Pretty simple. I was always into old cars, and always into customs.
My father, Charlie Pinto, was always into old cars and customizing in the 40s, 50s and 60s. In 1968, he took a ’66 Mustang 2+2 Fastback and did so many mods on it, it was damn near unrecognizable. He chopped out a cabriolet top, mounted ’63 Imperial headlights on the front, and ’59 Caddy tailfins on the back. Then he painted it Corvette Bronze and drove it around for a while. He sold it before I was old enough to know what it was, and this is the only picture of it that exists. (Where the car is I have know idea) I always wanted to do something like it, and over the years I had a ton of old cars but never any lettuce or time or a garage.
I always wanted a car with big fins. By the time I could afford one, I couldn’t afford one anymore. ’50s car price started getting krazy nuts high in the ’90s, so in 2000, when my wife, my father and I moved to Florida, he made the suggestion…
“Why not put fins on the Chevy?”
That simple sentence would turn into years of hard work, time, some money, and a lot of crazy looks from a lot of people!
What led to this sled…
I had a lot of vintage/classic cars over the years. I got to drive some of the coolest, fastest, craziest cars around from when I was a teenager. But I never had the resources to build a real custom or hot rod. I was always more into big luxury cars with big, fast engines than I was into rods; Between 1986 and today I’ve owned seven Cadillacs, three Lincolns, and an Imperial, all vintage. The only time I strayed was when I bought a 2005 Chrysler PT Cruiser GT Turbo convertible, a small car that was necessary to navigate the construction on the Florida highways I drove between ’06 and ’15. Once the construction was done, I jumped into the 1985 Cadillac Seville that’s my everyday car at the time of this writing (2020). Here are some of the cool cars my Dad and I had over the years…
1975 Dunham Coach Superfly Eldorado 
1975 Dunham Coach Superfly Eldorado 
1974 Cadillac Eldorado Convertible 
1974 Cadillac Eldorado Convertible 
2005 PT Cruiser Turbo GT 
1973 Chevy Caprice Mild Custom 
Pimped-out ’75 Buick LeSabre Convertible 
Pimped-out ’75 Buick LeSabre Convertible 
Pimped-out ’75 Buick LeSabre Convertible 
1950 Dodge Meadowbrook 
1956 Buick Century V8 Wagon 
1956 Buick Century “Dragon Wagon” 
Dad’s 1946 Buick Mild Custom 
Dad’s 1948 Buick Mild Custom 
Dad’s 1960s MG Sports Car mild custom 
Dad’s 1950s Metro Van converted into a Camper in the 1970s 
Dad’s 1948 Plymouth 
Dad’s 49 Dodge Wayfarer with custom touches 
1968 Mercury Monterey Convertible 
1989 Cadillac Brougham 
Foxy, my 1985 Cadillac Seville
Years of owning old cars gave me the experience I needed to tackle the custom job on the Chevy. My Dad taught me a lot about mechanical and body work. I grew up in a neighborhood with a half dozen mechanics, all of whom had a hot rod or muscle car. They would always come running when we brought a new vintage car home. Hell, we got cars that hadn’t seen daylight in 15 years running! So I learned a lot. And working on my own cars, I learned the hard way about engines, front-end suspension, transmissions, bodywork, and interiors. I believe my first “great feat” was setting the timing on my ’63 Imperial. I believe my greatest mechanical feat was learning how to tune and program the computerized electronic fuel injection on my 1985 Cadillac Seville HT4100 engine…late 70s solid state technology, still working today. All that…plus learning new things from friends, and from youtube…got me to the point of being able to start hacking away at the Chevy to turn her into something truly unique.