The 2023 Back to the Bricks feature car was born from the blood, sweat and tears of Mike Neeley, who lost both legs to a landmine during the Vietnam War.
FLINT, Mich. (WJRT) - The 1953 Bellaire serving as the featured car for Back to the Bricks in 2023 was born from the sweat and labor of a veteran who lost his legs in the Vietnam War.
Mike Neeley's labor of love is a show stopper painted in a crimson romance color with gold undertones that glow in the sun.
He's changed "just about everything on the car," including chopping 3 inches to sink the top, adding 1956 Packard tail lights, handmaking tail light skirts, installing French headlights and welding in the dash.
"A lot of custom tricks I picked up over the years," Neeley said.
His wife, Linda, is responsible for that incredible interior. She is a seamstress and did all the upholstery.
Linda is right by his side in the garage and when they are out cruising, unless she is in her own 1965 Mustang convertible.
ALMOST NEVER STARTED
Neeley a gear head who grew up in Flint and has kept his head under the hood of a car since he was about 9 years old.
"I worked on them in the backyard, pulling motors with the limbs of trees," Neeley said.
The 1953 Bellaire featured on all of this year's Back to the Bricks literature almost didn't make it out of the garage. Neeley said a friend bought the car with plans to customize it, but he lost interest.
Neeley offered to help work on the Bellaire for an hour for ever hour that his friend helped in the garage. His friend never showed, so Neeley pushed the car into a corner, put the parts inside and put a cover over it for 23 years.
"It was always eating at me, setting there and doing nothing," Neeley said.
Eventually, his friend turned over the keys. Neeley started overhauling the interior and exterior to create a work of art.
"Guys don't get the time or don't think they have courage or knowledge to build one," he said. "Pick one up and sets in their garage and gets covered up and forgotten for years. Some of them come out. Some of them don't."
LIFE-CHANGING DAY
Neeley drew on his courage to take on the monumental project of rebuilding the Bellaire. He got much of that courage from a fateful day serving America in Vietnam.
Neeley stepped on a landmine and lost both of his legs. He laid in a rice field with bullets flying all around him and thought he was going to die. Instead, he found a new way to live.
"I'd say this: Losing my legs made me grow up," Neeley said. "When I was younger, I would just as soon been dead as to be without a hand or arm or anything else. But when I lost my legs and was put in a ward in California and there were 70 other patients in the ward and every other was worse than you were, as a result of that you see what they can do and you can't feel sorry for yourself."
He decided to get out and do whatever he needed to forge a new life after the war. That meant returning to his first love of doing body work for Flint garages and then starting his own business, Russellville Auto Center.
'JUST AN EVERYDAY GUY'
Neeley tried wearing prosthetic legs, but he found that they just got in the way while he was working in the garage.
"Too cumbersome, and around cars scratch and bent them, so I set them aside never went back to them," he said.
Neeley used his skills to customize cars for the eye and to adapt vehicles so he could drive anything without his legs. He shrugs it off like it was all in a day's work.
"I don't consider myself nothing special or an inspiration. I'm just an everyday guy like anybody else," Neeley said. "I just have a handicap that I have to deal with and it's just part of my life and I don't consider it special."
Neeley's legacy is pretty special with a long history of building cool cars while helping others find the courage to put their dreams on the road.
