John Lloyd posted this snapshot of his 1956 Chevy wagon as it was in 1974. It’s highly representative of so many Chevys from that time: good used cars easily made to go a bit faster.
Here’s his comment about it and what it had under the hood:
Had a ’66 327 engine, photo from 1974, Owosso, Michigan. Sold it that year and moved to Australia.
I can relate. In 1974, I’d have liked to have one just like it too. The wagon was a lot more practical than the others, for a perpetual vagabond like me, back in that time.
I had owned my ’56 150 2 door 3 years (out of 20) at the time. I drove her, also with a ’66 327-275hp) all over southern California. She was my daily ride up to the old ACCD on 3rd Street in L.A.
Upon graduation she became our tow car to pull the largest U0Haul trailer with everything we owned, back home to Wisconsin to start my first job as an Industrial Designer. The towing trip was at the height of the first gas crisis, with a car that got 8-10mpg!!!. My “56 went back to CA, to IN, Ohio, Texas, Wisc and finally back to IN again. Twenty years and 85,000+ miles of mostly smiles!!
I NEVER should have sold her, and now I couldn’t afford a nice ’56!! My 2019 Accord cost less than a nice ’56 is now worth!!! DFO
Beautiful wagon! My grandpa drove one and my mom remembers it fondly – I believe I still have the sales receipt for it somewhere.
As a guy from Michigan, Owosso for Australia seems like a pretty good trade, and there’s probably an interesting story there in and of itself.
I really don’t recall Tri-fives (or other cars from the 50s) being used as used cars all that much when I was growing up in the 70s, but it could because the road salt used in my part of the country (Ohio) ate most of these up after a few years.
To my recollection, these were already considered “classic cars” even by the mid-70’s thanks to the boom in ‘50s nostalgia from movies like American Graffiti and TV shows like Happy Days.
Tom Halter, in NE OH, 1970, a high school buddy bought a decent “survivor/driver” ’56 from his woman neighbor, and it seemed something really special to me, ’cause at that point I wasn’t seeing a 14-year-old car as **anyone’s** daily driver. (Today’s, that’s an unremarkable 2006 model.)
I wonder if the same could apply for the 1949-52 and 1953-54 Gens as well? Althought some said the 1953-54 said it was new sheetmetal and the basic frame was more or less modified. https://www.hotrod.com/articles/0909sr-the-1949-54-chevrolet/ They seem to live under the shadow of the Tri-Fives and even the batwing 1959.
The big changes were for ’55, not just the V-8 and 12 volts. Frame and suspension were completely new. The torque tube drive thru ’54 makes engine/transmission swaps more complicated as well.
A restored 1956 Chevy 4 door was offered as a prize in the 2019 Halloween episode of the Price Is Right game show, which was rebroadcast yesterday.
The 55-56 Chevys are nice, but I’d feel paranoid about having that pointy steering wheel “bullet” pointed at my chest all the time! Is this the most unsafe design ever? Thankfully, the “bullet” disappeared in ’57.
Rib-spreader included at no additional charge. 🙂
It amazes me at the things we panic over anymore. No, that design wasn’t particularly unsafe back in the day. And it never occurred to us that it might be a safety concern.
Then again, I bicycle daily without a helmet, and in states where helmets are optional have been known to do around town motorcycle riding without a helmet, either.
I would reply that it was always unsafe, but then so was every other car back then so we never thought about it.
I’ve made the joke about the Spear-O-Matic steering column before, but this one may just take the cake.
That is an awfully nice looking Chevy for a fifteen+ year old car in the mid 70s. It was surely an “import”.
I can recall a handful of 50s cars serving as daily transport around that time. Some distant relatives in Minnesota bought a 51 Ford sedan from an elderly lady and their high school kids were driving it. And a family friend’s early 20s kid had a 58 Ford wagon. And I bought my 1959 Fury sedan in 1979.
Yes growing up myself in the 70s, (I was ten in ’76) we did not see many cars from the 50s here either. And when I did, it seemed like a really, REALLY old car. Even our ’62 Buick Special Deluxe wagon seemed like a relic but with a really cool aluminum V8.
I also had a ’56 – a “Handyman” wagon which I purchased in about 1968. A bit rusty, but I patched up the floor and installed a 360 hp 396 from a Chevelle. Being young and stupid I sold it as I couldn’t afford snow tires and I needed transportation. I got a phone call a couple of weeks later from the purchaser, who had lost control [it was a handfull] and wrapped it around a pole.
In the mid-60s, a friend had a 56 wagon that we used as a “woods car”. It was his father’s work car, passed down when the headlight bucket rusted out. This was typical for New England 1955-56 Chevys, which collected dirt and salt in that area. He was exercising the Blue Flame on a misty/rainy day and skidded into a tree. His girlfriend, later wife, was bruised, and that was the end of that. That left us with another friend’s 50 Chevrolet, which had no brakes to cause skids. He cut the top off with an ax, which I daresay was even more treacherous than the 56 steering wheel. It fortunately got stuck in a swamp before anyone was decapitated. Strange days, which we somehow survived.
Thing that stands out to me on this are the wide white steel wheels, I really like that look, very 50s stock car style
I don’t recall any ’50s iron in my HS parking lot in 1976 when I started HS. Well, maybe one or two. By then all of us gearheads were into mid-to-late ’60s and early ’70s muscle cars…Chevelles, Camaros, Mopars, Mustangs, etc. which were cheap and plentiful, if often pretty rough, by then.
I do remember our driver’s ed teacher lecturing us in class to stay away from driving 55/56/57 Chevies because we’d be impaled by the steering wheel in a frontal crash. Of course, he showed us gory b/w slide images of actual fatal incidents in a tri-5 Chevy to try and drive home the “point.”
In 1977 I occasionally car-pooled with my boss’s boss. He alternated between his ‘67 Chevelle and his ‘56 Chevy which he’d owned for about 15-20 years. Even 10 years earlier, when I was in junior high, tri-5’s were considered pretty desirable as cheap performance cars, so by ‘77 it was cool to ride in ‘56. But it wasn’t that unusual to see them on the road then as daily drivers. And in fact, I just saw one today, a wagon no less.
’55 and up Chevies had an obvious feature that no other car had, and that is the easy updating/backdating of the small block V8 engine, which was a sort of universal part. Whether or not engine swapping was easy in specific other cars, it was obvious to us dumb teenagers that the 265/283/327/350 V8 Chevy was an “easy” swap, and donor engines were everywhere, back in the day. Also, open up the performance parts catalogue “wish books”, and small block Chevy stuff was always there. Ford and Mopar guys, as well as the other GM guys, had to “know their stuff”, but the Chevy power train was almost always the beginner’s starting point for those of us getting into the car thing as kids.
Even swapping out a Chevy six for a V-8 was easy. Everything just bolted up. I did a 250 six to 283 V-8 on the ’71 pickup. 283 was a ’64, made no difference. Even the inboard pivot point on the engine block for the clutch linkage was identical.
I had a very stock ’57 Sedan for a long time. Ended up selling to a collector from Sweden. It was not as modern as a ’57 Ford or Plymouth, but very well built. Outside the rust belt these things lasted.
The very first car I ever bought with my own money was a ’56 Chevy 210 2-door sedan. I paid $50 for it, which was about what it was worth. This was in 1972 or ’73.
The second ’56 I bought was a running/driving 150 2-door sedan for $400, in 1974. About a year after I bought it, a friend pulled out the 6 and we put in a 283. Several years after THAT, with no money to make it better and seeing no light at the end of the tunnel, I sold it.
I can’t believe what some are worth now, either.