My Favorite Ride: Flashy? Just a little bit

You can see and hear Dale Hollers' Chevrolet coming down the road. 

He is the owner of a 1939 Chevy hot rod with a distinctive white, red, orange and yellow paint scheme that catches the eye. The interior resembles a cockpit, with race car safety belts and a roll bar. The rear tires are 22 inches wide.

Under the hood is a 502-cubic-inch fuel-injected engine with embellishments and it was made for racing. When asked about the horsepower, Hollers smiled and said he wasn't sure what it is. 

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He bought the car last winter in Baltimore, driving there and back in heavy snow and blizzard conditions hauling a 28-foot enclosed trailer for the car.  "It was so bad, all the truck stops were closed," Hollers recalled.

The man who transformed the old car into a racing machine, crafting that custom chassis and those fat front fenders, also built street rods with supercharged engines. This car, built in 2009, was his last. Hollers said the man died before fulfilling a plan to tour the country in the Chevy with his wife.

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Hollers had been looking for a car like this one since he sold a similar vehicle a few years ago. "I wish I'd never got rid of that car, and I'd been nosing around looking for another one like it."

He traded a 1954 "fully blown" Studebaker street rod he had for two years in order to buy this Chevy he longed for. 

One he got the car back to Bloomington, the engine needed some work. So with help from his sister-in-law, Charlene Lynch, also known as Pebbles, and also as Charlie, Hollers took the engine apart, added a new cam, lifters and other components, then put it all back together.

They finished the project a few weeks ago. "We were pretty ecstatic when it started," said Lynch, whose sister has been married to Hollers 57 years.

"I'm small enough that I can crawl under there and take the oil pan off," she said.

"Oh no, she does a lot more than that," Hollers responded. He said that half a century ago, they would drag race on the backroads. Nowadays, Lynch said, she is likely to grab something to hang onto when the car starts to speed up.

Contact reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com, 812-331-4362 or 812-318-5967