GALLERY: Go Behind The Scenes On Our 1953 Chevrolet 210 Film Shoot

Drew Sidaris received a Honda Trail 50 minibike at the formative age of eight, and his neighbor at the time had a full size dirt bike that he’d compete with at the old Indian Dunes compound before the motocross tracks were closed off. The building blocks of a motorsport enthusiast were there, and needless to say, growing up in Hollywood meant Drew was no stranger to the sight of an exotic automobile either.

He’s wanted to be a racing car driver ever since his childhood, and was finally able to realize that dream when he and his longtime friend Chris bought this Chevy 210 and set about getting it ready for the Carrera Panamericana in Mexico.

They made plans to enter it into the race by 1989, just a few years after the car came home with them in 1986, and they took it down to a shop in Baja California for a light restoration, an engine and suspension rebuild, and the fitting of a few basic safety items like a four-point cage and set of harnesses.

Drew drove the car in the race three times between 1989 and 1991, made it his daily driver for a seven-year span, and has even loaned it out to be raced by a relative stranger (hence the Belgian flag sharing the hood space with the stars and stripes, commemorating the time he lent the big Chevy to Paul Vereecken, someone he’s kept in contact with ever since).

When Drew moved to Louisiana in between the 1989 and 1990 race, he became friends with a car owner and builder at the local race track named Ronnie Adams, who helped bring Drew and Chris’s Chevy to a new level. Treating the engine bay to a larger 292ci straight-six and swapping in a full roll cage amongst other retrofits and modifications like a taller-ratio Muncie four-speed, it became a pretty capable machine indeed.

Drive Tastefully®