When even folks outside of the Rust Belt discover a lack of project-level examples of a particular car without terminal rust, that typically means the market is ripe for steel reproductions of that car. Such is the case with the 1966-1967 Chevrolet Chevy II, replica bodies of which recently began production.

Though Chevrolet sold more than 140,000 Chevy II hardtops those two years, Joe Whitaker of Real Deal Steel in Sanford, Florida, said it’s extremely difficult to find any that haven’t already been restored or hot rodded and that don’t have significant rust. “The ones you do see have huge holes in the fenders, the cowl and the roof skin,” he said.

Yet they remain popular, and the Taiwan-based supplier of sheetmetal panels for Real Deal Steel’s other fully assembled reproduction bodies – the tri-five Chevrolets, the first-generation Camaros, and the 1940 Ford – already had reproduced many of the Chevy II’s 60 or so panels. “When enough of the car is already finished and there’s not that many more pieces to do a full car, it just makes sense to go ahead and assemble entire reproduction bodies,” Whitaker said. “All the tooling for the Chevy II became available about two years ago, so we let them know we’d like to do it. We’d like to be somewhat eclectic and not do just ’57 Chevys, but spread ourselves out a little in the enthusiast market.”

Yet another beneficiary of the Low Volume Vehicle Manufacturers Act.