We’ve all seen pics of a chopped-up, El Camino rat rod floating around the internet, and we wondered what the backstory was on the car.  As we got settled in Las Vegas last week, the first car we saw when hitting the floor in Central Hall, was the ratty, green-machine that had intrigued us so…

We met builder Chris Walker and his aptly named “Hulk Camino” built by his company ITW Hot Rods in Stacy, Minnesota. What you see here are the best parts of a 1959 El Camino.  All the fat was cut away, transformed into a relatively small and much cooler version of its former self.

The starting-off point was a wrecked 1959 Chevrolet El Camino body. The roof was slid back and a one-off chassis and firewall were fab’d up to hold it all together. The thing is so low, hinged T-tops tilt up to allow ingress and egress.

Powered by a 400 cid, Dart block Chevy V8 and crowned with a humongous 671 BDS blower and two Holley 750 cfm carburetors, the “Hulk Camino” lays down a whopping 800 horses spinning a manual transmission, with Dana 60 rearend churning out molten stripes of rubber with ease.  This thing is no shrinking violet either. It plays well at the dragstrip as too, snapping off sub-13 second runs at 125 mph at will.

Chris told Rod Authority that ITW Hot Rods has a 1957 Chevy Nomad in the pipeline, and it will be cut-of-the-same-cloth as the Hulk-Camino. Stay tuned to Power Automedia for more details.