Supercharged LS7-Powered Pro Touring 1957 Chevy Bel Air
Supercharged LS7-Powered Pro Touring 1957 Chevy Bel Air
All right, who’s the genius that thought yellow paint and brown wheels was a good combination? Colors like Hugger Orange and LeMans Blue are legendary for all the right reasons. Butternut Yellow? Not so much. “You don’t run to it or run away from it,” car owner Sonny Freeman laughs, “but the color has been a big part of the fun we have with the car.” Regardless of how much you hate yellow, once you give the Tri-Five’s mean stance, clean lines, and understated elegance a good once-over, it’s hard not to like it. After the supercharged LS7 fires up and barks out the MagnaFlow pipes, you’re suddenly in love with a car you thought you’d hate. And that bit of trickery, friends, is rather genius.
Like the short guy at the party that wows the ladies with his electric personality or—more likely—a big bank account, Sonny’s ’57 Chevy slowly wins people over right up to the point when they realize they’re head-over-heels in love. “When people think of yellow cars, they usually imagine a high-impact yellow or baby-poop yellow,” Sonny jokes. “In all the events we’ve been going to the last seven or eight years, I noticed that over half the Tri-Fives out there are black or red. I just wanted to do something different. Axalta worked closely with us for the color selection. They call it ‘Butter Yellow,’ which is very close to the original Chevy color.”
For Sonny, building the ultimate Pro Touring ’57 Chevy marks a journey that started as a teenager. After many years lusting over Corvettes as a kid—then building many high-profile C1 and mid-year Vettes as he became more established in his career—Sonny felt like it was finally time to come full-circle and start another Tri-Five project. “Corvettes are what really got me into cars. I’ve always been a big Western fan, and I loved watchingBonanzaback in the early ’60s,” Sonny reminisces. “During the first episode each season, they cut the show short five minutes to show all the new Chevy models that were coming out the next year. The last car they showed was a Corvette, and I knew right then that I had to have one. When I was 8 years old, I saw my first Corvette in real life. It was a white 1954 C1. My first thought was ‘Wow, that’s a real Corvette.’ My second thought was ‘Wow, that guy must have a lot of money.’”
Once Sonny turned 16, he realized that his dream of owning a Corvette would have to wait. “I knew that I couldn’t afford a Corvette so I got a 1957 Bel Air. I thought that if I couldn’t own a 1957 Chevy, the Lord was going to come down and take me,” Sonny laughs. “I put a solid-lifter motor and two four-barrels on it, then drag raced it in C/Modified Production. Every time I had an eye for a new car, I had to sell what I had to get it. I put the ’57 back to stock to sell it, and as soon as I fired it back up my uncle came by that night. We decided to take it on a drive, ended up getting into a race with a GTO and blew the motor! We had to run down to the junkyard to buy a new motor. It’s amazing how when you get the car bug, it’s a life-changing experience.”
