Scott Sullivan's 1954 Chevy Masterpiece

Nov 28, 2023

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This car defies description. The longer you look at this '54 Chevy, the more amorphous it becomes. It's not Pro Street, but it does have big tires. It's not Pro Touring, but it does have a six-speed manual and big brakes. And it's most certainly not a custom, yet it offers some classic custom touches that you must search carefully to identify. This ride checks off all of the above, and more.

Scott Sullivan built this car. The HOT ROD faithful will instantly recognize his name. He's someone who has long been associated with cars that set trends and have that magic stance, an indefinable look—as one observer recounted, "As soon as that car rolled into the show, I instantly knew it was a Scott Sullivan car."

Our narrative will take a slightly different approach. This author has known Scott for close to 40 years, and our adventures have been recounted in multiple magazine stories including an epic Pro Street journey in 1988 across the country in his then-new Cheez Whiz 496ci big-block-powered '55 Chevy that he still owns.

Related: The Street Machines of Scott Sullivan

Accomplished car builders are often bestowed with legendary status, and people often attribute superhuman abilities to them, but when we sat down to go over the details of this '54, one thing seemed to loom over the entire discussion: this was not an easy build. In fact, in many ways it was downright painful. Others would have surrendered, hoisted the white flag, admitted defeat, and walked away. Scott persevered and delivered what we have come to expect from him. They say that it's not the destination but rather the journey that is the reward. In this case, the voyage was more like a battle that was both costly and gratifying.

The project began simply. Scott had just been victimized by a customer to the tune of $32,000 and was looking to make some quick money. He bought the '54 sometime back in 2002 with the intent to back half it, add an S-10 front subframe, drop in a drivetrain, and send it down the road. But some internal tug, an appreciation for lines that did not yet exist, prevented its sale. That began the process that Scott admits "went on for way too long."

We thought it would be fun to reveal a few of the inside stories regarding the disasters that befell this car and that cannot now be traced by even the closest inspection. Like a movie that almost kills its star actor, it's the backstage stories that are the most intriguing.

It's that new way of doing something that often causes problems. The Sullivan stance demanded pulling the two-by-three-inch fabricated frame rails five inches up into the body, and that demanded coilover shocks from close friend Brett Voelkel of RideTech. The front suspension also evolved away from stock S-10 notions, ending up with RideTech coil-overs, tubular control arms, and all the other necessary accoutrements.

Scott also desired an interesting drivetrain and commissioned Scoggin-Dickey to build an LS3-based 427ci engine with Holley fuel injection, a Viper-based T-56 six-speed, and a Dyad dual clutch assembly from Centerforce. All that promised power would be connected to a Ford 9-inch rear with 31-spline axles, 4.10 gears, and a limited slip. All of this has traditional markings, but the details reveal where the hidden lessons were learned.

Like his '55 Chevy Cheez Whiz car, there was only about five inches of original frame rail left by the time the two ends met in the middle. This required raising the floor pan and building new panels. That's also classic Sullivan. "Hot rodders are backyard engineers," Scott says, "with an emphasis on 'back yard'. You have to be creative and most of the time, you are successful."

The frustration hatched from the creativity. Scott is one of those guys who enjoys disguising his work. He started by disguising the LS engine to look more like a 409 W-motor with ribbed covers over the coil packs and a custom lifter valley cover milled by his machinist buddy Gary Mount. Scott's good friend Marty Miller was responsible for the overwhelming task of wiring the entire car, especially the EFI system. Marty did much of the troubleshooting and engine tuning too. On top of all that was the challenge of how to make all that wiring disappear. One solution was to use a non-terminated Holley wiring harness for the Holley Dominator EFI. The Dominator decision fell to the author, and looking back, it was a suggestion that added unnecessary complexity and eventually created a few miscues. But that's okay, Scott still takes my calls. A better choice would have been a less complex HP ECU, but that lesson had yet to be learned.

Because the engine had to look like it was born of the Sullivan bloodline, the engine's fuel rails were sent out to be chromed, along with multiple other '54 pieces. As the project came together, and it was time to fire the engine, it failed to start. It took days to discover the Chevrolet factory replacement front-mounted cam sensor harness was improperly wired. A freak of nature. That couldn't possibly happen again, right? With that fixed, the engine still ran poorly.

After discovering clogged fuel injectors and incorrectly positioned fuel filters, the engine remained balky. Two sets of cleaned injectors still didn't solve the problem. Then one day Scott pinged me during lunch from halfway across the country with a short video. The mini-movie revealed his chromed fuel rail dumping a two-inch tall pile of debris into the palm of his hand! The chrome company failed to block off the ends of the rail during the acid etching process to remove the exterior anodizing. The acid corroded the inside of the fuel rails, which were never properly cleaned, and Scott didn't inspect the lines before installing them. That damage devoured weeks of fuel system problem-solving. Once the issue was resolved, the engine ran much better, but now there was a clunking sound emanating from the engine.

The stroker crank was hitting the windage tray. This required pulling the engine back out of the car, which is no small feat maneuvering around those preciously-painted components that you dare not scratch. The windage tray was repaired, the metal shavings were removed, and perhaps now there was light at the end of this tunnel for the long-suffering builder.

Nope, there was more drama to come. The '54 was now painted, the drivetrain was in place and performing decently, so Scott deemed the car ready for its interior. He contacted his friend Larry Sneed and decided to trailer the car to Larry using a borrowed truck and enclosed race car trailer. The load became unstable on the highway, causing Scott to crash and nearly demolish the '54 in the process.

No one was hurt, but the same could not be said for the '54. Scott said, "The passenger door had a beach ball-sized dent, and both front fenders were caved in. The rear of the car was okay, but the damage was nearly overwhelming. I stored it for eight months and never looked at it. Then I brought it back to the shop and studied it for two more weeks while I decided how I was gonna fix it." This project was not going to end in defeat.

Scott had originally reworked the body so diligently that replacing the damage with stock panels wasn't an option, so each mangled piece was carefully massaged, sometimes with custom tools Scott built, in order to achieve oneness. He stripped the original paint down to the primer using a razor blade, straightened the body, and repainted the car with a custom blended Ditzler two-stage paint. The girl who cuts Scott's hair labeled the color Metallic Cardboard, a name Scott feels is more than appropriate.

The interior is nothing short of a masterpiece. Despite all the damage to the exterior, the cockpit suffered only minor damage. The dash may look stock, but that's an illusion. Scott cut out the entire welded-in dash and relocated it one inch to the left to accommodate a Vintage Air duct outlet on the passenger side. The burlwood pattern in the dash is there because the interior needed to be elegant, with a nod toward the Duesenberg and Packard classics of a previous era. The stock seats were recovered in a material similar to mohair and inset with an English wool broadcloth. The perfect dye color quest protracted into an excruciating two-year search before finding the proper hue. Such is the pursuit of perfection. The steering wheel is one of many clever examples. The wheel is from a '50 Chevy with a late model Corvette hub adapted to fit the column. The center of the wheel duplicates the dash speaker grille, while the horn ring is custom stainless tubing. Spend a little time looking at the wheel much like an art connoisseur might appreciate the effort of a painting by Tom Fritz or a sculpture from an artist like Stanley Wanlass.

Scott's art was not limited to just the interior. Multiple paragraphs would have to be dedicated to all the exterior modifications, so we'll limit our attention to just a few of the more notable additions. In 1954, Chevy stamped the hood from two separate pieces of steel that were riveted together and hidden with the hood ornament. Scott welded the hood and then added what he considers a much cleaner, swoopier '53 Chevy hood bird, and detailed the nose with '53 headlight rings. Ask Scott about the rear wheel openings in a stock '54 and he'll describe them as "frumpy" because the rear rocker panels make an abrupt change that follows neither form nor function. Scott radiused the wheelwell openings and extended the rocker panel rearward to complement the position of the rear bumper. Frumpiness was suddenly lost. The front grille gained two teeth, and the bumper guards were shortened 2 inches in the front and 2 1/2 inches in the rear. Insightful observers may notice that Scott filled the fuel-filler door on the left rear quarter panel and built a custom hinge to place the fuel filler neck inside the left taillight similar to a '56 Chevy. The door handles were also a major labor of love. Says Scott, "Fifty-three Oldsmobile door handles are much sexier than the Chevy's. I had to adapt two electric door poppers, then build a narrow pin and guide that actuates a solenoid to open the doors. This allowed me to make the button flush, because it only moves about an eighth of an inch." There's no telling how much time all that took for something that even the most ardent observer would likely not discover.

Art, beauty, and minute details notwithstanding, Scott's tribulations with his latest creation were not yet over. With a few hundred miles under its belt, the '54 was running amazingly well, which meant, of course, that all was still not right. At idle and with no warning, the engine would suddenly rev to as much as 2,500 rpm. This clearly was cause for concern, and after weeks of tech calls to tuners, friends, and eventually Holley's technical department, the solution came from an observant Holley tech who traced the problem to a single idle air-speed motor connector pin that was not fully seated. Scott had built a jumper harness for the idle air speed motor and throttle position sensor hidden inside the cold air tube to the throttle body. One pin had not quite seated and took the car's first few miles to become uncoupled. These are the kinds of issues that happen to all car builders, which can be amazingly stressful.

Was it all worth it? Of course it was. Scott says, "Once we had the car finished, and the engine running right, Marty and I took it out and jumped on it. Man, it runs good. I was screaming like a little girl."

All of Scott's cars are intended as drivers, not show queens, so it wasn't much of a surprise to find the '54 accompanied by Bob Florine and his amazing '57 Ford wagon on the HOT ROD Power Tour in 2021. The pair put plenty of road miles on their hot rods and even staged an impromptu acceleration contest. Scott was taken aback when Bob's 521ci Jon Kaase Boss9 engine handily pulled away from the '54 despite the wagon's significant poundage. It was all in fun—at least that's what Bob says.

All the setbacks, heartbreaks, damage, and frustration are now firmly lodged in the rearview mirror and become less of a burden with each mile Scott puts on the odometer. If you count success in terms of burdens overcome and frustrations defeated, this might be his greatest effort yet. Most car builders start with a good-looking car and make it prettier. It's a little more of a challenge to transform a dowdy old lady into a queen of the highway.

Want to see some examples of Pro Street vehicles? Check out this procession of Pro Street perfection from the 2019 Daytona Turkey Run, complete with amateur lower-third event intro!