Steven Hunt is not the kind of person you come across every day. Steven is a 20-year-old who has accomplished something quite extraordinary for such a young man. Motivated by a strong desire to restore an old car, it took Steven a full year and a half, but he did just that. Now he has a 1969 rebuilt Chevy Impala sports sedan purring like a kitten in his driveway.
Looking for just the right car to work on, Steven found the body of a 1969 four-door classic muscle car sitting way back in the woodlot of Andover Auto Wrecking on Main Street in Andover. He noticed the tail end first and knew he had found the right car. He bought the engine block from a friend named Mitchell who worked for his parents at Country Pine Furniture, also in Andover, and then started hunting for more parts. It wasn’t easy! The front grill (which he painted himself) was found online on eBay and had to be shipped from Alaska.
Late last winter, it took all five members of his family to help him haul the rebuilt engine from his outdoor workshop half way up the side of Mount Kearsarge across the icy, muddy ground to the awaiting restored body.
To understand Steven’s passion for challenging work, he explains that he comes from a long line of people who worked the rocky farmland on Mount Kearsarge. He calls himself “original to the mountain,” born and raised right where he and his family have been living for generations.
There is even an interesting coincidental fact associated with this project. It turns out that this very Chevy is “original to the mountain,” too. It once belonged to a great-aunt of Steven’s, Evelyn Morgan, who drove it well into the 1990s. His aunt’s last car inspection sticker is still on the vehicle: 1994.
Asked about why he chose to do this long, involved project in the first place, Steven says he wanted to do the work, on his own, if only to prove that he could. He considers himself a car-building hobbyist and may show the Chevy at car shows at some point.
As a next step, he would like to restart work he has already begun on a 1977 F-150. Found in Sutton quite by chance, it turns out that years ago this Ford truck belonged to his grandfather, Harrison Hunt. It would seem that thanks to Steven, yet another “original to the mountain” vehicle will be getting a second shot at life on the road.