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Street or dirt, fast is fun. There's just something primal about mashing the pedal and feeling the landscape streak by at ever-increasing velocity. Even rockcrawling, the quintessence of low speed, has recently dabbled in going fast with the introduction of rock-racing competitions.
Ralph Cimarusti of Valley Center, California, is a longtime connoisseur of high velocity and has been an automotive enthusiast, he says, "ever since I was a kid."
A member of the Goodguys Rod & Custom Association, Ralph owns and wrenches on a '55 Chevy Nomad and a '28 roadster pickup. If there's a common thread among rod and custom enthusiasts, it's that the need for style should be mixed with the need for speed. When it was time to combine speed, style, and dirt, Ralph carried the rod-and-custom approach over to the bad-in-black '03 Chevy SS AWD on these pages. The SS had to look good and ride smoothly. Most of all, it had to be fast.