Fleet Street

Building one rare chevy commercial vehicle into a tough streeter wasn’t enough for reece christensen; now he’s back with this bitchin’ ’59 apache fleetside

- Iain Kelly

Partners of car fiends who not only tolerate but actually encourage project car builds are surely the rarest and most sacred creatures in all the street machining world. Having someone who understands the roughed-up hands, financial burdens, long hours in the shed and unending frustrations that project vehicles deliver can make the whole process so much easier.

Melbourne’s Reece Christensen can attest to this. Having previously built an astounding 1960 Chevrolet Biscayne sedan-delivery, Reece wasn’t exactly racing out to get his teeth into another fullbore, old-school project. It was actually his wife, Susan, who kicked off the build of this epic ’59 Chevy Apache fleetside.

“We were on holidays and saw one go past, and my wife said she wished that I built one, so I took it and ran with it,” Reece recalls. “I jumped online straight away and started looking.

“I searched everywhere for a fleetside but couldn’t find one. I found this ’59 in Vegas that a guy had for 20 years but never finished, which had a stepside tub. The truck was really good – probably 99 per cent rust-free, even in the areas they always rot like the seams and cab corners.

“I found the fleetside tub in Canada, from a guy with a mint one-owner fleetside truck he was going to put a stepside tub on,” Reece continues. “Most of the tubs I had come across were irreparable, so I pulled the trigger and paid what he wanted.”