Like many of us, Steve English of Vail, Arizona, has been a car guy since he was very young (8 years old in Steve’s case). When he grew out of playing with Hot Wheels, he made the leap into buying a 1978 Firebird Formula in 1981. A year after he joined the U.S. Air Force, first stationed in Jackson, Arkansas, and then overseas. That car followed him for both trips and when Steve got back home in 1988, he made more plans for the Firebird. He decided on selling it off to buy a 1985 Monte Carlo SS that he held onto until 2015. By this time, Steve had retired from the service and had owned that Monte Carlo for over two decades. He decided it was time for something new, and luckily his partner in crime, his wife, Margot, was thrilled to be along for the ride.
“My wife and I discussed the different types of vehicles we could purchase,” Steve says. “We lost out on a solid 1964 Chevy II Nova gasser that was in New Jersey, but the timing didn’t quite work out. That one slipped right through our fingers, but maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.” Steve continued his search and remembered seeing a 1957 Bel Air gasser for sale in Utah during his last round of Online car hunting. “I looked, but it was nowhere to be found on the Web,” he adds. “A few months had passed, then one day, lo and behold, there it was again—the ’57 I had seen before. Now the car was in California, just outside of L.A. I could tell from the pictures in the listing that the new owner had changed a few things, mainly new wheels and tires. For the most part, the Bel Air was still the same.”
Steve didn’t want to miss out on another car he really wanted, so he hooked up the trailer, packed up a few things, and jumped in the truck with Margot and they were on their way to SoCal. “We were both excited and anxious to see the car, but because of our late start, we stayed the night in Blythe, California. After eating breakfast at the hotel the next morning, I noticed that my wife had a death grip on her purse. I laughed and said, ‘Try not to make it look like you have thousands of dollars in your bag.’ We both had a giggle, but we knew we still had some negotiation room left on the ’57 even though we had agreed on a price.”
The moment of truth had arrived. Steve and Margot had finally made it to the Bel Air. “As soon as I parked, Margot got out of the truck and said, ‘I absolutely love it!’” Well, all hopes of negotiation went out the window, but we were both good with that. We liked what we saw, so we paid the owner, loaded up the car, and started to make our way back to Arizona.”
The two arrived home to find all of Steve’s neighborhood beer-drinking buddies waiting for them. The crew quickly proceeded to unload Steve’s new hot rod off the trailer. Plenty of celebratory beers were popped and plans were discussed regarding the car’s bright future.
With that, the ball started rolling right away. Steve’s friend, Ron Greulich, was itching to order parts and help make changes. From the new 9-inch rearend to the front, Ron was there for almost the entire build. “The car came with a tunnel-rammed 383ci stroker, but I wanted more,” Steve says. “It was because of Ron that I had a blown 408ci engine built to replace it. In May 2019, he was there when my buddies Randy Manning and Jordan Helget came to help me drop the shiny new engine between the framerails. Unfortunately, Ron was unable to be at my house a month later for the start-up because of his illness. Ron [died] on September 1, 2019. There was still plenty more to do at that point, but he will always be a big part of this car.”
Another friend of Steve’s, Randy Torrence, also played a huge role in the Bel Air’s rebuild. Torrence is a painter and fabricator, so he started work by cutting a bigger hole in the hood to fit the 8-71 blower sticking out. He then molded the opening and painted it to match. “I then asked [Torrence] if he could paint the roof red with black metalflake,” Steve says. “All the paint and bodywork were done in [Torrence]’s home garage. The roof came out awesome, and in 2022 I requested that he repaint the body. It was at this point I named the car ‘Full-Blown Psycho.’ I had El Bugs in Phoenix paint the name on the back of the trunk in gold leaf to match the emblems on the car. In early 2025, [Torrence] repainted the roof with gold leaf to separate the red and black metalflake. He killed it again, and this is exactly how the Bel Air looks today. It’s a head-turner, for sure. This experience has taught me so much about cars and has allowed me to build lifelong friendships with like-minded hot rodders.”
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