Junkyard Find: 1960 Chevrolet Brookwood Two-door Wagon
Published: July 15th, 2019
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Once the original 1955-1957 Chevy Nomad two-door wagon became a sacred icon among those who prize Detroit machinery of the Eisenhower Era, all GM two-door wagons attained a certain prestige among those who enjoy cruise nights, car shows, Time Out dolls, and the 119,544th repetition of Hot Rod Lincoln (no, not the gloriously hillbilly original 1955 Charlie Ryan version, the still-excellent-but-now-overplayed 1971 Commander Cody version, which incorrectly refers to the souped-up Lincoln motor as a V8). I would have thought that a genuine two-door 1960 Biscayne wagon ought to have found someone willing to keep it on the street, but this car in a northeastern Colorado yard proves me wrong.
In the full-sized Chevrolet hierarchy of 1960, the Biscayne was considered cheap transportation, the Bel Air was a bit more flashy, and the luxurious Impala parked on the top of the pyramid. Each of these trim levels had a corresponding wagon version, with the Nomad, Kingswood, and Parkwood names going on the Bel Air and Impala wagons; the lowly Biscayne wagon got the Brookwood name.
The chassis build tag indicates that this car began its life at the St. Louis Assembly plant.
We’re looking at about the cheapest possible North American-market GM wagon for 1960, complete with two doors, three-on-the-tree manual transmission, manual brakes, manual steering, and the good old 235-cubic-inch straight-six engine, rated at 135 gross horsepower that year.
There’s some rust, probably from sitting outdoors with missing glass for decades and filling up with snow every winter. Maybe the two-door 1959-1960 Chevy wagon restorers are holding out for the Kingswoods.
McCook, Nebraska, lies just about 220 miles to the east of this car’s final parking space and about 650 miles to the west of its birthplace, so it appears that we’re looking at a car that spent most or all of its life on the Great Plains.
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If you’re cheap, buy a Biscayne!If you like these junkyard posts, you can reach all 1,650+ right here at the Junkyard Home of the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand!
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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"we may not have those lovable but poor crash worthy land yachts of the 50s and 60s" I disagree. The birds just turned into dinosaurs this time. tinyurl.com/y62u9yav tinyurl.com/y6gzao3c
We do have full size crew cab pickups which are today's equivalent of the Olds 98, Buick Electra 225, Cadillac Deville, Caprice, Lincoln Town Car, Grand Marquis, LTD, Imperial, Fury, and Polaris sans the enclosed trunk. So yes the land yachts became the large crew cabs.