I’ve been trying to put some order into my digital photo files lately, which led me to recover this gem, which a friend and I happened upon while walking in Yangon about four years ago. Classic American cars are few and far between in Myanmar, but this one was probably part of a collection I was to uncover by chance sometime later. Yes, there is a huge treasure trove of classic cars in the middle of the city. This Chevy is a hint of it.
Not far from the Shwedagon Pagoda, right next to a supermarket, lies a nondescript warehouse made of corrugated iron. I once was in the area and needed to get something at the supermarket. As I came out, I noticed that the warehouse door was cracked open and three or four guys were busy uncovering and dusting a superb late ‘60s Mustang convertible. I approached to take a look, but was soon rebuffed by the Burmese folks tending to the Ford, as well as by a security guard, who stood in the doorway.
I only managed to see, very briefly, that the whole warehouse was full of cars. Classic shapes and glistening chrome were just visible in the unlit building – an early Camaro, a couple Tri-Five Chevys, a post-63 Stingray, hints of big American sedans and British or Italian (Euro-sized) sports cars… I had no chance to catch much more than a glimpse inside this house of delights and had to be on my way. As I drove off in my trusted Tokyo taxi, I recalled how, every once in a while, a pristine classic American car would show up in traffic, always too fast for my camera. This is where they likely slept at night. But the heavily guarded treasure was safely kept out of everyone’s sight.
I made a few inquiries, but understood that the man who owns the building and the cars was not the kind of person one could just walk up to and ask for permission to see his collection. I sensed fear – or at least reticence – in the Burmese people I talked to about this, so I let the matter drop. The only other (semi-)classic American car I saw regularly in the city was a Lincoln Town Car. Slim pickings.
But at least my mate Luwi and I managed to capture this 1961 Bel Air. Not the most glamorous of the breed, to be sure, but the low-end (and with few options, probably) nature of this particular sedan is quite pleasurable. I prefer snapping this than a Mustang or a Camaro – not that they’re not great cars, but they’re a tad ubiquitous. It’s not impossible that this car was bought new in Burma back in ’61: the country was still pretty open back then, and a bog-standard Chevy was seen as extremely durable and reliable in Southeast Asia.
Hopefully, I can dig up enough pics to string together a couple posts on old Rangoon’s traffic, as I always meant to do but never actually got done.
Related posts:
Curbside Classic: 1961 Chevrolet Bel Air Sport Sedan – The Last Bel Air Four Door Hardtop, by PN
Curbside Classic: 1961 Chevrolet Impala Sport Coupe – Wherein The Author Meets His Nemesis And Finds Love, by JP Cavanaugh
Curbside Classic: 1961 Chevrolet Brookwood (Biscayne) Wagon – California Patina, by Dave Skinner
How does something this large fit through a fracture in time? And how does it land in a very foreign place undamaged (and, I reckon, unrestored)?
Every car has a story, this one more intriguing than many. It needs to talk, and probably wanted to. It has kept it’s pretty self awfully nice waiting for that day.
Alas, an incomplete tale from a pap snap of a reluctant subject will have to do.
From a hoard belonging to a General, perhaps?
That’s a beauty. It has a dealer badge at the point of the decklid, which isn’t readable in the JPG. Is it more legible in your original photo?
Here is the hi-res file cropped. Have a look. I can’t make it out too well — reads like “DANGELS”… ?
Ah, the good old days when the dealers would drill holes in your brand new car so that you could display his badge . At least today I can peel off the stickers that they use.
That’s the first thing I do when I get home
+1… The new thing is the license plate frame with the dealer’s name and website on it. As soon as I get home, it is immediately turned around if it’s only plastic, to keep the metal license plate from touching the paint.
So if the dealer ever asked, I’d say, “It’s still there. Look more closely.” ?
Not surprisingly, that exhaust is quite unoriginal, as these cars all had their exhausts exit just behind the rear wheels, to the side.
Do you think the dealer badge could say DANIELS?
There’s a Daniels Chevrolet in Colorado — I found the ad below, which dates from about a decade after this Bel Air was produced… but the typeface of the dealer’s name in the ad looks awfully similar to the trunklid badge in your photo.
Just found this vintage badge for sale — it’s definitely Daniels Chevrolet in Colorado Springs:
Quite the combination of car and location. This Chevrolet also dwarfs the (what I’m guessing to be) the kei van parked behind it in the first picture. This Bel-Air has a terrific color combination.
Chevrolet designers did a great job with this ’61. To me it is simply more visually appealing than any ’62 to ’64 and it also manages to look a bit trimmer in the process.
Definitely trimmer. To me the ’61 looks light and fleet. The ’62s rear fender treatment, while neat, adds a lot of visual mass, and by the time you get to ’63 the poor thing looks immobile in comparison.
This car hits home to me, my mother had a series of Impalas and Bel Air’s 64,65,66,68,69 and 72. she never had a 61 but it is the year of my birth and it has a special place in my life as i remember marveling at the tail lights,the side sweep and the clever turn signals. my mother owned a lot of cars and that led to my love and affection for automobiles. In 1973 i asked her the most profound question that set me on the road to a life of cars and wanting the best things in life……i asked her “ma……whats the biggest car in the world?” and she said…………(God bless her)………..Cadillac!. i’ll never forget that day.
It would not be a stretch to say that this car could have been bought new and imported into Burma in 1961. After all it was not until the 1988 coup that things went south on the US- Myanmar relationship.
It could also be a former US Embassy car or a car brought over by an American that was working in Burma.
Yep, that’s all very possible too.
Burma really became a semi-autarky (initially quite Soviet-friendly) after Ne Win took power in 1962. Gradually, new car imports were halted and only second-hand Thai cars were available. Then Mazda started an assembly line in Rangoon in the late ’60s, providing cheap wheels for folks who could afford them (which wasn’t many) and 4x4s for the regime. All that was well before 1988.
Point being: there probably weren’t many Chevrolets sold new in 1961 in Burma, but that must’ve been the high point in the 20th century. And this could be one of them, though the dealer badge (see comments above) might indicate this one came from the US of A.
I couldn’t even begin speculate as to how that 61 ended up in such a place.
A four door Bel air sedan with just the right amount of trim/bling. I would love to have such a vehicle.
C.C did a piece a few days ago on a small car show. Vehicles that regular folks could afford . I’ll bet that Chevy would be a crowd pleaser at any such event.
Agree on the right amount of trim. And the colours on this one are stunning. Here’s a ’61 I found in a small country town a few years back, in colours more like what I remember seeing.
A great sighting!
I always find it strange to catch myself whenever I see a car like this, meaning not painted in a standard color. (I looked it up just to check myself). The cars that surrounded me as a kid were mostly carrying their original paint then and I would be bombarded with various models and their colors, and I developed some kind of weird reflex whenever I see one that does not “fit” within the matrix of my year/model/color memory. And this one does not fit.
Now I think it looks good in this combo and the paint job looks quite nice. I do not begrudge the owner his choice to choose his preferred paint color. But it still a little jarring for me to look at. Does anyone else suffer from this condition? 🙂
Also, perhaps my reaction is heightened by colors which are associated with Purdue University, the primary rival to Indiana University which is where most of my family’s college connections have been. So I guess 61 Chevys should really be painted like this. 🙂 Although some others in the midwest might disagree.
Interesting thought. While it didn’t occur to me until reading your comment, this Bel-Air would be perfect for my area, with Mizzou’s colors being black and gold.
Of course, I didn’t go to Mizzou, also known as the University of Missouri – Columbia.
I expected this was not a standard colour scheme — thanks for looking it up, JPC. It’s a weird combination to be sure, but then there were some weird colours out there in the late ’50s / early ’60s.
Like you, I also have a memory for make/model/trim/color by year and immediately thought this Bel Air did not look quite right. And, though I remember lots of 1961 Chevies with the roof painted a different color (usually white) from the rest of the body, I don’t ever recall seeing a two-tone one with a black roof.
That said, I have really come to appreciate the purity of design on the 1961 Bel Air and Impala line. That such a perfectly preserved on ended up in Burma of all places attests to the widespread appeal of this mid-century modern!
It doesn’t look that far off from the Almond Beige though. I suspect if the vehicle was painted in its current homeland there probably isn’t anyone that has the old color books and formulas to provide a true OE color. Chances are they went out with their current book of colors and did something that was as close as they had.
The Almond Beige I remember was a non-metallic that looked like the telephones we all talked on back then. The Fawn Beige was the metallic one like on the attached photo.
Chevy did offer a distinct gold in 1962 and this looks like its in the neighborhood. I will agree that it can be hard to match the old color formulas in modern paints and I often see colors on cars at shows that seem a little off but at least somewhat close.
Your folks must’ve had one of those new phones – ours was black. 🙁
@ J P Cavanaugh…Oh..I very much suffer from this condition. I was fairly confident that never was a 61 Bel air ever born with that paint configuration/colour.
As a kid we would sit on the curb, and shout out years and models. “Thats a 59 Ford, or “I see a 62 Chevy Impala” etc etc.
Right.such info is retained in the memory bank forever. Slightly modified and all, I do like that Chevy.
Fantastic find! It’s always nice to see a more pedestrian model nicely preserved, especially outside of the U.S.
As a bit of trivia, ’61 was the only year that Chevrolet offered an Impala two door sedan (post) in addition to the usual two door hardtop.
This wasn’t low end when new. While not the top of the line the Bel-Air was fresh out of being the top line Chevy and would have still been worthy of a little envy from those who could only afford the bottom level Biscayne.
Beautiful car and photos. Like you, I also like rediscovering photos of cars I’ve previously taken and done nothing with originally. Even for a basic car, this ’61 Chevrolet has such great lines – looks like it’s moving even while it’s standing still.
If it’s true that’s a non-standard color, it could offer a significant clue as to the origin of the car, and the reason for that is it still wears the original dealer badge (good sleuthing on that one, BTW). I can’t imagine anyone doing a repaint over a factory color retaining and reattaching a dealer emblem, even a metal one affixed with rivets.
So, if anyone feels like contacting Daniels Chevrolet in Colorado Springs, and if they still have records back to 1961, maybe it would explain, exactly how that Bel Air happened to come in that particular non-standard color combination and how it eventually ended up outside the US. A special fleet COPO, perhaps?
Beautiful car, it’s sixty-one-derful as the ads of the time used to say!
We had a 61 Bel Air 2-door sedan in turquoise as the family car back in the day.
A Bel Air like that was the first car I drove, or tried to, at least. I would have been nine or 10. There was an uncrowded two-lane road near our Nashville home, and I made a pass or two at the wheel. When I hear a car called “a barge,” I always remember this: the broad, distant hood that obscured road stripes on both sides, the wallowy feeling of the suspension and seats and the delayed-action steering. I hadn’t driven, but I was reading enough car mags to know what was wrong with Mom’s car. Why it didn’t even have triple taillights, like an Impala!
By the time I got my learners’ permit at 16, salvation came. She traded up to a Mustang. I made sure it had a few sporty touches, like the full gauge package, and I was good to go. Never thought much about the old Chevy after that. The mustang was so superior in every way, except back seat and trunk space. It taught me a lasting lesson about the value of having interesting cars.
That is my car .. i parked near my office..I use it daily. I bought from old man who owned this car since 1963. I restored in 2009 . The Denial logo is original .. that’s dealer from Colorado Spring .. Thank you very much ..and i am very glad to see my can in this great website
I may not be the biggest fan of these, but those are two beautiful Chevys you have there. The 61 and 63 may have my favorite styling of any Chevrolet of the 1960s.
I am really curious about the gold paint color on the ’61 – was that an attempt to match an old paint formula or did you choose a paint color from a different make/model/year?
Excellent! So you’re probably not the guy who owns the warehouse full of cars near Shwedagon? Congratulations on your passion for old Chevrolets — and I bet it takes a lot of passion restoring one in Myanmar ten years ago!
Mingalaba
You can enjoy and see in facebook
https://www.facebook.com/Myanmar-Classic-Cars-Club-372696876088915