Don’t bother tempting Matthew Miller with a late-model Camaro, Challenger or Mustang. Unlike many his age, the 38-year-old native of south Florida is, and always has been, into older cars and trucks.

Miller’s passion for vintage wheels has reached its zenith with his current project, “Hell’s Belle.”

That’s the name of his 1950 Ford Custom that competes in the C/Gas class with the Southeast Gassers Association. He hasn’t won a round of eliminations yet in his rookie season, but that shouldn’t be surprising for a racer operating on what he calls a “super-shoestring budget.”

“It looked a lot easier from the stands,” said Miller, “but I wouldn’t wanna be anywhere else.”

To appreciate why Miller has undertaken this path, it helps to understand how he arrived at this point.

Miller grew up in Palm Beach County, Florida, and his firefighter father often took him to sporting events. Those outings included trips to Moroso Motorsports Park, most recently known as Palm Beach International Raceway. It was there he witnessed the jaw-dropping performances of Top Fuel dragster, jets cars, and jet-powered semis, so it was no surprise that he gravitated to racing when he got his driver’s license.

Like hordes of others his age who were inspired by the franchise of “Fast & Furious” movies, Miller engaged in street and strip drag racing with a souped-up Mazda MX6. 

When he joined the Air Force nearly 20 years ago, Miller said he got into the customized smaller-cab-truck scene. But soon his focus changed again, to a Cadillac and “some older cars on air ride and stuff.”

Then, when stationed at Dyess Air Force Base in Texas, Miller purchased a Mercury Marauder equipped with a Vortech supercharger. After spending a year in South Korea, Miller got orders to move to Germany for a four-year stint, by which time he had acquired a 1929 Ford Model A and another from ’31.

“I was invited to a bunch of car shows. For some reason, they always like seeing the Model A there,” 1st Sgt. Miller said. “The ’29 was a roadster with a rumble seat, and at the time I only had my two oldest boys, so we’d throw them in the rumble seat and my wife in the front. It was a lot of fun – definitely turned some heads.”

Since he concluded his stay in Germany, Miller has been stationed at Robins (Ga.) Air Force Base. His inheritance from his grandfather was a ’65 Ford Galaxie convertible, and one of his buddies owned a ’66. One weekend, they took their cars and headed out to nearby Silver Dollar Motorsports Park to watch a race/car show that was billed as “vintage drag racing.”

That Southeast Nostalgia Drag Racing event lit a fire under Miller, especially since he already had a penchant for older cars. 

“I watched the first car do a wheelie, and I said, ‘This is some cool stuff,’” Miller said. “I’m already into old cars and owned old cars and was into period-correct stuff. Some of the cars at the race were cool, and some were not my definition of what a gasser would be, but I really enjoyed it.” 

It was while he was sitting in the stands and perusing his phone that he found a “shoebox” for sale. He reached out to the owner in Kannapolis, N.C., and they worked out a trade for the ’50 Custom in exchange for Miller’s 1960 Ford F-100.

His intention was to build a car to compete in SNDR or Southern Outlaw Gassers competition. Ever the wheeler-dealer in search of parts, Miller eventually touched base with Texan Billy McPhillips, who was interested in buying a transmission. They decided to meet at the SEGA race in Holt, Fla., to make the exchange.

Miller was blown away by the authenticity and attention to detail of the SEGA cars, which is a direct result of the vision of series founder Quain Stott, a former IHRA Pro Mod world champion.

“We went up there and I experienced real gasser racing,” Miller said. “Every car that was there was how I imagined it should be, which was period-correct. I could tell there was some newer stuff, and it was very much done super tastefully. Everyone was super nice, I could talk to any driver or crew, and they’d tell me anything I wanted to know, they answered all my stupid questions. I just felt welcome right away.

“So we get to our seats – we’ve got a tent at the side of the track – and I watched Gabe (Gabriel Burrell) and his ‘Southern Flyer’ pull this gnarly wheelie. And then he’s going downtrack and he blows the clutch out of it or something crazy, and he’s trying to keep a’hold of it and gets to the line. Then he takes it back to the pits and they have it all torn down. You’ve got Jimmy Huff up on the trailer taking stuff off of his car to put in Gabe’s. It was just so cool to watch how it was all going. It was a community and relationships that you don’t find if you just surround yourself with bracket racing or test-and-tune nights.

“It was just an awesome experience. I watched Tony Turner doing wheelies … and everybody was out there driving their asses off. Where we were sitting was near (the shift point from second to third gear), and they were still doing wheelies. I looked over at Billy and I said, ‘Well, you’re buying this transmission – but it’s going to cost me more because now I know where I want to be.’”

It took over a year for Miller and friends from work and a car club, the Graveshifters, to get the Custom ready for the track. The build was a much more detailed process than he had expected, and the task was delayed by the difficulty in getting certain parts in hand.

“I thought it was going to be something easy like putting a transmission in, putting in a clutch pedal, run some piece-of-crap truck 302 and have fun,” he said. “I quickly realized that wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

John Leidich, who was Miller’s supervisor 16 years ago when they were aircraft mechanics, crossed paths with Miller at a SEGA race. “He found out I was building a car in my garage, but the car was pushed over in the corner. He and some of the other guys were, ‘Let’s get this thing out and get it going.’” Friends such as Shawn Bennett, John Lydick, and Derrick Pilarsky were among others who helped accelerate the project.

The process moved with sloth-like speed. With two weeks left before the 2022 SEGA opener at Reynolds, “Hell’s Belle” was still little more than a body and the two frame rails. Completing the car went down to the last minute, to the point that McPhillips, who came from Texas to pitch in, was cutting the Lexan for windows on Friday night – when the car should’ve been at the track for a SEGA test session.

That session was rained out, meaning that on Saturday, with the show condensed to a one-day affair, Miller rolled a completely untested car to the water box for its maiden voyage down the strip. Their collective creation delivered far better than expected.

“All the guys were there – like, 12, and my family – and we revved that thing up to 7,000 rpm and she did a wheelie and she went down the track, straight as an arrow, all four gears, and you would’ve thought we won a trophy or something,” he said. “We were tickled to death – and that’s our local track. Quain and (SEGA tech chief) Randy (Edmonds) looked at the car, ‘Man, looks good, really proud of your team,’ and made us feel welcome to be there.”

At first, that simplest accomplishment was cause for celebration. More than halfway through the SEGA season, though, Miller’s champing at the bit for his first round win.

“The thing that’s cool about SEGA is that it’s not necessarily about the car or electronics, it’s about the driver,” said Miller, who said his elapsed times have improved by 7/10ths of a second. “You’ll have a Tim Hall, who won every race in C/Gas until the last one, blow the tires off or have guys redlight or clutches pull you through the lights. I’m racing cars that are 3/10ths faster than me, but I’m beating them on the tree and having a better chance because it is first-to-the-finish-line racing. We haven’t won a round yet, but it’s not deterring us from going out there.

“We found out that even though we’re not the fastest car out there, at least our car looks good, it’s got the right style, the right lettering and paint and gold leaf, and it’s not like anything else out there. Even though we’re on the trailer first round, it all goes back to the coolness of the type of racing and cars that’re out there, and the fans that will follow you. I’ve had people who came from three states over to the race in Lyons, Indiana, who made sure to say hi to us because they followed us on Facebook and watched us build the car.”

He’s also enjoying introducing his wife, Brittany, and his three sons – Aiden, 17; Isaac, 15; James, 7 – to the sport he’s enjoyed for more than two decades.

“She puts up with it because she loves me,” he said. “I don’t know that she’s ‘into’ cars, I think she just knows I’ve been into cars since I was a little kid.”

In addition to the ongoing challenge of unleashing speed out of “Hell’s Belle,” Miller is doing whatever he can to ensure he can attend each race. 

“We’re a low- to no-budget team, just like Diana and Dana (Casto), Bobby Frisell and Ernie Smith,” he said. “I have to scrounge and beg for gas money. We’ve got T-shirts now and that’s helped some. I’m not nearly mid-pack in C/Gas yet, but we’re having fun doing it, we’re showing up for every race.

“And fans really like the car. We always remember how important it is to have time for fans and share what we do because if it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have a place to do this. We wouldn’t be able to provide a show and allow people to reminisce. I get a lot of people come up and talk to me about their dad owning a Ford like this, or wanting to know if it’s a ’49 or ’50, or say, ‘Me and my girlfriend Nancy had our first kiss in the back seat of one of these.’”