Junkyard Find: 1969 Chevrolet Impala
By this time, everyone knows I have a soft spot for the 1965-70 full-sized Chevrolet, and there was a time when every self-service wrecking yard I visited had at least a dozen of these things in stock. Now a year of more can pass between sightings. Here’s a rather weathered but reasonably non-rusty ’69 I spotted in a Denver yard last week.
More than a million full-size Chevrolets were sold for the 1969 model year, and most of them were Impalas (cheapskates got the lower-end Bel Airs and Biscaynes).
Here’s one of the umpteen gjillion small-block Chevy engines built since 1955.
Ah, the good old 327!
No, wait, it’s the good old 350! To complicate matters further, this junkyard— which is one of those operations that has its act together— says this is a 1970 model Impala. It’s possible that it’s a ’70 with ’69 fenders and bumpers, or that it’s a ’69 with swapped-over ’70 VIN plate from another car.
If one is to believe John Delorean in On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors, dealers that dared to install cheaper Motorola radios instead of marked-up factory-issue Delcos were punished severely.
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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Can any one tell me the name of the Junkyard in Colorado where the 1969 impala was found, I have a 2 door sedan and could use a few parts from it as it is the same Mustard green as I have here in Massachusetts, I would like to contact them before it goes totally into the scrap heap.
Can you tell me where I can get the rear bumper for 69 impala?