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1957 Chevy “Showmad,” Restored By Riley’s Rebuilds, Is up for Auction
We first met Dane Trask and his 1957 Chevrolet Nomad in the summer of 2022, when we visited his home south of Tampa to do a story on his 17-year-old daughter, Riley, proprietor of Riley’s Rebuilds. Her business rebuilds carburetors for customers all around the country.
Dane, an accomplished shade-tree mechanic, taught Riley to rebuild carbs, correctly reasoning that it would be more fun, and far more lucrative, than the typical jobs available to teenagers. The business grew quickly, and Riley called in a handful of her girlfriends from school and taught them how to work on carburetors. In the next couple of years, Riley was featured in a variety of media appearances, and she and Dane were recruited by Hemmings to appear in the publication’s Repair 2 Rev video series.

When we first visited Riley’s Rebuilds, it was headquartered in a well-equipped corner of the Trask garage. On the other side of the garage sat the Nomad, a bit forlorn and dusty, and largely in pieces. It wasn’t just any Nomad, Dane told us: It was a considerably modified show car that Chevy displayed at car shows in major cities.
Trask has owned the car for nearly 20 years, and at the time of our visit had been working on its restoration, but other projects had gotten in the way. These past couple of years, though, it was the Nomad’s turn. It was the subject of a full frame-off restoration by Trask, and by the teenagers who now make up Riley’s Rebuilds. “Every nut and bolt has been touched,” Trask said.





The finished Nomad, which was called the “Showmad” in its car show days, was displayed at the 2024 SEMA show, where it won an award. And this afternoon, the Showmad will cross the block at Mecum’s Kissimmee auction in Florida. The buzz is that the no-reserve Chevy could go for as much as $300,000, but Trask said he’d be happy with anything over $175,000.
What makes this Nomad so special? Primary is its pioneering Rochester fuel injection, the same unit that was installed in the Corvette SS and series of race-inspired test mules, representing a project near and dear to Corvette chief engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov, Chevrolet general manager Ed Cole, and General Motors lead designer Harley Earl.

This Larkspur Blue/India Ivory Showmad has a 283-cubic inch V-8 and a three-speed manual transmission. But the fuel injection unit was made to work on a race motor, not a stock engine, and the Showmad’s build came so early in the process that a racing V-8 had to be appropriated from the Nassau Bahamas Corvette program and transplanted into this Nomad. Later on, Chevrolet, unhappy with that problematic fuel injection unit, had all cars fitted with it recalled, and a new fuel injection system was installed by dealers.
Trask still has that original Rochester fuel injection, and it’s included with the sale of the car, along with a copious amount of materials Trask uncovered in his research. That includes the work order for the car and additional build sheets, plus photos of its time on display at the Motorama exhibit at the New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles car shows.

The history of the car is considerably richer than just its prominence as a purpose-built, hotted-up show car. When its display days were over, it was sold by City Chevrolet in San Diego. It found a buyer, but per Chevrolet’s rules, the car had to sit in a dealership showroom for a full year before it could be depreciated by the company’s accountants. It was finally turned over to the new owner in 1958.
Nearly 50 years later, “I found it on a consignment lot in southern Alabama,” Trask said. He was suspicious of the car’s stated history, the fuel injection in particular, “so I wrote down all the numbers and started making phone calls.” He learned that yes, there was fuel injection available in 1957, but it was fitted to only 106 Nomads. And yes, he was told, this car was one of them.

The car was complete, and ran and drove. It had 106,000 miles, but “it had the original plastic on the seats, from the factory. I ended up buying it the next weekend,” Trask said. “I rented a trailer and took it home. About two years into the restoration, working on the interior, I found 16-millimeter negatives in the seat frame.” They were vintage photos of the car.
He used one of the photos as his lead social media image, “and a guy saw it and said, ‘I have a book that has pictures of your car.’ So he sent me the book. It was from 1972, and the pictures were from that photo shoot. Under one of those pictures was the name Nathaniel Watterson, Jr.” It turns out Watterson was the original owner.

Trask did more research and tracked down the Watterson family, namely Watterson’s daughter. “He had just passed away. But she said, ‘You have my dad’s car.'” She told him that they’d owned it for 48 years.
“She said that it was the show car for auto shows. I didn’t really understand at first what that meant. I thought maybe it was a going-to-Cars and Coffee-type show car. But as we started doing more and more restoration, we kept finding prototype parts.” He had several experts in early fuel injection look at the car. “They came back and said, ‘We know exactly what car this is. It’s the show car, built in 1956.'”

As for Riley’s Rebuilds, it’s still solidly in business in that corner of Trask’s garage, where Riley’s younger brother Graham, 15, supervises the six-teenager, second-generation workforce, as the first generation all graduated from high school and splintered off into various colleges. Including Riley, who is midway through her second year as a double-major student at Connecticut College, which is close enough to the restoration shop of Hagerty columnist Wayne Carini to allow for frequent visits. She’s also the goalkeeper for the College’s soccer team. In her biography on the team website, she’s the only member who says she “plans to pursue a career working on cars after graduation.”
The Trask family will miss the Nomad when its third owner takes possession of the car this afternoon. “I grew up with that car, working on it as a little kid,” Riley said. But they’ve taken the restoration as far as they can, and it’s time to move on to a new project. “I’m so excited for this car to cross the block,” she said, “and go to someone who has the same passion and love for this car that I do.”
We’ll update this story after the auction. (And here’s the update: The Showmad went for a disappointing $105,000 gavel price on a day at Mecum where it seemed like a great deal of money changed hands, especially on high-end Corvettes and muscle cars. This may have been the wrong crowd for this car…)









Great story. The amount of design work that went into just dashboards in those days was amazing. Now just shove a screen in it and done. I’m impressed they did so much detective work and that so much was preserved.
Thumbs up 👍
Great to see Riley is doing well in her pursuits. Lovely Nomad!
The Trask family continues to impress with their talents and dedication to quality work.
Great story, great car, great family. Kudos
Great story. I too was a bit shocked at the low gavel price. Now I wish I had bought it but I didn’t register for this auction. I hope it goes in a museum. That’s where I’d put it. It’s a history time capsule. Anyone now who bought it?