Paronis' Pickup

Making Metalflake great again...

Road Agents Car Club member, Andrew Paronis is the proud owner of this neat little sixties-inspired street rod. Purchased in April 2017 as a mocked up basket case, Andrew spent 14 months building this car, completing the job in June last year. This cool closed cab pickup is not Andrew’s first hot rod or even his first hot car of any sort, but it is the first one to satisfy his love for traditional hot rod show cars.

“Where I lived most guys were in the car scene with mainly Aussie muscle cars. I started with a VF Valiant when I was 17 and a first-year apprentice mechanic. From then I went on to own an HR Holden ute, then tried a V8 conversion on an MK2 Zephyr, but that didn’t work out so I transplanted the running gear into an XM Falcon, which was a success. The hot rod bug had bitten at some point, I don’t know when or how, but the virus had taken over. I had fallen for the show rods of the ’60s, to me, they were just next level cool! The first venture to curing my affliction was a 1937 Chev sloper running a V8, auto and LSD diff that I tried to replicate as a ’60s car. I then went into a 1941 DeSoto coupe but I still needed the right car to do a proper ’60s hot rod build.

About this time, fellow club member, Malcom Galea had mocked up a 1928 Ford pickup with a slight chop and a great rake. When I saw it I knew that was the car for me! I told Mal if he ever decided to sell the pickup unfinished, to let me know. Sure enough, the call came, the deal was done and the work had begun. First, I wanted to keep the flatty dressed up, looking neat and exposed. I picked a colour, it had to be brown and it had to have metal flake. When it was done and gleaming I felt it was still lacking that one last piece to put it back to 1964, the answer lay in the hubcaps, which are 1955 Mercury to be exact.”