During his high school years back in the late 1960s, Tom McKinney and “Red”, his big-block, four-speed ’68 Chevelle, earned a bit of reputation in the small town of Davidson, Oklahoma. “The car was kind of famous,” Tom’s daughter, Brandee McKinney-Jones says with a laugh. “My dad was always driving too fast.”

Tom purchased the Chevelle new back in 1968, and by the time he entered college, he was supplementing his income with money won from racing the Chevy at drag strips in and around Weatherford, about two hours north of Davidson. But while the car was clearly a formidable runner, it’s the memories that the Chevelle helped create that have made it such a cherished ride for the McKinney family. “This car was really special to my dad,” Brandee explains. “He proposed to my mother in that car, and I’m pretty sure they brought all three of us kids home from the hospital in that car. As far back as I can remember, Red has always been part of the family.”

The car eventually went into long-term storage in 1979, but after Brandee’s parents retired, restoring Red became a priority item on their to-do list. “There were some hurdles at first, though,” she recalls. “In 2014 my dad hired a mechanic to do the restoration, but this guy wasn’t following through with it. There was always an excuse about why the project was delayed, and my dad poured a lot of money into it. And in the meantime, my dad was also diagnosed with Alzheimer's.”

After years of waiting for the Chevelle to be restored with nothing to show for it, the McKinneys were fed up. “By 2018 I was pretty frustrated with the situation and I realized that the build was never going to get done by this guy. He’d lost his business where he was supposedly restoring cars, and he had moved the Chevelle into a shed next to his house. Me and a friend of mine went out there and I was livid; the car was just in pieces. He had taken it all apart and that was about it. We loaded the Chevelle into our truck, piece by piece, and we had the engine hauled out on a tow truck. And that’s when we called Kaleb Kelley at Classic Car Liquidators.”

Kaleb helped the McKinneys put together a game plan for the restoration which, after years of delays, had taken on a sense of urgency because of Tom’s condition. “He helped us make some important decisions about the build, and at that point my dad was still present enough to be involved,” Brandee tells us. “So, for example, my dad never really liked the original wheels on the car, so he picked out the [wheels] that you see on it now. The idea was to keep the car looking as original as possible, but drive more like a modern car.”

So along with the new wheels (which measure 18x8 inches up front and 20x10 in the rear), the team also outfitted Red with a Wilwood big brake kit, a Ridetech suspension system, and a Borgeson quick-ratio steering box. On the powertrain front, the overhauled 396-cube Chevy big-block was equipped with Hedman headers, HyperSpark ignition, and a Sniper EFI system.

“We wanted to be able to just get in the car and drive it whenever we wanted, so while it’s not original to the car, we knew that making the switch to EFI would help with that,” Brandee points out. “And my dad also wanted the car to be as loud as possible, so we put dumps on it, too.” The original four-speed Muncie was swapped out in favor of Tremec TKO five-speed with a Centerforce clutch as well, and the power is now sent to the pavement through a Ford 9-inch rear end from Quick Performance.

The car also went under the knife for rust eradication before the new two-tone paintwork was applied, while a new vinyl top as well as new glass, trim, and factory badging also help to ensure that Red looks as good as it drives. The interior saw some attention as well, scoring additional creature comforts like Dakota Digital gauges, a TMI deluxe center console, and a Vintage Air AC system.

The build was completed in 2019, and by that time Tom was in an assisted living facility. “We were kind of in a rush to get it finished for my dad – he was slowly losing his ability to remember things, so we really wanted to get it done for him,” Brandee says. “We had him sitting in a rocking chair out on the porch of the place that he was living at to show him the car for the first time, but we didn’t tell him what we were up to beforehand. So Kaleb and his dad bring the car around the corner with the dumps opened up, and my dad instantly recognized that it was his car. He jumped out of that rocking chair and said, ‘That’s Red!’ And I don’t know how, but he got himself down those stairs to get to the car as quick as he could. I hadn’t seen my dad move like that in ages.”

Over the past few years the Chevelle has racked up an array of trophies at various car shows and has helped make a whole new batch of memories for the McKinney family. “My son loves taking it to shows, and while my dad was still able to go on rides, we started taking him on weekly outings with Red,” Brandee says. “And we’ve talked about continuing to take Red to more car shows after my dad is gone – the idea is to donate any prize money we win to the Alzheimer's Foundation.”

As for the build itself, Brandee notes that Red is pretty well dialed in at this point. “Right now we don’t plan to make any changes to the car – it’s exactly how we wanted it to be.”