A beautiful car, on a beautiful day, in a beautiful setting: Joe Smiley's '57 Chevy Bel Air.
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Mike Berry / The Wichita Eagle
Smiley's battle plan was to keep the Bel Air as stock-appearing as possible, while adding modern safety and convenience to the package. A 350 crate engine and a 350 Turbo automatic, along with a healthy splash of chromed and polished accessories give the engine bay an extra dash of class.
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Mike Berry / The Wichita Eagle
"This one will never go away" is how Joe Smiley describes his second Sierra Gold/Adobe Biege '57 Chevy hardtop. He did virtually all the restoration work on the car, except for the beautiful paint work applied by his brother, Larry.
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The gold "V" and Chevrolet logo denote the car as a PowerPak version; bumpers, headlight buckets and the hood "rockets" are all original pieces.
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An original owner's manual lies on the front bench seat, which is reupholstered in original factory-style material after Scott Downey performed surgery on the springs and backrest.
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Chevy didn't build dashboards any prettier than this one, with its three graceful instrument pods and stylish steering wheel.
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Old and new combine: Joe Smiley had a vintage Sun tachometer rebuilt for his Chevy and also added factory-style cruise control for road trips.
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The inviting back seat area is new again, thanks to an upholstery kit by CARS of California.
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Door panels also got the factory-new treatment during the restoration process.
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Joe Smiley let a '57 Chevy Bel Air hardtop just like this one get away from him as a young man. He swore if he ever found another one, he would buy it and amazingly, in 1994, he discovered this one only two blocks from his home.
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Diamondback radial wide whitewalls are mounted to stock steel wheels, covered in full wheel covers with tri-bar spinners.
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No one could mistake this for anything other than a top-of-the-line '57 Bel Air; note the gold "shark gills" just behind the headlight assembly.
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This is what grabbed everybody's attention in the fall of 1956, when the butcher paper was pulled down from the showroom windows; the iconic sweep of the '57 Bel Air rear fender spears set it apart from every other car.
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The antique vanity plate on Joe Smiley's '57 Chevy sums things up nicely: It is a car filled with memories.
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Mike Berry / The Wichita Eagle
Vintage Air air conditioning outlets are mounted below the dash and at the corners, while a full-size set of white-faced gauges help Smiley keep track of underhood activity. The original AM radio was retained, but modern six-CD sound system was also hidden to provide travel tunes.
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Joe Smiley was a founding member of the Newton Railroaders car club and he still proudly displays his original club plate on the package tray of his '57 Bel Air.
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Mike Berry / The Wichita Eagle
The factory trunk mat was good enough to go back in the car when the restoration was wrapped up.
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Mike Berry / The Wichita Eagle
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