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PHOTOGRAPHY BY THE AUTHORhere comes a time in most fathers’ lives when they are able to share their passion for custom cars and trucks with their children. Sometimes that message of passion is received and the father-son/daughter relationship will flourish. More often than not, however, Junior might just choose wasting his time on the WiiStation over hanging out with dad in the garage or at a car show—it happens all the time.
Luckily for Joe White, a verified custom junkie in his own right, his youngest daughter Nicole learned to love fast, cool cars just like her old man. “My own dad was a huge car guy,” Joe says. “The stories he would tell sounded like they were outtake scenes from the movie American Graffiti. When I was 16 we built a ’67 Chevy Camaro convertible together, and it was pretty much the coolest thing I can remember from my childhood.”
To this day, Joe still has that Camaro. In fact, he just had it rebuilt back in 2015 to keep it up and running and relevant for his family to enjoy. To handle the job, Joe recruited fellow Pennsylvania natives Mark and Heather Giambalvo of Creative Rod & Kustom to go through this car and update it to last another generation. Joe and Mark became friends and started hanging out and talking about things other than what was being done to the Camaro.
Just after the Camaro was restored, Joe and Mark took it out to the 2015 Goodguys Southern Nationals show. Mark was thrilled to see the appreciation others had for the car that he and his dad built years ago, but something else captured his attention while at the event that took his mind off the car. “We were at the track and there was this ’70 C10 flying around the road course. I’ve seen a lot of these trucks before, but this thing was absolutely badass. It was fast, low to the ground, and it handled like a race car. That evening we were headed out to dinner and we saw it sitting in the parking lot of the hotel—I was hooked right there and then. I just had to build one.”
Needless to say, this C10 wasn’t going to be the daily driver it was supposed to be from the start. The guys got together with rendering artist Eric Brockmeyer to get a solid idea of what to aim at. Within a month of getting the rendering, Mark started building. The two decided that nothing less than a Roadster Shop SPEC Series chassis would do, especially since the roots of this truck were to be equal parts performance and agility. To work in tandem with the impressive chassis, the guys selected Strange Engineering coilovers for all four corners. Throw in Wilwood spindles and braking components and this C10 was guaranteed to have the fancy footwork necessary to satisfy the distinguished taste of its builders.
There was no chance that Joe and Mark were going to be happy with a 350 swap—not even close. A crate LS3 was more their speed, so was the Magnuson HeartBeat blower system, Ultimate headers, and custom exhaust system devised by Creative Rod & Kustom. The guys weren’t putting many caps on performance, as you can see, but the story was a little bit different when it came to the exterior and other more visible portions of the project.
Even though the truck might not be suitable for everyday driving duties (it’s just too nice for normal wear-and-tear abuse), Joe was able to deliver a special truck build for his daughter to rip around in every now and then. “I think Mark nailed it with this build,” Joe exclaims. “This C10 could be a modern truck built by GM or something.” Joe wasn’t the only one who thought so highly of Mark’s handiwork, since the truck was honored with the coveted GM Design award at the 2018 SEMA show—yeah, this thing competed and won against some heavy hitters during its first time out.
