“Ron gave us a lot of free rein and trusted my engineering,” Brian says. “He knew what he wanted his end result to be, but anything in between there he let us do what we needed to do to come up with a means of getting it there. It involved some pretty fun custom work.”
When Fast Lane got the Malibu, Ron had completed the chassis work but was in over his head when it came to body work. The team found other issues Ron didn’t know existed. They replaced the entire back half of the car due to hidden collision damage, body filler, and rust: a door, rear quarter panels, the trunk floor, wheel wells, among other parts. They did save the trunk lid but had to do extensive repairs. Overall, nearly 75 percent of the metal in the car was replaced, which illustrates the value of engaging people with experience to identify issues the layman would miss.
“Working with Brian—he is a magician with metal,” Ron says. “He did some magical things when we started working on the body.”
The new parts, like the door and quarter panels, needed extensive welding work to align with the car’s ’60s-era body, and Ron appreciated the extra mile the team was willing to go to remake the car right.
“When I wanted something done that wasn’t originally planned, they came up with ways to do it that worked really well and turned out as good or better than I expected when we started,” Ron adds.
The Fast Lane Classic Cars team unveiled the Malibu a year and a half after Ron delivered it to them. “I actually was amazed,” Ron says. “Where we started and what we ended up with and the amount of hours of work it took to get it all together…”
His wife Judy helps describe where he trails off.
“They have a really cool showroom where they deliver your car, and it’s all white. The car just gleaned in this round white circle. It was pretty amazing to see it. It was gorgeous. It was like: wow! This is really done after seeing it in our garage for so many years in bits and pieces.”
