1970 Chevrolet Chevelle Metal Brothers

Metal Brothers brought this 1970 Chevelle to Cruisin’ The Coast 2016 before it was actually finished — no interior, an LS3 still mid-tune, but a stance and mile-deep black paint job already locked in. The panel work is smooth enough that viewers are asking how many hours it took to get there. It’s a rare look at what a serious build looks like before the final polish. Watch to see how much of the hard work was already done.

Most builds get shown off once they’re finished. This one wasn’t – and that’s exactly what makes it interesting. Metal Brothers brought their 1970 Chevelle to Cruisin’ The Coast 2016 with the interior still stripped out and the LS3 under the hood not yet fully tuned, betting that a car this far along would still turn heads even in an unfinished state. On a black-painted Chevelle with panel work smooth enough to draw comments about the labor behind it, that bet paid off – this is what a serious build looks like mid-process, not staged for a magazine cover.

A Build Shown Before It Was Ready

Displaying an incomplete car at one of the biggest cruise events in the country is a deliberate choice, not an oversight – it puts a shop’s raw craftsmanship on display without the polish of finished upholstery or a fully dialed-in tune to distract from it. For Metal Brothers, showing this Chevelle mid-build at Cruisin’ The Coast meant the body work, the paint, and the stance had to carry the entire impression on their own, with nothing else to fall back on if the fundamentals weren’t right.

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What ‘Mile Deep’ Black Paint Actually Requires

Getting a black finish to read as “mile deep” rather than flat or streaky is one of the least forgiving jobs in the entire restoration process, since black paint shows every imperfection in the body underneath it that lighter colors can hide. The panel work has to be essentially perfect before the color ever goes on, which is exactly what one commenter was reacting to when they called out the “tremendous amount of work” required to get those panels that smooth – on a black car, that smoothness isn’t optional, it’s the whole job.

An LS3 Swap Still Being Sorted

Rather than chasing a numbers-matching restoration, Metal Brothers built this Chevelle around a modern LS3 V8 – a swap that trades period-correct authenticity for dramatically more usable, more reliable performance, at the cost of tuning work that doesn’t happen overnight. The description notes the engine still had tuning left to finish, a small but honest admission that separates a real build in progress from a static show car; getting an LS-swapped classic to idle, drive, and sound right typically takes months of dyno and street tuning after the engine physically goes in.

Stance First, Everything Else After

Of everything left unfinished on this Chevelle, the stance was already locked in – and that ordering says something about how serious builders prioritize a project. Ride height and wheel fitment define a car’s first impression more than paint, interior, or even the engine bay, which is why shops like Metal Brothers get that dimension finalized early, even while other systems are still being sorted out. A Chevelle with the wrong stance looks off no matter how good the paint is; one with the right stance can win over a crowd even half-finished.

Cruisin’ The Coast’s Role for Regional Builders

Cruisin’ The Coast draws hundreds of thousands of spectators to the Mississippi Gulf Coast every year, making it one of the largest recurring cruise events in the country and a natural stage for a shop like Metal Brothers to put unfinished work in front of a massive audience. Showing a car there mid-build is a calculated risk against that scale of exposure – but for a build this far along, with the hardest parts of the bodywork already done, it’s a risk that clearly worked in the shop’s favor. For Metal Brothers specifically, being included in ScottieDTV’s coverage of the event adds a second layer of reach beyond the show itself, turning a single weekend on the Gulf Coast into content that keeps circulating years later.

What the Comments Section Confirms

The reaction across the comments – “beautiful,” “clean,” “built right” – lines up almost exactly with what the build still needed to finish, which is a telling sign in itself. Viewers weren’t responding to a completed interior or a fully tuned drivetrain; they were responding to panel fit, paint depth, and stance, the three things Metal Brothers had already nailed down by the time ScottieDTV’s camera found the car at Cruisin’ The Coast.

A Preview, Not a Finished Statement

What this video really captures is a build in transition – proof that Metal Brothers’ fundamentals were strong enough to impress a crowd before the car was anywhere near finished. Whatever this Chevelle looks like today, with its interior completed and its LS3 fully sorted, the version captured here is a useful reminder that the hardest, least visible parts of a serious restoration – the bodywork, the paint prep, the stance – are usually finished long before the car looks camera-ready. It’s also a useful case study for anyone considering their own LS-swap project: the visual work and the mechanical work don’t have to finish on the same timeline, and there’s no shame in showing the results of one before the other catches up.

Why Unfinished Builds Draw a Different Kind of Respect

There’s a specific kind of respect enthusiasts reserve for builders willing to show unfinished work, because it removes the safety net a completed, detailed car provides. A finished show car can hide a multitude of shortcuts behind wax and interior trim; an unfinished one can’t hide anything, which is exactly why Metal Brothers’ willingness to bring this Chevelle to Cruisin’ The Coast in a visibly incomplete state reads as confidence rather than an oversight. It’s a build philosophy that trusts the fundamentals to speak for themselves, panel gap by panel gap, before anything else gets added on top. That’s the real value of watching a build mid-process instead of only ever seeing the finished reveal: it shows exactly where a shop chooses to spend its time first, and Metal Brothers clearly chose to get the body right before worrying about anything a viewer could only appreciate up close. For a channel built around finding well-executed cars before they’re famous, that made this Chevelle exactly the kind of find worth featuring, unfinished interior and all. It’s a bet on substance over presentation, and by every measure in the comment section, it paid off.

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