The Street Outlaws star breathes new life and purpose into an unwanted Chevy 210.
Jeff Lutz has always loved the 1957 Chevy Bel Air. As a young guy delivering newspapers, he would lust after a neighbor’s Bel Air on his route, always telling himself he would one day own one of the most iconic American cars in history. Adding to the lust was Levi Strauss sticking HOT ROD’s Project X in their advertising campaigns at that time, and of course Lutz was a fan of the cult-classic film The Hollywood Knights, featuring the famous yellow ’57 Chevy. Ubiquitous in the custom car scene since its release, too, it’s no surprise young Jeff was enamored with the Chevy Bel Air, but he never sold enough papers to buy one.
It was natural that as he became a success, the two-time HOT ROD Drag Week champion and Street Outlaws star would make his dreams come true and acquire a 1957 Chevy Bel Air of his own—a couple of them over the years, in fact. Jeff Lutz has run a 1957 Bel Air four out of the eight times he’s competed at Drag Week, securing his 2014 overall win with the 2,500-hp black “Evil Twin” build (his son Jeffery piloted another black ’57 Bel Air that year, the “Good Twin”). “The ’57 Chevy kinda made me famous. It was a dream car to me when I was 12 years old, and it’s still a passion to me now. I guess I’ll take it to my grave,” Lutz told us over a phone call.
Street Outlaws’ Jeff Lutz Needed a New Car
It was tragic news when Lutz crashed his yellow ’57 Chevy race car while filming for Street Outlaws in May 2021, but thankfully the Pennsylvania race car builder and drag racer made a quick and full recovery—a testament to the importance of safety equipment. It wasn’t long before Lutz announced he would be building a new 1957 Bel Air race car (the PRI Show in December 2021), but before the new race car could be finished, the itch to buy another Bel Air struck.
At 52 years old, Jeff Lutz has his eye on the future. The Street Outlaws universe of shows is more popular than ever, but the filming schedule is brutal. Lutz has wanted to return to HOT ROD Drag Week since 2017, but his filming schedule hasn’t allowed it. After the crash in 2021, the slower things in life are starting to take more importance as well, like taking the grandkids for ice cream on a Sunday, or just enjoying a nice cruise with his wife behind the wheel.
Dennis MacPherson of DMC Racing was contracted to build the replacement ’57 Bel Air race car, and while on his way to Massachusetts to get fitted for seat and pedal placement, Lutz found another car on Facebook. A detour to Delaware unveiled a 1957 Chevy 210 that had only clocked 138,000 miles on the original 283 small-block V-8 and Powerglide combo. The interior was still intact and usable, and despite the usual Northeast car cancer (rust), the body was straight enough. The family that owned it added power brakes and A/C, but simply lost interest in the project and wanted to move on. The owners of the Delaware 210 were excited to learn that the caller on their car was in fact Jeff Lutz, and a deal was quickly struck.
Unwanted 1957 Chevy 210 Gets New Life as 2,000-HP Bel Air
Television production has a way of glorifying car builds—injecting artificial drama and manufacturing deadlines to create a big payoff at the end of the show, when the car works perfectly and the customer is happy—but that’s not reality, kids. Overhaulin’s dirty secret was that at the end of the week, the mark wouldn’t actually get their car back. Foose’s crew held onto them for months on some occasions, making sure they were properly sorted and driveable. Jeff Lutz doesn’t have months to build cars, though; his filming and racing schedule is just too tight. If Jeff wanted to drive his new daily driver in 2022 at all, he had about a month to get it done.
With such a compact build schedule, sending the body off to Jeff Thompson (one of Lutz’s childhood friends and the guy who paints all of his cars) at Pro 1 Automotive in Butler, Pennsylvania, was a no-brainer. The black paint on the Chevy 210 was rough, and the car needed a new rear quarter-panel and both front fenders, among other issues. Thompson had his work cut out for him, but with the body at Pro 1, Jeffrey couldn’t start on the chassis modifications.
Within days of bringing home the new 210, another 1957 Chevy chassis was found in Texas that had already been stripped of rust and crud and fitted with new stainless-steel brake lines for a stalled project. It was time for Jeffery to start hustling. A frame-stiffening kit from Summit Racing was welded on, and the rear framerails were narrowed and notched for mini-tubs. A trussed frame gantry plate and gusseting plates stiffened up the twisting moment around the rear axle. The inboard-mounted spring perches (stock units swapped from outside the rails) were gusseted as well, and the new Calvert Mono-Leaf Springs with CalTracs bars ride in custom-fabricated slides with plenty of beefcake to handle hard launches.
Photos courtesy of Richard Rowe