Photo: Karen Meier/Facebook Marketplace
Chevrolet Bel Airs built from 1955 to 1957 are quite valuable nowadays. They can fetch well in excess of $50,000 in restored and restomod forms. But they didn't cost much a few decades ago, so many of them got butchered and scrapped. And horrifyingly enough, at least one 1957 Bel Air was converted into a shorty.
This Bel Air used to be a four-door model, but, at some point in its life, someone removed the rear doors, shortened the roof and the wheelbase, and welded the remaining sections together. The end result is a Bel Air shorty, an idea that could send Tri-Five enthusiasts to the lunatic asylum.
Listed for sale via Facebook Marketplace in Walker, Iowa, this Bel Air shorty project is far from completed. The shortened body isn't its only problem. It also looks like a barn find, with much of its body covered in rust. Various elements are missing and the original V8 engine is no longer under the hood.
The seller purchased the vehicle in its current state back in 2019. The conversion was performed sometime in the 1970s and the state of the car suggests that it hasn't been cared for since then. This piece of information also explains why someone butchered the most beautiful Chevy of the 1950s: the Bel Air wasn't very valuable in the 1970s.
The project car was purchased with a 5.7-liter V8 engine and a four-speed manual transmission. The mill is not the original one, as the Bel Air wasn't available with V8s bigger than 4.6 liters. The four-speed transmission has been removed and it's not offered with the car.
The interior doesn't look very good either. A lot of parts are missing and most of the original elements that are still in there need to be restored.
At $3,000, it's probably the cheapest 1957 Bel Air out there, but does this project have a future? Well, restoring it to its original specification is out of the question. It would simply cost too much. Restoring it as a shorty could be fun. I mean, it will never be as valuable as a full-length Bel Air, but it would definitely get a lot of attention at car events.
The second and coolest scenario I can think of is turning this shorty into a dragster. The shortening process removed a notable amount of weight from the car, so a properly tuned V8 would turn this mutilated Bel Air into a fast, albeit funny looking, quarter-mile slingshot. Perhaps the wheelbase is now much too short for brutal take offs, but a wheelie bar might help.
What do you think? Should this Bel Air be restored as a shorty or would you rather have it scrapped so we no longer have to look at its mangled body?
Listed for sale via Facebook Marketplace in Walker, Iowa, this Bel Air shorty project is far from completed. The shortened body isn't its only problem. It also looks like a barn find, with much of its body covered in rust. Various elements are missing and the original V8 engine is no longer under the hood.
The seller purchased the vehicle in its current state back in 2019. The conversion was performed sometime in the 1970s and the state of the car suggests that it hasn't been cared for since then. This piece of information also explains why someone butchered the most beautiful Chevy of the 1950s: the Bel Air wasn't very valuable in the 1970s.
The project car was purchased with a 5.7-liter V8 engine and a four-speed manual transmission. The mill is not the original one, as the Bel Air wasn't available with V8s bigger than 4.6 liters. The four-speed transmission has been removed and it's not offered with the car.
The interior doesn't look very good either. A lot of parts are missing and most of the original elements that are still in there need to be restored.
At $3,000, it's probably the cheapest 1957 Bel Air out there, but does this project have a future? Well, restoring it to its original specification is out of the question. It would simply cost too much. Restoring it as a shorty could be fun. I mean, it will never be as valuable as a full-length Bel Air, but it would definitely get a lot of attention at car events.
The second and coolest scenario I can think of is turning this shorty into a dragster. The shortening process removed a notable amount of weight from the car, so a properly tuned V8 would turn this mutilated Bel Air into a fast, albeit funny looking, quarter-mile slingshot. Perhaps the wheelbase is now much too short for brutal take offs, but a wheelie bar might help.
What do you think? Should this Bel Air be restored as a shorty or would you rather have it scrapped so we no longer have to look at its mangled body?
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