Brandon Pypkowski knows not everyone likes donks, but he’s partial to these particular cars.
That’s why the Detroit man builds them at his garage, Well Connected Customs, on Gratiot Avenue, north of downtown near the Faygo plant.
On a recent afternoon as he sat near a few of his creations, Pypkowski attributed any dislike of the big-wheeled car’s style to a misunderstanding.
Donks aren’t just any cars with big wheels, he said. They’re specifically customized 1971-1976 model year Chevrolet Caprices and Impalas. They were full-sized, affordable family cars in their day, and lots of people have told Pypkowski, 39, they remember their families had them growing up.
But now, Pypkowski builds them to stand out.
“They’re not hot rods, but we turn them into hot rods. They have a lot of characteristics of Chevelles, your Camaros, your Corvettes, as far as suspension and engine goes, but they have the ride of a Cadillac,” he said. “You see a big old car like this that somebody’s grandma would drive to the grocery store and pick up her groceries, but it’s got a 1,200-horsepower motor and it don’t look like it.”
A few cars come to Pypkowski in good enough condition that they will keep a lot of what they had originally, with key upgrades. Others will be almost completely remade. Pypkowski works with his customers to develop a plan for what the build will become. Then the work gets underway.
“I build a cart and take the frame from under the car and literally strip it down to bare bones. I leave the body panels on some of them; some of them I don’t.”
Pypkowski adds aftermarket brakes, “aftermarket everything,” especially the suspension. He’ll also redo the wiring, describing it as a special focus, a job where he can be in the “zone.”
A project can conceivably be completed in six to eight months, but some efforts clearly take longer.
Pypkowski got a big honor earlier this year, when he won an award for a donk, a black 1975 Caprice, at Detroit Autorama.
It’s a car that belongs to a relative, but that’s been “built from scratch.” Like many of the other customs he works on, it’s also had specific work done through other shops that help with paint or detailing. Pypkowski, who has been in his current location for about five years, plans to move in the near future to a location farther up Gratiot that will include a paint shop and give him more options.
In the garage during our visit were a few rides in varying stages of work, including a darker blue Caprice that Pypkowski is building for the children of a friend who died last year, and a purple Caprice that a customer had hauled up from Mexico on a semi. An Impala, painted an eye-catching candy apple green in Florida, was in for an unspecified job.
Pypkowski also gave me a ride in another impressive build, a gleaming brown Caprice that had about 38 original miles on it before it was acquired by one of his customers a number of years ago (A pastor in the Port Huron area had owned it previously but barely drove it).
The car’s white interior is original (as is the engine), but because it sat for so long, the car had a strong odor that took a lot of work to remove, Pypkowski said.
Now, it has more than 3,300 miles, lots of upgrades and rust-colored Forgiato rims. It rolled down Gratiot with a smooth confidence and a cushioned ride.
Pypkowski said he has been around cars his whole life. That includes racing, starting when he was 13. He noted that his late grandfather, John Broaden, was the first African-American to manage a drag strip and worked at the defunct Detroit Dragway.
Pypkowski gets hired as a drag racer now, traveling to tracks around the country. He has a son, 8, and daughter, 13, and his son is already racing.
Pypkowski hasn’t had any formal training as a mechanic, but he used to help his dad work on cars.By the time he was an early teen, he was doing brakes and tune-ups for his neighbors and earning what at the time for someone his age would have been “good money.”
Now, the projects are more involved, and the prices are higher.
Parts for the cars he builds are expensive, he said, in part because not a lot of companies make them. These models, which no one used to care about, he said, are much more in demand.
He recalled his dad buying these same types of cars at auction for a thousand dollars years ago. Now, the original cars can cost from $5,000 to $50,000, he said, and some notable finished donks have reportedly fetched upward of $250,000.
Eric D. Lawrence is the senior car culture reporter at the Detroit Free Press. Send your tips and suggestions about cool automotive stuff to elawrence@freepress.com. Become a subscriber. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit auto shop turns classic Caprices into high-powered donk cars
Reporting by Eric D. Lawrence, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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