The Fun Is Over When You Turn the Motor Off

            “The fun’s over when you turn the motor off,” said Rick Hayes, talking about his 1948 Chevy Fleetmaster two door sedan. There was a glimmer in his eye as he sat at the car show in Amelia that said he would rather be driving his car.

            “I probably take it out for a drive at least once a week,” he said. “Taking it on vacation is the most fun. I love to be on the road. Going to the Smokies is a blast.” He regularly makes that trip in order to take part in the Shades of the Past car show, often driving extended stretches off the interstate

            “I always liked 40s Fords and Chevys. I like that look they have,” Rick said, explaining why we bought his ’48 Fleetmaster.

            When he bought it, he said, the car was in really bad shape. “It was rusted all the way around the body. I had to put panels on everywhere,” he added. “The body and rust repair were the hardest things to do. There was a lot of cutting and welding.”

            In fact, in order to get the car to look the way it currently does Rick had to do a complete frame up restoration that took a couple of years.

            “I did the interior over this past winter and that took a couple of months,” he said.

            The car, which he shows “a fair amount” took a good deal of imagination to get running. Rick used a Chevy Nova read end on the car and a Mustang II front end.

            “It has a 350 Crate motor that has 300 horses,” Rick said. Though he isn’t sure exactly how fast the car will go, based on his personal experience he guesses somewhere between 120 and 130 miles per hour.

            So driving a car that looks and runs like this it’s little wonder that Rick prefers driving this beauty to doing just about anything else. It’s easy to see that the fun is over when you turn off the motor.