Blue Collar Garage Culture Shop: Sideshow Fabrication & 380 Motorsport and Custom

February 29, 2024

Once again, a huge thank you to Blue Collar Garage for sponsoring this article and the YouTube Video that goes along with it. Blue Collar Garage is a fantastic option if you are looking to get your hands on some shop or storage space, be sure to check out their website at BlueCollarGarage.com if you are in the market.

Our first stop on this episode of Blue Collar Garage Culture Shop, was at Sideshow Fabrication and Paint to meet Chris and the gang. Located in Edmonton Alberta, Sideshow specializes in custom paint, restoration, and fabrication. They are also a local source for in house Cerakote and even gold plating. It was pretty cool to see first hand the durability of both of these coatings. The gold plating is actually very chip resistant, Chris had me smash a piece against the edge of a shelf, multiple times, and no chipping.

For our visit, they pulled out their fantastic golf cart, custom painted by their painter, Christa, and pinstriped and lettered by their guy, Cody. Currently in the shop they also had a 1974 Mopar getting a full build as a mild restomod including a ton of fab and body work, like removing the rag top and shaving the bumpers. They also had a 1965 Mercury truck that took three vehicles to put one good one together and has a custom painted inline six. My personal favorite project they had in there at the time was a fiberglass Model A on a custom frame that was getting everything that would be chrome or polished, gold plated, everything else blacked out and it will get a wild paint job on the body.

Chris and the others at Sideshow spend a lot of time over at RAD Torque Raceway drag track and even sponsor a few dragsters and drivers including Chevy Reeves. This is due to Chris’ background in Nitro and Alcohol racing.

Inside the shop and showroom they have an extensive collection of cool memorabilia and hand painted and pinstriped.. everything. You could spend hours walking around checking it all out. Be sure to give them a call for your next project and they will be sure to take care of you with their wide selection of House of Kolor paints in stock. They also do more than just automotive and were working on a set of speaker boxes for a local speaker manufacturer called Harbottle Audio that were built with Carbon Fiber and getting incredible finishing done by Sideshow.

Our Second stop takes us to check out a new YouTube channel called 380 Motorsport and Custom. Shane and Barb Gilroy have a really cool little shop out on their acreage, build some cool stuff, and collect some awesome antiques.

They built the shop eight years ago and gave it a cool spin to look like an old shop with a brick veneer and some vintage lights. Inside Shane is currently building a few projects on his channel including a 1940 Pontiac with suicide rear doors on an S10 chassis. The Pontiac has some cool local history as it was originally bought from Stan Reynold’s Dealership, and anyone local to Alberta knows that the Reynold’s automotive museum and collection has some incredible history and amazing pieces. Shane is also building a 1949 GMC cabover that used to be a fire truck in Saskatchewan. You can see in the pictures and in the video on our channel that it has a fully custom frame designed to lay on the ground with an old 12 Valve Cummins and cool rat rod flare.

Some other cool projects he had included a 1951 Chevy in flat olive green paint with a military star on the doors and had a 383 stroker under the hood. He also built a matching trailer with truck fenders to haul his motorcycles. In the video we also check out some of his motorcycles, a 1964 Chevy “Duck Truck”, a lifted 1978 Chevy K10, and more.

They had some cool memorabilia around the shop also, like a vintage plywood 7up sign that was still in really great shape considering its construction, and some old barn wood that lined the walls of his mezzanine that still had moss on it, where he would relax and watch MASH when he needed a break. Something else that was pretty unique on the mezzanine was a slot car track that was suspended from the ceiling and could be lowered and raised to keep up out of the way when not in use.

To see the full tour and even hear some cold starts, make sure you check out our latest episode of Blue Collar Garage Culture Shop on our YouTube Channel, Cruise Culture Magazine.