1964 Chevrolet Chevy Biscayne Custom in Turquoise

A turquoise 1964 Chevrolet Biscayne turned heads at a Bedford Park, Illinois car show, but the story behind it is what kept viewers watching. Owner Alex Levesque runs the Automotive Mentor Group, a restoration shop that also works to give former gang members a real second chance. One viewer’s own $150 Biscayne story from 1974 says everything about how far this car has come. Watch the full segment to see it.

Most car show segments start and end with sheet metal. This one starts with a turquoise 1964 Chevrolet Biscayne and ends somewhere far more personal, a program built to give former gang members a second chance through the exact kind of hands-on restoration work that brought this car back to life. Lou Costabile’s camera found the car first, sitting clean and sharp at a Bedford Park, Illinois car show. What he found standing next to it changed what the video was actually about.

A Car Show Stop With a Bigger Story Behind It

On March 11, 2017, in Bedford Park, Illinois, Lou Costabile’s My Car Story camera came across a 1964 Chevrolet Biscayne finished in turquoise paint, presented by Alex Levesque. Levesque is the owner of the Automotive Mentor Group, a body shop and restoration business that also functions as something closer to a workforce program, and this particular Biscayne was one of its finished projects. The car alone would have made a solid five-minute segment. What Levesque explained about how it got built turned it into something Costabile’s audience kept sharing well beyond the usual car-show crowd.

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Turquoise Paint Over a Program That Changes Lives

The Automotive Mentor Group’s mission, according to commenters familiar with the shop, centers on giving people, specifically former gang members and others who have struggled to find stable work, real, marketable skills in auto body restoration. One commenter wrote plainly, God bless Alex for his work with turning gang members around and doing something productive they can use in their lives. The Biscayne was not restored to flip for a quick profit, it was restored as part of teaching a trade, with the finished car serving as proof of the program’s standards.

Who Alex Levesque Is, and Why It Matters

Levesque is not simply a restoration shop owner trading on a feel-good story, multiple commenters describe direct, personal familiarity with his work, with one calling the effort a truly noble venture and another simply saying they were proud of my friend Alex. That kind of specific, first-name familiarity in a comment section, as opposed to generic praise, suggests a shop with real roots in its community rather than a one-off feature dressed up for a single video.

The Biscayne’s Place at the Bottom of Chevy’s Full-Size Lineup

In 1964, the Biscayne sat at the entry-level end of Chevrolet’s full-size range, positioned below the Bel Air and well below the Impala in trim and standard equipment. Buyers who wanted a full-size Chevrolet on a budget bought Biscaynes, often with six-cylinder engines and minimal chrome, which is part of why clean survivors and well-done restorations of this specific trim are rarer today than Impalas from the same year, fewer were optioned up, and fewer were kept once flashier full-size Chevys became available secondhand.

A Viewer Remembers Paying $150 for the Same Car

One comment captured exactly how far the Biscayne’s reputation has traveled since 1964, a viewer recalled that their first car, bought in 1974 at age eighteen, was a 64 Biscayne four-door with a tired six-cylinder engine and a three-on-the-tree manual, purchased for 150 dollars. That is the gap this restoration highlights, a car once treated as the cheapest possible transportation for a teenager is now clean enough, and rare enough in this condition, to headline a car show segment more than fifty years later.

Why a Base Full-Size Chevy Still Draws a Crowd

Another commenter remembered a neighbor’s grey 1964 Biscayne wagon with a 283 V8 and red interior, calling it simply a nice car decades on. That kind of memory, specific, unprompted, tied to a real car someone actually saw, is common in the comments on Costabile’s videos, and it points at why base-trim full-size cars from this era have quietly become collectible in their own right, they represent an ordinary, honest version of American car ownership that flashier trims never had to prove.

More Than a Restoration

By the time the segment ends, the Biscayne itself has almost become secondary to what it represents. It is a finished product built by people the Automotive Mentor Group set out to help, presented at a public car show as evidence the program works. For Costabile’s audience, that combination, genuine restoration craftsmanship paired with a mission most car videos never touch, is exactly why this particular episode kept circulating long after the show itself ended.

The Automotive Mentor Group’s Place in a Wider Movement

Programs that pair automotive restoration with workforce development for at-risk individuals have grown into a recognized model across the country, giving participants a trade that combines mechanical skill, patience, and attention to detail with a visible, sellable end product. The Automotive Mentor Group fits squarely into that tradition, and a car like this Biscayne functions as a kind of portfolio piece, tangible proof to potential clients, donors, or future participants that the shop’s training translates into professional-grade results. For Levesque, every finished restoration is simultaneously a business outcome and a recruitment tool for the next person the program might be able to help turn their life around.

Why Costabile’s Format Keeps Finding Stories Like This

Lou Costabile has filmed thousands of car show segments over the life of his channel, and the format’s simplicity, walk up, ask questions, let the owner talk, is exactly why stories like Levesque’s surface at all. A scripted review would have no natural place for a restoration shop’s mission statement, an unscripted walk-around does, because the owner decides what to talk about. That structural openness is why My Car Story has become a place where car culture and community work, not just car specifications, regularly find an audience.

A Detail Easy to Miss on First Watch

Watching the segment again, it is worth noting how naturally the restoration conversation blends into the car’s actual mechanical specification, six-cylinder base engines, available V8 options, and factory trim levels discussed alongside the shop’s mission rather than as a separate, tacked-on segment. That blending is deliberate on Costabile’s part, letting Levesque explain the car and the program in the same breath keeps the story from feeling like two unrelated segments stitched together, and it is part of why viewers who came for a car walk-around stayed to leave comments about a restoration program they would never otherwise have heard of.

Catch the full video above and leave your thoughts below.

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