ince we started In The Garage Media back in 2020, Padfield constantly teased about the aforementioned build but refused to give up any photographic insight! I understood the embargo, but still, come on—the baddest Bumpside?

Well, that prediction, rather, claim, came to fruition this past summer when, at their annual open house in Knoxville, Tennessee, Scott’s Hotrods ’N Customs finally unveiled Troy Peck’s beyond-bad Bumpside just prior to fully debuting it at the 2nd annual Triple Crown of Rodding in Nashville. I had the honor of interviewing Padfield (behind the camera) for Modern Rodding’s Triple Crown of Rodding documentary, and was amazed at just how much work went into the build—but even what Padfield described was just a sampling. So, with that said, I asked him to further explain the entire project for us:

first got interested in the concept of restomods when I saw the third-generation Challenger. I thought it was such a cool concept to have an old-school body on top of a modern chassis and interior. When I was finally in a place in my life to afford buying such a car, I bought a first-generation Camaro that was basically retromodded. I drove the car for the first year then quickly realized it needed to have a better chassis/frame under it because it had too much horsepower for the Hotchkis suspension that it had. I began the search for something better, which led me to MetalWorks and the Art Morrison (AME) chassis. At this point I had very little mechanical skills, so with the help of a good friend we tore out the old chassis and frame from underneath the Camaro and installed the AME frame and suspension.

n the Jan. ’24 issue of Classic Truck Performance we revealed Art Morrison Enterprises’ (AME) new AME Offroad 4×4 chassis for 1973-1987 Chevrolet/GMC pickups and 1973-1991 Blazers by showing the construction of the prototype. We can now show the finished product, and it was well worth the wait.

This project began when Matthew Jones, president of AME, found a 1974 GMC 2500 pickup that had been retired by the Mapleton, Utah, fire department. The goal for the truck was to use it for developing a 4×4 chassis that had the capabilities of a high-speed off-road truck, the articulation of a rock crawler, with the handling and performance on the street that AME is famous for.

ngineers aren’t often known for being artistic. As problem-solvers, their solutions don’t necessarily have to be aesthetically pleasing as long as they work per their intended purpose. There are some engineers, however, who take just as much pride in the presentation and form factor as they do in the function of whatever it is they are designing. Alex MacDonald is one of those engineers.