Time Traveler '68 Impala SS Convertible Wakes Up In Denver
I see a fair number of total beater 1960s Detroit convertibles on the street, and nicely restored examples show up from time to time, but I’m not sure what to make of this clean-but-nowhere-near-show-quality Impala SS parked on a freezing night in downtown Denver.
This car appears to have about five years of wear on it— original paint, original interior, not obsessively cared for but just not old-looking. How? Why? It’s possible that it spent 35 years in a garage… or perhaps it just popped out of a wormhole from 1973! Sorry about the crappy cell-phone photos; I don’t bring my good camera on late-night taco-obtainment missions.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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On a very rare 20-degree day in Tacoma last Tuesday we saw a 1969 Pontiac convertible. Didn't get a good look at it, as it had turned by the time we got to the intersection. An odd day for such a car to be out as there was road sand everywhere. That Impala does have a collector vehicle plate on it rather than normal pass. plates.
My '77 Chevelle would be considered a decently maintained original car, down to the faded and in some places down to the primer original metallic green paint. I'm fixing the interior up, and making it mechanically sound, but leaving the exterior alone for now, as I'm not afraid to drive it on long road trips, to work, run errands, basically drive it like it was meant to be used. Heck in the 18 months I've owned it, I've put 10,000 miles on it. Sorting the 305 out and swapping the fried THM-350 gives me great pleasure after deaing with computers all day. I had a '76 as my daily driver for my first 8 years of my driving career so I'm no stranger to it. Where I work there are tons of BMW and Mercs, but that slightly battered and worn Chevelle gets the looks. Unlike sis' BMW 3 er which I feel completely invisible in.