WORDS: Drew Perlmutter
IMAGES: Brandon LaJoie
ome kids spend their weekends at the soccer field. Hailey Morgan spent hers at the drag strip. Her dad, Kyle Huettel, was a race car driver. A real one. The kind who traveled from state to state chasing races, sometimes bringing three cars to the track and jumping from one straight into the next. American muscle, big blocks, drag radials, quarter miles and eighth miles, chasing speeds over 200 miles an hour. South Carolina one weekend, Louisiana the next. Oklahoma, Texas, North Carolina. Wherever the racing took them, the Huettel family went along.
“My whole childhood, we were taken out of classes and went from state to state to watch him race every weekend,” recalls Hailey, now 24. “Then he retired when I got into high school, and we’ve always been into building trucks since.”
She had spent time around the pit crew and eventually tried drag racing herself. But when she was 15, she decided to try something a little different. She and dad needed a project.
More specifically, they needed something they could build together, something Hailey could drive when she turned 16. She liked vintage four-wheel drives and old trucks, and after spotting a Scout® truck online, she started searching.
Then came the classic $500 internet classified. It was rough. It needed floors. It needed everything. But by the time Hailey and her dad were finished, nothing would be left untouched.
From race cars to a daily driver resto-mod, the goal with the Scout truck was different. This one needed to be something a 16-year-old could actually drive. It needed to start, stop, steer, and cruise with confidence.
Growing up around racing meant the Huettels already had a pretty good place to start. Their property northwest of Houston includes what the family casually calls “the barn,” though that undersells it a bit. It’s an air-conditioned shop stocked with the tools once used to prep race cars. Hailey’s grandfather lives just down the road and even has a machine shop, which came in handy when the build called for custom pieces.
"We just had a huge learning curve... I started calling people, asking for advice from all over the states. The whole community was just super helpful."
The Scout II™ was torn down to its bones. And then some. New metal went in, bodywork followed. Then Hailey and her dad went further, separating the body from its original chassis and swapping it onto a more modern frame.
“I did a lot of research before to figure out what frame would fit under the body,” Hailey said. “Because I was going to be a 16-year-old driving this classic car, it was pretty important to Dad and I that we make it as safe as possible, and just a good driver.”
And then came the thunder. Under the hood went a big ol’ V-8. And a roll cage just in case…remember: race car driver.
But dad just wasn’t building her a truck and handing Hailey the keys. This was Hailey’s. Which meant she had to do all the work. “It wasn’t his first time working on classic cars, but his first time having me involved in classic cars, me making all the decisions. I had to pick the paint. I had to design the interior.”
And her dad couldn’t have been happier with the help. “She had a lot of time in that, and I was very proud of her,” Kyle said. “Cleaning, sandblasting, just—you name it.”
Hailey landed on a vintage blue color that gives the Scout rig its unmistakable exterior. Inside, she went with a camel-colored ostrich interior. Picking the details was exciting, but when you’re 15 and building a vehicle for yourself…there’s plenty of opportunity for second-guessing.
“The color choices kept me up most,” Hailey laughs.
And less than a year after dragging home a $500 project, the Scout truck was back together.
The finished truck is a restomod in the truest sense. From the outside, it is still a Scout II. Underneath, the frame swap and modern V8 power make it something entirely different. Inside, Hailey’s choices make it distinctly hers.
More importantly, the process of getting there changed what happened next.
About a month after buying the truck, Hailey started an Instagram account simply because she thought documenting the father-daughter project would be fun. She shared the teardown, the problems, the decisions, and eventually the finished truck. Build it and they will come.
And the people came in numbers. “I had no idea that there was this whole Scout community,” she said.
Neither Hailey nor her dad were Scout truck aficionados when they started. Her dad knew race cars and square-body Chevrolets. Hailey knew her way around the pits. But Scout vehicles came with their own quirks, parts, problems, and best of all: people. So naturally she started asking questions. To all the right people.
She joined International Scout Owners of the World on Facebook, called owners around the country, asked where to find parts, learned the common trouble spots, and leaned on people who had been keeping these old trucks alive for decades like John Glancy, and Dan Hayes, to name a couple.
“Dad and I were both brand new to Scouts,” Hailey said. “We just had a huge learning curve, and got on the phone with people. I started calling people, asking for advice from all over the states. The whole community was just super helpful.”
And that $500 truck ultimately became the starting line for something much more. The social account that began as a way to document a project with Dad grew into @bad9ergarage and an audience of around 100,000 followers. More importantly, father and daughter just kept building.
“Bad 9er was my race car, and I still have it. It was a ’69 Camaro. That’s where we got the name from, and she took it with Bad 9er Garage, continuing my legacy” Kyle fondly shares.
Old trucks. Vintage muscle. Classic pony cars. Rollers arrive as little more than an empty canvas. Some they build and sell, some they consign, and each one presents another chance for Hailey to make the kinds of decisions she first wrestled with on her first project, the Scout II.
“All of that stemmed from doing this Scout, like the very first one,” Hailey said. “It taught me so much, and then from there, it’s just been learning something through every single one.”
Today, the Scout rig still gets out at least once a week. It isn’t Hailey’s daily driver, nor is it a truck she plans to beat up rock crawling. It’s the weekend cruiser. The after-work excuse to take the long way home.
Hailey’s automotive world has continued expanding, too. She raced while attending Texas A&M and has since gotten into off-road racing and rock crawling.
Her dad may have retired from racing years ago, but together, they’re still finding plenty of reasons to head out to the shop. For these two, there’s no finish line in sight.
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