Matteo Medoro and his 1951 Ford pickup will be competing with nine other Young Guns finalists, including one other Canadian, at the SEMA Battle of the Builders competition.

Medoro, 19, won “the golden ticket” invitation to SEMA by taking top honours at the Seattle Drift regional SEMA competition with his ’51 Ford rat rod.

He has been building the truck for more than two years with a steady training program of YouTube videos and advice from St. Joseph Catholic High School where he was a student.

Medoro will be joined by Penticton’s Chelsie Lesnoski and her Scion FR-S, which won in a fan vote (taking the final of 10 Young Guns spots), so he won’t be the lone Canadian at the SEMA Young Guns Battle of the Builders.

Medoro is excited to be heading to Las Vegas for SEMA. It’s the culmination of years of practice; Medoro started buying equipment for projects when he was barely a teenager, saving his money for a welder.

“Probably when I was 13, I started building stuff,” he told CBC Edmonton.

Medora has learned well. Aside from the project truck, he won two gold medals in Skills Alberta autobody competitions and took a silver medal at Skills Canada in 2018.

When he was 16, his father—who likes cars but is far from a gearhead–picked up the Ford locally on the understanding that the project go ahead.

And Matteo went to work. “It was bare metal and empty.” And lots of pieces needed to be added to complete the build, like a truck bed, countless other pieces and, of course, more horsepower.

The completed Shabba Motorsports truck has a number of creative touches including barbed wire taillight trim, a headliner made from his torn jeans (courtesy the barbed wire), and VW air-cooled cylinders used as exhaust tips.

“I tried to keep it clean. Some of the rat rods out there are pretty, well, ratty.”

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