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Words: John Gunnell
Van Heck lived in southwestern Illinois. He was into drag racing and drove a ’55 Chevy gasser, which he hauled on the back of a color-matched Chevy 4400 ramp truck that was nicely decked out and as sharp as the jacked Bel Air hardtop it carried around.
That’s right. Heck liked the Bel Air hardtop with the white insert on its rear fender chrome moldings. His car was also built better than many dragsters with chrome-plated chassis parts. He was as much a showman as a racer. This was reflected in the incredible detailing that he had carried out on both the car and the truck that hauled it.
The car was built into a racing car in 1968. Heck campaigned it until 1976. He was a known and popular driver, and the Chevy could do the quarter mile in the low 10 seconds bracket. It raced for nearly nine years with “Mr. Chevy” lettered on its flanks. The same name also appeared on the truck’s doors.
Both vehicles were painted in a shiny, metallic gold color, and the car carried stickers from a lot of racing equipment companies like Isky Cams, Hooker Headers, Moon Equipment, Stewart-Warner, Hurst Shifters and Firestone Tires. The truck’s cab interior was done in diamond tuft off white and gold vinyl. It had a matching two-tone dashboard and a white steering mast and steering wheel.
One fateful day in 1976, Heck broke one of the car’s universal joints while racing at the track. It actually flew off with great force and went right through the car’s rocker panel. Heck loaded the ’55 Chevy onto the truck and headed home. During that trip, the truck was hit by a drunk driver’s car and damaged.
Luckily, the ’55 Chevy was not damaged by the accident. If you look it over very carefully you can see signs of the hole that was opened when the U-joint flew through the quarter panel. Other than that, the car looks just like it did in its racing days. The truck, however, was damaged in the crash, which took the wind out of Heck’s sails. After that, he parked his rig and never drove it again.
When Heck passed away in 2006, a man named Larry Frees became the new owner of both the car and the still damaged truck. Frees cleaned up the car and returned it to the condition it was in the last day that it was raced. All of the parts on the Chevy are just as they looked in 1976. Even the 38-year-old Firestone tires that were on the car when the racing stopped remained exactly where they were.
As far as the Chevy 4400 series truck went, Larry Frees fixed the accident damage and did a cosmetic restoration. He performed a lot of the restoration work and had the V8 Speed & Resto Shop (www.v8speedshop.com) of Red Bud, Ill. do the sheet metal and paint. Soon, the truck was ready for the road again.
The truck has the 235-cid in-line six under its hood, but a few speed parts have been added. Russ Schliecher, who had stitched up the diamond pattern upholstery in 1968, redid the seat. In the same fashion, Jack Irwin redid the lettering on the car, just the way he had in 1968. Other people helped, too. Then, in June of 2014, Mr. Chevy was loaded on the back of the truck for the first time in 38 years.
When he saw the matching car and truck, Bob Ashton—the manager of the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals (www.mcacn.com)—knew that he had to have them at his 2015 show; that’s where Frees - who’s becoming known as Mr. Chevy himself - picked up a nice award for his efforts to preserve racing history.
