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The Build, The Brotherhood, The Chevelle:
A Reunion 12 Years in the Making

I’ll never forget the first time I saw my Chevelle finished, sitting on the floor at SEMA, and realizing what a small miracle it was that it existed at all. This episode is the story behind that miracle. For the very first time ever, the full crew that built my Chevelle – Jeff Allison (Allison Customs), Kirk Hansen (then National Parts Depot, now our Network Director), Zip Simons (Street Metal Concepts), and Danny Giustino (Muscle Express) – all sat down together in the same room at SEMA 2025. Bernie McPartland, who joined the story later as our producer, was there too. We grabbed some pizzas, wings, a few frosty beverages, and hit “record” on what turned into a 40-minute time capsule of friendship, risk, and faith-in-each-other that I’ve wanted to capture for over a decade.

If you’ve ever dreamed of doing something big that was clearly “beyond you,” this is the episode I made for you. Back in 2011, I had just jumped out of a safe engineering career, started The MuscleCar Place from my basement, and had exactly one thing that really mattered in the garage: my dad’s ’64 Chevelle. It wasn’t a great car. In fact, by the time we got it on a lift, there was basically no car left underneath. But it was my dad’s car – the one link to a family story I didn’t want to lose. Jeff Allison sent an email out of the blue to me and volunteered to build it. Kirk Hansen pitched the show to Rick at NPD when print was a sinking ship. Danny Giustino reached out of the blue to “send a T-shirt” and ended up connecting everybody. Zip Simons and his best friend (and business partner) Don Endinino and his crew took a leap of faith on a high-end paint and body job under an impossibly short deadline. All of them brought more to the table than I deserved…and they did it when there was absolutely no guarantee any of it would work.

In this roundtable, we walk through the entire arc: from that first email from Jeff, to the brutal reality check of how rusty the car really was, to the all-night thrash sessions, to the “this might not make it” phone calls, to the very moment we stood outside the doors at SEMA with a car that wouldn’t start but did somehow make it in. You’ll hear the real behind-the-scenes: wives dragging exhausted husbands in from the shop at 2 a.m., borrowed trucks and sketchy trailers with no ramps, kids riding along on cross-country hauls, and the kind of on-the-fly problem solving that only happens when failure is absolutely not an option. You’ll also hear how this car – and this crazy project – turned into cover features, new clients, new businesses, and in more than one case, literal career re-direction for the guys at the table.

But more than the nuts and bolts, this episode is about what happens when you surround yourself with people who have a heart of gold. These are men who were willing to donate time, talent, sleep, and money on the promise of nothing more than “I’ll put your name out there and we’ll see what happens.” We talk about what it feels like to be upside down on a project financially, why we kept saying “yes” anyway, and how – looking back – the payoff wasn’t just a SEMA car or magazine ink. It was a little family we built around a Chevelle. It was the proof that dreamers do sometimes land the moonshot, as long as they’re not trying to do it alone.

As I say in the show, building my Chevelle is still one of the achievements of a lifetime for me. Not because of the car itself – though I’m proud of it – but because of the people it brought together and the life that’s happened since. If you’ve ever wondered, “Could I really step out and try something non-traditional? Could I really ask for help on a dream that big?” I think this 40 minutes is time you’ll never regret giving. Grab a coffee (or a frosty beverage of your choice), sit back, and enjoy this very special SEMA roundtable with my long-lost Chevelle family.

-Rob Kibbe