09/07/2026
Mr. Norm in Chicago put a 440 in a Dart that Chrysler said wouldn't fit. Nickey Chevrolet in Chicago put a 427 in a Camaro that Chevrolet wouldn't offer. Two Chicago dealerships, same city, same era, same philosophy: the factory says no, the dealer says watch. The performance dealer network of the 1960s was the layer between what Detroit was willing to build and what customers were willing to buy. The factory had corporate policies, insurance concerns, and legal departments. The dealer had a lift, a set of wrenches, and a customer with a checkbook. The dealer won. Every time.
Nickey Chevrolet sat on Irving Park Road in Chicago. A 200,000 square foot facility. One of the highest-volume Chevrolet dealerships in America. The Stephani brothers owned it and understood something most dealers didn't: the performance customer who walks in for a 427 swap today buys his wife a station wagon from you tomorrow. The speed shop wasn't a hobby. It was a customer acquisition strategy that happened to produce some of the most formidable street cars of the 1960s.
The partnership that made it work was between Nickey and Bill Thomas Race Cars in Anaheim, California. When GM issued its 1963 corporate racing ban, Chevrolet used Thomas as a back channel to funnel performance parts to the racing community without the factory's fingerprints on them. The Stephani brothers connected with Thomas in 1966, and the collaboration produced what Nickey marketed as "Super Car Conversions." Thomas supplied the technical knowledge and the parts pipeline. Nickey supplied the facility, the technicians, and the customers. Lou Anzelmo ran the performance program. Mike Teffafino turned the wrenches. Bill Harrell, the man in the necktie in this photograph, watched it happen with the satisfaction of a man who knew that the car being built on his watch would run 12.3 seconds in the quarter mile at 113 mph before the buyer drove it home.
The 427 Camaro was the flagship conversion. Chevrolet offered the Camaro with engines up to the 396 in 1967. The 427 was reserved for the Corvette. Nickey ignored that distinction. They ordered a Camaro with the largest engine the order form allowed, then pulled the 396 and dropped in an L72 427 making 425 HP. M21 Muncie four-speed transmission. 12-bolt Positraction rear differential. Bill Thomas traction bars. Super Scavenger exhaust headers. No two Nickey cars were identical because every build was customized to the buyer's specifications and budget. A Nickey 427 Camaro ran 12.3 seconds in the quarter at 113 mph. A stock 396 Camaro ran mid-14s. Two full seconds and fifteen mph separated the dealer-built car from the factory car. The same platform. Different engine. Different elapsed time. Different universe of performance.
The conversions extended beyond Camaros. Nickey dropped 427s into Chevelles, Novas, Impalas, and Corvettes. L88s, L89s, and L72s went into anything Chevrolet built that a customer pointed at and said "put a 427 in that." The network expanded nationally: Harrell and Thomas created a distribution system for their dealer-built supercars across America, selling Nickey-converted cars through partner dealerships to buyers who didn't live in Chicago. A performance dealer in Chicago building cars that were sold through dealers in Florida, Texas, and California. A national supercar distribution network operated from a Chevrolet dealership on Irving Park Road.
The dealership was sold in 1973 and became Keystone Chevrolet. The speed shop continued as "Nickey Chicago" until 1977. The building is gone. The brand was purchased in 2002 by collector Stefano Bimbi and revived for continuation builds. But the original Nickey cars, the ones Lou Anzelmo supervised and Mike Teffafino assembled and Bill Harrell watched in a necktie, are the ones collectors chase. Because they represent a moment when the fastest Chevrolets in America were not built by Chevrolet. They were built by a dealership that refused to wait for the factory to catch up.
