But this is no ordinary shop promotion truck—not by a long shot.

“This is a truck that I will never get rid of and will stay part of our family,” Levi continued. “My uncle gave it to me, and my dad and I started the project. I took it over when I went to school out at Wyotech and it has followed me everywhere since. I worked on it off and on while working at Rad Rides by Troy. I did the firewall there and welded all the seams inside the cab. Warren Louis helped me bed-liner the bottom of the cab and I bodyworked the inside and sprayed the high-build primer on the inside. The project slowed down a bit when we moved to Texas, but I soon decided to ‘step it up’ and be very intentional about getting it done.”

Obviously, the move from Illinois to Texas meant Levi would either have to take his skills learned from his time working under Troy Trepanier to another shop, or …

“I started my own shop, Hammer Fab in 2014 in Liberty, Texas. As soon as I could I started putting in long hours working the extra hours on my Apache. Having my own shop really made it much easier to just get to work on it whenever I had a chance. I no longer had to drag it out of storage just to work on it and I now had all the tools and experience I needed to make it happen.”

In that final five-year, pre-SEMA crunch, Levi/Hammer Fab took the old family heirloom truck and transformed it into an award-winning hauler—without doing anything super elaborate, either. For instance, the stock chassis features a ’78 Trans Am front clip (albeit updated with Ridetech/DJM components), an ’80s Camaro IROC rearend (also Ridetech equipped), and a mid-’70s Chevy small-block with a Turbo 350 trans. A quartet of 20- and 22-inch Raceline Classicos offer a visual world of difference in the rolling stock department compared to the old stock steel wheels with dog dish caps—but it’s the amount of work put into the exterior that really sets Levi’s Apache apart from its prior guise. Practically everything has been shaved, with flipped/tucked/reshaped rear bumpers fore and aft, and the rear fenders have been widened to make room for the 12-inch-wide wheels with 325/40 Continental radials. Finished flawlessly in Nassau Blue with an ivory white roof (by Vastine’s Paint Garage), a mahogany and maple Mar-K bed by Lesslie Webb perfectly accents the updated exterior. Jay Schluter provided the final touches by compiling a killer interior based around distressed leather with ’55 Bel Air fabric inserts.