Name: Roy & Lynne Sorenson
Vehicle Year/Make/Model: 1968 Chevrolet El Camino
Built By: Roy & Lynne Sorenson and South City Rod & Custom
Engine Details: 327 small-block, 450 hp; Holley Sniper package; Sanderson headers; MagnaFlow exhaust kit; Flex-a-lite aluminum radiator (and tranny cooler) with twin electric fans
Transmission: 700-R4 (installed by South City) with Genie floor shifter
Chassis and Suspension Details: Hotchkis Suspension kit, QA1 control arms, and a disc brake conversion
Wheels & Tires: Rocket “Igniter”/BFGoodrich P275/R60R15 and P245/R60R15
Interior Details: Dakota Digital dash, Vintage Air A/C, Custom Autosound stereo, Ididit tilt column, done in light gray leather
Body and Paint Details: Patina until we win the lottery! Factory colors.
Miles Driven in a Year: Just got it running (after three years of building in the garage and three months at South City), and we have 280 miles on it. Looking forward to putting a lot of miles on it!
Favorite Shows to Attend: Goodguys shows (I live next to Pleasanton, California, where they do three shows a year), local cars and coffee shows, Hot August Nights
Any Awards: With the patina on it, I doubt if we’ll ever win an award, but the good news is I can park the car at the show, pop the hood, give it a quick wipe, and go enjoy the show
Background on the Car: When my wife and I decided it was time to build a new hot rod, we both agreed it would be a 1960s-something El Camino. Her father had one when she was a teenager, and I always wanted one. But we both felt that the El Camino was going to be the next big collector car. With ’60s muscle car on the front and pickup bed in the rear, how can you go wrong? The problem was there were a lot of other people who felt that same way and soon prices began to climb! Seems like everything we looked at was either a rust bucket not worth restoring or a big-block, big-buck, out-of-reach kind of car. We spread the word to all our car buddies and our family members that we were searching for one, but no luck. Just as we were about ready to give up, my wife’s uncle from Southern California called us. He said he knew a lady in San Bernardino who had a 1968 El Camino she received as her sweet 16th birthday present and was ready to sell it.
We made arrangements to drive down the next week to see the car. The car was a little rough around the edges but was all there. It had the high-performance 327ci, 350hp small-block with a Powerglide transmission. The woman assured us she was the only owner. Her dad had bought it for her on her 16th birthday. The original owner’s manual in the glovebox even had the date it was bought written on the back of it! She told us she had cruised the local boulevard in it as a kid, hauled horse trailers with it, but the last couple of decades it had been sitting under the tree in the driveway and very rarely driven. As she signed over the pink slip, she began to tear up a little and asked if we would please keep calling the car “Elca” since it was the name she had used for years.
This car fit our plan perfectly. We wanted to keep the original look of the car on the outside but give it all the modern conveniences of a late-model car under the skin. The first thing I noticed was how bad the four-wheel drum brakes were. This big, heavy car/truck did not want to stop! A disc brake conversion was a must. Turns out, after we did the conversion and began bleeding the brakes, the rubber hose that feeds the back brakes was clogged solid! No wonder it felt so bad. Since we were under the car, we also replaced the front control arms with QA1 tubular control arms, added Bilstein gas shocks, refurbished all the steering, and added a Hotchkis complete suspension kit front and rear. Good old BFGoodrich T/As on Rocket wheels reside at all four corners. The car handles like it’s on rails and stops on a dime.
The small-block has a ton of compression, doesn’t smoke, and only minor oil leaks. We decided to save money and keep it. The big change under the hood was the addition of a complete Holley Sniper conversion. Their electronic fuel injection and electronic ignition now fire the small-block. Other additions underhood include an aluminum radiator with twin electric fans, an automatic transmission cooler, and a complete Vintage Air A/C unit. The “slip and slide” Powerglide auto magic transmission was replaced with a model 700-R4 transmission. Shift it into overdrive on the freeway and it saves a ton of gas. While it was in South City Rod & Custom (Hayward, California) getting the new tranny put in, they also installed the Sanderson Headers and MagnaFlow exhaust. I hate doing any kind of wiring, so South City did all the different wiring for the Holley Sniper, Dakota Digital dash, stereo, and so on. Billy Ganahl and his crew turn out some of the best hot rods in the country, so I knew they were the shop I could trust to work on mine!
The interior had been reupholstered in light gray not too long ago, so we kept it. The big bench seat will give us room for the dog on long trips. The dash got the updated treatment as well. A Dakota Digital dash replaces the stock one. The digital dash tells us what gear the 700-R4 tranny is in, gives us 0-to-60 and quarter-mile times. Next to it are the Vintage Air A/C controls, and below them is what looks like a stock radio but is actually a Custom Autosound digital radio with Bluetooth. JVC speakers at all four corners pipe out the tunes. If you look really close, in the center of the dash is a custom chrome strip that says “ELCA.” After all, we had to keep our promise to the original owner.
