The restoration is nearing completion and Sandkaut hopes to take the finished product to the Bonneville Speed Week, a week of racing held each August at the Bonneville Salt Flats.

"It would be kind of like an anniversary for the car," he said.

During the past year, the entire car has undergone the automotive equivalent of massive surgery — doors and trunk replaced, metal siding patched up, a new engine and upholstery — under the hands of an expert surgeon.

Hutchings began restoring cars in 1976 and moved his hobby into a deserted body shop in Lehi in 1989. He doesn't know how many cars he's restored, but he said he'd put the number somewhere around 100.

"My old partner (at the shop) told me I was afraid of nothing," Hutchings said. "No one in his right mind would have tackled some of these (cars)."

Photos of finished beauties, flaunting shiny paint and chrome, are tacked to the wall, next to a list of scrawled phone numbers, mostly of old friends and other "car nuts," as Hutchings calls them.

One doesn't have to look far to find them, though. There are usually a couple hanging around the shop, talking about their latest project or tinkering with one of the vehicles in the vicinity.

Ron Shumway, who has been working with Hutchings for about seven years, was working on a paint job for a 1971 Jaguar the other day.

"I came in here to help (Hutchings) finish one of his cars and I just never went out," he said.

It's a flexible arrangement, said Shumway, and it gives him the opportunity to do custom work.

"If I want a day off, I take a day off," he said. "But normally I just tear into (a project) ... until it's done."

The hobby is an expensive one — Hutchings estimated the materials alone for the restoration of the '57 Ford will add up to about $20,000 — but his friend, Del Ray Hardy, said it's like a disease.

"It's called rustitis," said Hardy, an Orem resident.

Some of the cars have been sold, others are fixed as favors for friends, like the '57 Ford. The automobiles displayed in the makeshift photo gallery on the wall have ended up in a variety of places, including Australia, Texas and Oregon. But most spend some time cruising around Utah Valley before heading off to new homes.

Every Tuesday night all summer long, Hardy, Hutchings and quite a few others meet at different hamburger joints to listen to '50s music and admire each other's rides.

"Cruise nights," as they're called, are an excuse to feel 16 again, Hutchings said.

"When we was kids, we used to hang out a lot at these places and the women looked good but the cars didn't and now it's flip flopped," he said. "I told my wife that. She didn't think it was too funny."

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E-mail: rwestenskow@desnews.com