At most car shows, you’re likely to see any number of extensively modified or resto-modded cars alongside more purely stock rides. The latter attract my attention far much more and I suspect the same is the case for most CC readers. That would explain why I voted this 1965 Chevelle Malibu best-in-show at the Stone City Rumble car show in Bedford, Indiana in May. It may have been modest compared to the nearby ’68 Charger with its lurid purple metal-flake, but it was much easier to relate to. It didn’t hurt that it was a particularly beautiful example, with flawless black paint over blue vinyl.
Its good looks today in 2014 were helped by Chevy’s aim to create a timeless look that would appeal to as broad of an audience as possible in the mid ’60s. This car was meant to be everything to everyone, and if anyone wanted to blame its stylists for being conservative, they’d have to ignore that the intermediate competition from FoMoCo and Mopar was far from scintillating at that point. The Chevelle managed to temper the fashionable straight-edged look of the era with a hint of roundness about its edges and, in Malibu trim seen here, a modest amount of extra jewelry. And if it didn’t benefit from the rubenesque curves of the ’65 B-body, at least there was little of the severity which characterized the ’66 Coronet and Belvedere/Satellite (which I personally love), and the blandness of the famously unloved ’65 Fairlane.
Paul once described the mid-sixties Chevy A-body as the American Opel. This car, in flossier Malibu trim, demonstrates this point rather well, with a 230-turbothift six and not one of the increasingly hot V8s. At this point, the cars were trim enough, and expectations modest enough, that such an engine wasn’t wholly inadequate and if nothing else, this car’s six has helped save it from extensive modification.
As I recall, the owner said the car’s all-stock, and it certainly looks it. This 230 Turbo-Thrift six sat between the standard 120-horsepower Hi-Thrift six and the 195-horse 283 Turbo-Fire V8. Its 140 gross horsepower hauled about 3,100 pounds through a two-speed PowerGlide, the sole automatic available. It wouldn’t be until 1969 that a three-speed TurboHydramatic would be added to the mainstream powertrain line-up to match Chrysler’s TorqueFlite and Ford’s Cruise-O-Matic, though it was available on the SS396 beginning in 1967.
Isn’t this the sort of dashboard you’d want to face when driving east against a setting sun? That’s a lot of brightwork and if there’s any upside to the cheaper, somber injection-molded affairs soon to follow this shiny piece, it’s the decreased likelihood of getting blinded in such a situation (or worse, with a truck riding your tail at night). The owner said that other than the reupholstered seats, the interior is all original and I see no reason to dispute his claim. Nor can I fault him for his choice of seat covering amid all the other show cars’ painted vinyl buckets.
In 1965, going Malibu bought Chevelle buyers such niceties as an electric clock with a second hand, armrests, sun visors, ashtrays as well as back-up lights and front seat belts; in other words, not much. Of course there was the Super Sport, available as a hardtop coupe and convertible, but it was mostly an appearance package, as its standard engines were the same 194 six or 283 V8. Optional on all ’65 Chevelles were 250, 300 and 350 hp versions of the 327 V8. The 350hp 327 with the optional four speed made a very brisk package, even if it wasn’t generally considered a true muscle car like the GTO.
As a promotional prelude to the 1966 production SS 396, Chevy built a small batch of 201 1965 Z16 SS 396 coupes, a very potent package which included a unique 375-horsepower, high-compression, hydraulic-lifter V8, a reinforced convertible frame, oversized brakes, heavy duty suspension, etc. Their primary purpose was to generate publicity, which it did successfully. The 201 Z16s were distributed to a select number of Chevrolet dealers, one each, to be sold to a favored customer or celebrity.
The current, second owner used to operate a service station and bought the car in 1983 from the original owner, who would bring the car in to be serviced. He’s cared for it since and I can’t remember if he said this is the original paint, but the modest kit is pretty much in keeping with this car’s story.
What’s interesting is how much expectations changed while the ’64 A-body was in production. This was a low-ambition machine, with drum brakes, a crude transmission and a poor reputation for handling, but it ended life with a much more contemporary looking dashboard and the (limited) option of a much improved transmission and disc brakes. And that’s not including the changes the platform underwent at Pontiac, Olds and Buick. People were beginning to move out of full-size cars and into intermediates for reasons other than simply cost and even if Chevy management didn’t position the basic Chevelles to be the most noteworthy contenders, an excellent job was done making this a platform easily tailored to the needs and desires of a very large, very diverse buying public.
My young eyes can’t view the purposeful styling of this sedan without making associations with the more famous powertrains of the muscle car era; surely a car that looks this good must have a big bruiser under the hood and go fast. But popular recollections of history are rarely accurate, and while this skewed understanding of 1965 helps explain why so many of these cars are resto-modded, it also makes this very faithfully maintained machine an important reminder of what so many Americans really wanted in their cars back in the day: a simple machine with a hint of added style. We’ll always remember SS396, the GTO and the 442, but for those of us who didn’t live through the era, this reminder of the GM A-body in its most basic form helps keep things in perspective.
Related reading:
Powerglide: A GM Greatest Hit Or Deadly Sin?,
1965 Chevelle SS396 Z16: 201 Built, And A Common 396 Engine Misunderstanding Finally Resolved
1967 Chevelle Malibu Sedan – The American Big Opel
First car I ever owned. Bought it from one of my dad’s coworkers in 1975 for 50 dollars, it had been sitting in a field behind his house for about a year, standard steering and brakes, I put gas in it and a battery, checked the oil, and drove it away. It had the 283 in it, and the engine was worn out, did not go much above 60mph, which my dad considered a good thing for my 17 year old self. Had it for a year, sold it, got a 67 Camaro w/ a 327, then onto a 68 Firebird 400. good times…; ) Why oh why, did I not see into the future and keep the Firebird:(
So wonderful to see what a REAL Malibu (in terms of sales at the time) looked like. This is the kind of stuff I remember dad driving home from time to time. The kind of car that was ubiquitous on the streets of Johnstown back in the day.
Nowadays, to look at a car show, you’d think 1965 was populated by Jan and Dean obsessed street rodders and surfers. This is what their parents drove.
I may (will?) be in the minority here, but I have never considered these very good looking. They have always looked stubby to me. They seem too thick in their midsection and the styling always made their wheels seem too big. The car was certainly not ugly, bit it was somewhat clumsy.
I grew up riding in a 64 Cutlass, which had much better proportions – as did the Tempest and Skylark. But the Chevelle of 64-65 was a rare dud coming out of GM in those years. However, everything wrong with the looks of the Chevy A body was fixed in 1966.
Anything that could make the skinny little wheels and tires of the time look too big is good in my book. 🙂
The B-O-P versions had more front and rear overhang, which made them look a bit more upscale, as per the presumed intent. The Chevelle was unusually “clean” for its time, which had pros and cons. I think it looks good as a SS coupe, with its clean flanks. The grille was of course a bit spartan.
It’s more than just overhang. The BOP cars all had more angular greenhouses. There is something about the Chevelle that tries to soften and tone down the sharp edges that make the other cars work so well.
The 1964-65 GM intermediates are the last “family” of cars from GM where the versions from the “senior” divisions are clearly a step up in style and presence from the Chevrolet version.
The fact that Chevy generally refused to put chrome on the door window frames of its high trim intermediate sedans and wagons right into the 1970’s left them looking like mid trim range cars. Ford and Plymouth generally treated their intermediates a bit better.
Otherwise, it is a fairly clean and easy design to like. But, a nicely optioned Olds would have been much higher on my list if I had been shopping in ’65.
I like the car. A little chrome here and there is ok. The last thing you need is an intermediate or even a compact Chevy that looks like a Cadillac.
Modern eyes and the black paint make this a good looking car. Step into the mid ’60s, paint it white, and it looks like a car that falls short of top trim line status.
I think the 65 Chevelle in the pics above looks perfect as it is. I also like the straight six engine that’s under the hood. While a V8 engine would blow the doors off of most cars, except the biggest and baddest Hemis, not everyone needs, or even wants that much power under the hood. Sometimes just a good reliable six would be perfect. 🙂
I agree with your observation that these cars looked a bit thick and stubby. The other GM intermediates were better looking cars. Even so, as you say, the Chevelle was far from “ugly,” and the dash and the interior overall – really nice looking (but far less safe than later, less attractive dash designs).
Nice writeup, and a good looking car – but while I share your opinion in the first paragraph regarding stock cars (I too prefer to see cars in their more ‘normal’ guise than totally hotrodded/pimped/blinged out etc), I would nevertheless still like to see some pictures of the ” ’68 Charger with its lurid purple metal-flake” you mentioned… 🙂
Always refreshing to see — as Syke mentioned — a “real” car of the era.
And as Paul and others have noted, despite trends and gas price fluctuations, Americans always seem to gravitate back toward sedans of this size (tri-five Chevys, GM A-bodies from ’65 to ’77, and later B-bodies from ’77 on, current model Camry/Accord/et al).
Other than overall height, the ’64-’65 Chevelle is dimensionally very close to the ’55 Chevy, which was entirely deliberate. I remember seeing a factory photo in a book that had the silhouettes of both overlaid to show the similarity.
I’ve always liked original, unrestored, and generally unmodified cars. I also like the 1965 Chevy Chevelle. If there’s any modifications I’d want done, it should be as minimal as possible, and that’d be to improve its performance and handling. I’d also want to give the instrument cluster some proper gauges, like temperature, and battery gauges.
Or you could just skip straight to an old Mopar that came with all that stuff when new. 🙂
Mopars are nice, but I grew up with General Motors cars.
As long as its not a Ford. (grin) As a child, I knew exactly what kind of quality was in Ford products. (bigger grin) And what kind of poor, deluded, no-class fools bought them. (biggest grin of all)
I think their descendents are Mitsubishi customers today.
I think the worst of the Fords is the Pinto. Who in their right mind would design a car that would catch fire after only a 5 mph crash? That doesn’t make any sense.
I’ve never understood why GM used warning (idiot) lights for gauges on their cars, rather than proper needle gauges. I’m not against warning lights as a supplement to the gauges, but I would think they’d be a poor substitute to the gauges.
GM did offer a lot of gauges – in the 50s. I think that in the 60s, GM was early to figure out that it could save some money by eliminating a feature that most of its customers didn’t really care about. The same reason it wouldn’t offer a transmission with more than two speeds in its A body cars until the late 60s. Only goofy old Chrysler kept paying to put ammeters and temp gauges in its stripper Valiants. Which is one reason I was a fan.
For sports models like the Corvette, or for the full-sized trucks, they had gauges. It’s for most of their cars, GM used warning lights. I do like Plymouth Valiants and Dodge Darts. I particularly like the 1967-72 Plymouth Valiant.
Presumably so they could charge extra for them as an option (and then as often as not bury them on the console where you could only see them if you were scrounging around for a lost pen or fallen French fry). The general attitude in Detroit in that era was that basic cars should be basic and if someone wanted more than that, they could just use the options list. From that standpoint (by no means limited to GM), it’s more surprising that AMC continued having a standard temperature gauge and Chrysler stuck with temperature gauges and ammeters even on low-end models…
I got the impression that they limited the options on the smaller cars in an attempt to “move you up” to a more profitable larger car. What they never seemed to consider was the possibility that a prospective customer might “look over the fence” and see what was available elsewhere – hence the success of Japanese cars in the seventies.
The guage package was standard in the SS which included the Tach in the middle spot in place of the clock.
A flawless appearing restoration on one of the dullest cars to ever come out of Detroit.
Power steering, power brakes, automatic transmission…..but no 283 V8??
If you wanted a 283 V8, I’m sure you could’ve asked the dealer.
Darn..that donk looks just like an old sixties’ Holden six!
Scaled up about 30%.
The Holden red 6 was a underbored Chevy 2 just transpose the dizzy and fuel pump, in 66 Chevy 6s were fitted to Holdens and they sold as Chevs in SouthAfrica
Ok ..so would the HR 186 block be the same actual physical dimension overall external size as the Chev 230?? Could I just get a 230 and just bolt it up to my existing 186 mounts, and re-fit the manifolds as just a bolt-up job?? All i would need to do would be to re-jet the Weber ADF (off a Falcon 250) that i use on the 186’s Redline intake manifold.. is the 230 head a nine port head one too???
A 230 cube engine would make my Lotus 7 move along quite well i think.. would the 186’s cam be interchangeable in it do you think??
GMSA recessed the firewall some of course after the HR finished Holdens used Chev V8s anyway and the 6 went into the Opel/HKTG bodies easy. I doubt much actually interchanges like you want, you’d have to get both in pieces and trial fit it all, drop a blue 3.3 in they produce better power than the reds even virtually stock.
Although I’ve never seen a Holden HR in person, I’ve seen plenty of pics of the Holden and I thought it was the same exterior dimensions as our Chevy Nova.
Not quite that simple. Starter motor is on the other side as well. And the Holden Red motor has an external oil pump.
Agreed.. anyway the ‘186’ was a beauty with no issues like cracking pistons due to inadequate piston pin and ring land area, as with the 202).. what a lot of people don’t realize is that GM Holden put some ‘quality’ into the HR 186, at least for the first 18 months of HR production.. during this time a forged steel crankshaft was used in every 186 engine… going back to nodular cast iron for the last few months of production ..the steel cranked engines can be turned into rip-snorting race engines if one so desires ..the guy who built the Donkervoort Seven (Edgar Salwegter, a dutchman who emigrated out here in ’86, had the engine fuel injected at one stage, and even now with just one 4.1 litre Falcon Weber ADM, it still spins to 6,000 rpm effortlessly in road going tune.
Edgar Salwegter is one of the world’s least known car manufacturers.. i think he has hand built around five ‘ESC’ race cars for sale to the public to date after he has circuit raced each one for a while.
He is also a race suspension set-up guru, currently operating from Australia I believe..
His first car (the 186 Seven) was built by hand in co-operation with the late ex-Team McClaren’s Peter Bruin, who constructed the space frame chassis by hand. Latterly Peter was constructing replica D-type Jaguars by hand..
I owned one of these in seafoam green ~ it too had the I6 and powerglide slushbox , PS & PB .
Sadly I fell asleep one late night and hit a lamp post with it and nearly died .
-Nate
I take it the airbag didn’t deploy.
In researching some details on the ’65 Chevelle last night, I noticed a not uncommon discrepancy regarding the L79 350 hp 327 engine. I didn’t remember it being available in the Chevelle. It is shown as having been available in the Encyclopedia of American Cars, as well as some other resources, but it was not shown as optional in the ’65 Chevelle brochure. I suspect one had to know and ask specifically for it.
I’m guessing a Chevelle with a 350hp 327 would have been a pretty effective competitor to the GTO and such. It’s a bit odd that Chevy sat out the mid-size muscle car market for two big years (’64-’65) without making any real effort to participate. An SS327/350 package might have been a popular competitor until the SS396 came along in ’66.
From what I’ve learned over the decades, I wouldn’t be surprised that bureaucratic inertia on the upper floors had a lot to do with the delay. And possibly, an unwillingness to compete internally with the 409 SS? After all, how many other cars of those years had a Top 10 pop song written about them?
Dad never mentioned that car, which leaves me to believe that he didn’t get one in the dealership (odd, as his shop was the second biggest in the Pittsburgh Zone) – and he’d have certainly told me if that had come in. He made a point of mentioning to me every time a new Corvette or Spyder/Corsa arrived in the showroom.
Leaven that with the realization that any interest my father had in performance Chevys was totally to keep his kid happy. His taste was an Impala SS, base V-8 with Powerglide. And cars were units to be moved, not things to be interested in. As with any other trend, the musclecar wave hit Johnstown a good year later than everywhere else. I lived in a real conservative backwater.
“It’s a bit odd that Chevy sat out the mid-size muscle car market for two big years (’64-’65) without making any real effort to participate. ”
Especially with Pete Estes as Division manager. Perhaps the thought within GM (outside of Pontiac) was that the high powered A body was a fad or too small of a segment for Chevy to participate in, and that with enough Corvettes and 409/427 Impala SS-s, Chevrolet was well situated. Of course, the Corvette and Impala, nice as they were, proved to be not exactly what a large part of the performance market was looking for in the mid 60s. I think that Chevrolet management was a step slow in the early identification of several key emerging market segments, which Ford exploited the hell out of.
I think that Chevrolet management was a step slow in the early identification of several key emerging market segments, which Ford exploited the hell out of.
Not the mid-sized muscle car market. Ford sat that one out too, until 1966, and even then, didn’t do all that well in it. And in reality, so did Chrysler, until ’66. Yes, one could get big engines in a ’65 Coronet or Belvedere, but there was no specific package or marketing effort as such. One had to be in the know.
GM really invented the segment, or specifically, DeLorean did with his ’64 GTO, which created a huge market beyond the pure hard-core drag racer set. Yes, Olds had the 4-4-2, but that only really started in ’65, when it got the larger 400 engine.
The muscle car segment really got underway in ’66 (except for the GTO), and frankly, Chevy’s SS396 was a much more successful package than the Fairlane GTA, with its less-than-stellar 390.
I don’t see Ford as actually ever having been all that successful in the mid-sized muscle car category. GM, along with Chrysler dominated it.
Agreed – the midsized performance market is one that eluded Lee and Co.
A 68 or 69 Torino/Cyclone fastback has long been on my American car wish list.
Remember that the Mustang debuted a few months after the GTO debuted, and Mustangs were selling as fast as Ford could build them. Ford tried to stuff a huge V-8 into the 1967 Mustang in an attempt to make it into a muscle car.
Ford’s attention was split between the Mustang and the traditional Fairlane from day one, while Pontiac only had the GTO, and Chevrolet only had the Super Sport version of the Chevelle, until the 1967 model year. The debut of the 428 Cobra Jet V-8 put Ford into the game in 1968, but the restyled Charger and new Road Runner stole the thunder that year.
I think to some extent the delay just reflected the lead times involved in automotive development. There’s a common assumption that each year’s changes were motivated by the previous year’s business, but that’s rarely true unless the engineering involved is pretty trivial — most of the major decisions were finalized before the previous year’s model went on sale.
Beyond that, one of the reasons Pontiac was able to do the original GTO was that Pontiac didn’t really have separate engine families. The biggest and smallest versions of the Pontiac V-8 had some internal differences, but the 326 and 389 were largely identical externally and there wasn’t much difference in weight — less than there was from, say, adding air conditioning to a 326. So, dropping the big engine in the Tempest was really no big deal in terms of engineering.
That wasn’t the case for most of the others. The big 390/396/401 engines were physically larger and heavier than the small V-8s, so there was a non-trivial amount of work involved in getting them to fit the intermediate bodies.
Also, as far as the other GM divisions went, Harold Metzel, Bunkie Knudsen, and Ed Rollert were aware that Estes and DeLorean had really bent the rules in putting the bigger engine in the A-body. The main reason they got away with it was that it sold and it helped sell other Pontiacs. If it had flopped, which even Pontiac’s own general sales manager insisted it would, or if Pontiac hadn’t had record sales in general, the corporation probably would have been a lot less forgiving. I assume that the other division heads held back to see how hard Estes would get his hand slapped. (The original 4-4-2 seems like a pretty obvious bet-hedging move in that regard.)
It is true, though, that Chevrolet was surprisingly out of touch with market trends. Lee Mays, who was Chevrolet sales chief at the time, didn’t like specialty cars — he allegedly didn’t even want the Monte Carlo, which became one of Chevrolet’s big ’70s money makers.
Estes wasn’t Chevrolet general manager then. He was at Pontiac through June 1965 and went to Chevrolet in July, by which time the ’66 cars were already in pilot production. Bunkie Knudsen was still running Chevrolet when this car came out.
Obviously, Knudsen liked sporty cars, but he was also concerned that Chevrolet had too many models and too many variations. That was his rationale for turning down what became the Riviera a couple of years earlier and I think was why Chevrolet didn’t get serious about the idea of a Nova-based specialty car until after the Mustang had already gone on sale.
Thanks for the clarification. My faulty memory had Estes at Chevrolet a year or two before he actually got there.
I agree with the posts that other GM brass maybe thought the GTO would ‘flop’, since they still had the ‘bigger is better’ mentality. “Real racing men will buy Big Cars!”
And, didn’t want Chevelle to steal too much big car sales. Most smaller cars then were meant for bait and swtich. “Why for a few more a month, you can get a real car!”
The issue of automotive safety was bubbling to the surface even before the debut of Nader’s book. GM brass had already clamped down on the divisions’ participation in racing. The GTO was developed in response to this corporate ban, as Pontiac leadership wanted another way to burnish the division’s performance credentials. GM leadership, however, didn’t necessarily want that type of publicity with the growing ruckus over automotive safety.
They were definitely concerned about that, in part because they knew that they would be first in the crosshairs for any kind of public censure.
My understanding was that the discrepancy was because the L79 wasn’t added to the Chevelle until roughly mid-year. Since the 327/350 wasn’t available at launch, it isn’t mentioned in the early ads or brochures, but it was definitely advertised during the 1965 model year — in fact, there is at least one magazine ad that explicitly describes the L79 as a rival for the big-engined Supercars. I presume that there are probably later brochures/catalogs that list the option, although I haven’t specifically seen them.
(It’s not uncommon to have several rounds of brochures over the course of a single model year, although sorting it out later can be tricky because brochures don’t always have indicia, the indicia doesn’t always indicate the month, and even if it does, when people reproduce brochures, they don’t always bother to scan that part.)
I like this a lot,it reminds me of my Vauxhall Cresta PC.This Chevelle is what Detroit did so well,plain vanilla sedans and wagons with 6s or twin barrel smallblock V8s.What my Dad called honest cars,they may use a bit more gas but they were stylish, tough,reliable,comfortable, long lived,and easy to work on.
Go to a show today and you rarely see cars like this any more,the tyreburner and big block versions are in abundance yet back then it was the other way round!My nephew thinks that in the 60s everyone drove chrome laden luxury behemoths or big block muscle cars in red or orange
Likewise the 66-67 HR Holden apart from the twin lights
the 1965 Chevelle always looked frumpy to me, it always seemed like a committee car, the styling was bland; I liked the styling of the Buick Skylark and Pontiac Tempest much better.
“I didn’t know they made Chevelle four doors!”
Said the lad thinking all were ‘muscle cars’ with big blocks, going 12 sec. in 1/4 mile.
More stuff said:
“What kind of motor is that?”
“I bet the 4 doors never sold well”
“How could they dilute the muscle car image making 4 door Chevelles?”
Clean machine. Great styling.
I, too, prefer stock rides at shows and always walk past the resto-mods no matter what. now this particular car is one I always wanted to buy in the mid-70’s but never got around to. Now it is pretty much too late. This car is a nice example but if I were scoring it I would have to take off for the flawless black paint since such a thing was unheard of for an assembly line car back then. When I repaint I make sure it is SS, not bc/cc, and I leave some orange peel afterwards.
The first new car we ever got was a ’65 Chevelle 300 DeLux four door sedan. It had the 230 six and “Three on the Tree”. No power steering or brakes. I bought it from my Mom in ’73 when it had less than 40,000 miles on it. It had alot of rust, alot caused by the car having been t-boned when it was about 6 months old. I think this was caused the windsheild and back glass to leak whick caused the floor and trunk to rust away. I junked it in ’81 with only 115,000 or so because of the rust issues. I have a few corrections on the engine specs. I am looking at the owners manual, 3rd Edition . The 230 six was rated at 155 h.p. @ 4400, with 215 ft/lb @ 2000. I beleive it had a different cam that the 230 in the full size and truck which was 140 hp @ 4400 with 220 ft/lb @ 1600. As noted some where the 327 was available in three diffferent versions. 250 @ 4400, 300 @ 5000 and 350 @ 6200 with the 11:1 heads. Now for the best part of the story that I have mentioned here before. In 1975 I took “The Chevelle” to Thompson Drag Raceway and easily beat a guy from work in his ’75 TransAm Firebird 400 4 spped. I have the slip from that evening of great fun around here some where. I would have had 8mm movies of the event but another guy from work who planned to come never showed up to film the event. In defense of the T.A., I think it was rated 175 H.P. and probably weighed nearly 1000 lbs more that “The Chevelle” at 3000 even.
The 155 hp 230 was a 1964 one-year only version, with a slightly livelier cam and chrome engine trim, and only for the Chevy II and Chevelle. For 1965, the 230 was only built in the standard 140 hp version. We covered that 155 hp 230 here: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/the-quickest-and-slowest-chevy-turbo-thrift-sixes/
1965 Chevelle engine lineup image attached (a bit hard to read).
That T/A had 185 hp, but those were net hp, not gross. Your Chevelle had maybe 125 net hp. His T/A must have been really running badly, or he couldn’t drive.
I’m with Jimbob on this. My ’63 Nova also had the 230/Powerslide tranny combo. The Owner’s manual (still in the glovebox in 1977), listed Horsepower at 155 (gross).
If you had the 155 hp 230, it must have been a ’64, which is the only year it was built. In ’63, the only six available on the Chevy II was the 194.
There was one of these in 2door in my home town belonging to a local hoon he stuck it in a tree backwards made a hell of a mess turned out it was the only one in NZ another rear section complete from the door shuts was imported from the US for a cut n shut repair. That one had a V8 motor though whether original or not Ive no idea.
I had the opportunity to buy a 1964 Chevelle total stripper circa 1981 or so. The guy across the street was selling it for $500. It was a 230 and three on the tree, and power nuthin’. That was real driving, let me tell you. These cars were bulletproof in that they were very easy to wrench on and maintain.
There were loads of these in Canuckistan back in the day. Most were plain, and about half had Powerglide. They were also sold as the Pontiac Beaumont in Canuckistani Pontiac stores. More of the Beaumonts were sold in higher trims, and many had V-8’s under the hood.
What can you say about these things? Well, they drove well, they could easily keep up with the traffic of the day, and stop with it (most of the time). They were simple and reliable. The 230 six was an excellent, modern design that actually was a pretty high revver for the day, the power peak at like 4400 rpm. You couldn’t kill these motors with a stick the were so over-engineered. I often wonder how much GM saved making this engine. The seven bearing crank couldn’t have been cheap. Finally, the Chevelle also withstood our horrid winters better than their competition.
I used to find these early Chevelles dull, but as time goes on I like the design more and more. It’s clean, I like the proportions, and I think there’s quite a feeling of timeless elegance. Restrained tends to age well.
I do also love that this one is so original. These are the cars that were everywhere, and it’s good to see them without modifications.
I used to think that all mid-60s cars made by General Motors were boring, to say the least. Not anymore. These days I prefer anything built between 1949 and 1989.
There is a very similar car being used as a daily driver around here. It was for sale in front of an ARCO station in Torrance for a while at $20k+, which I thought was a bit high.
Ice blue inside and out, with the same powertrain, only the front seat had been reupholstered.