National Field Director Charlie Bryson and wife Janie.
with two kids, a full-time job, and working on the side, the fact it was running was a huge benefit. The primered coupe featured a Corvette 283ci engine, three-speed tranny, and 4.11 gears. Charlie’s first run to Ohio was 4,000 rpm the whole way but after a year he finally switched to a four-speed tranny and better highway gears. Leading up to the year 2000, Charlie and Janie’s main ride was the ’40 Chevy and it went through numerous rebuilds. On the first rebuild, Charlie swapped in a Nova subframe, (the first of 52 he has performed for others), slipped in a 327/four-speed and painted the rod with his dad in Antique Poly from a ’69 Buick landing it on the cover of StreetScene while attending the Street Rod Nationals South. In the ‘90s Charlie also started man- ufacturing beds for ‘47-54 Chevy pickups featuring
thicker-gauge sheetmetal from other offerings at the time and he figured if he was making the beds, he should at least own a ‘47-54 built for sucking up the highway miles, hence his amazingly reliable ’47 Chevy featured. Charlie’s favorite bed was for a Quincy local that had a 1-ton truck and wanted an oversize pickup-style short bed using ’47 pickup fenders. It looked awesome and Charlie loved seeing the truck cruising all over Illinois. Soon, with running street rod in hand, he attempted to join his local Illinois Safety Inspection Team, but ended up working out of the Missouri Safety Team. Charlie continued working on the Safety Team throughout the ‘80s, but when he learned the Southern Illinois State Representative position was open, Charlie checked with Janie, asked friends who
66 MAY 2026
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