Down On The Mile High Street: 1967 Chevrolet Impala
With all the relatively solid big Detroit cars from the 1960s getting eaten by The Crusher in these days of $4/gallon gasoline and $250/ton scrap steel prices, how does a rough survivor like this sedan manage to stay out of the Chinese steel foundries?
The probable answer: because it keeps running!
The mid-to-late-1960s full-sized Chevy cars (and I can’t sweat this is actually an Impala, since all the emblems and most of the trim are gone; we might be looking at a Biscayne with Impala taillights, or a detrimmed Caprice) tended to be very sturdy and simple to fix, and they were manufactured in such vast numbers— well over a million units for the 1967 model year alone, counting wagons— that parts are still easy to find. Engine blows up? No problem— just drop in a random 350 from Pick-N-Pull and off you go.
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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These cars were actually pretty good on gas for the day when equipped with the 283 or one of the lower performance 327's. A well tuned 283 could easily get 18+mpg and a 327 wasn't far behind.
Many people that drove full size cars during the 60's and 70's now drive suvs and fullsize pickups. I grew up in the house that I now live in, and many of the neigbbors from those days who worked in the auto industry are still around. The people that worked for gm and drove cars like this back then are now driving silverados, tahoes, suburbans and the like. The retired ford workers that drove LTD's and such are now driving F-150's, explorers and expeditions. My wife's dad worked for the twinsburg chrysler plant, and back when I first met her her dad drove a D-100 and her mom had a 73 polara wagon. Now her dad drives a ram and her mom drives a grand cherokee.