. They helped me get registered, parked, and roped off for the event. The Perkins family had a great setup; it included a tent, tables, chairs, and lots of delicious grilled brats, burgers, and terrific side dishes. On Sunday, I learned my Chevelle was a top award winner for the event and Robert McGaffn, a nationally renowned photographer from Super Chevy magazine, wanted to shoot my car for a feature.”

The search for Denis’ ’67 SS396 started with a road trip in 2015 to St. Louis, Missouri, with his two good friends Kevin Kessler and Byron Olson. The trio scoured the region known to be good muscle car hunting grounds and came up with nothing until the very end of the day at their last stop: Classic Car Studio.

Classic Car Studio is housed in a 40,000-square-foot behemoth of a building with a showroom in the front and full restoration facilities in the back. The three friends parked in the alley and knocked on the rear door to be let in. Denis didn’t even make it to the showroom floor before he spotted the car of his dreams sitting in the shop, but it was a diamond in the rough, so to speak. Not that rough really, just in primer. Everything short of repainting the ’67 SS396 back to camera ready condition had been completed.