"Dads Car"

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That was pretty cool. It's a damn shame they don't make anything that will last the 30 years since he sold it, let alone the 5 it took to track it down anymore.
 
That's a very cool story. When I grew up, mom's little brother and her mom (my grandmother) lived with us until I was 13. Uncle Jim is 7 years older than me and is more like a brother to me than an uncle. He is a pretty serious gearhead. He owned a '65 Impala back in the day that looked exactly like the one in the video, not the SS 396 though, his had a 327. He bought it new in 1965, same color yellow - brings back memories.

Here's the real kicker. Before the '65 Impala was my favorite car he ever owned - a 1963 Impala SS 409. Yep, just like the Beach Boys song, a 4 speed, dual quad positraction 409. 425hp rated, the high performance model, and it was a monster - 4:56 posi, Hurst Shifter, dual point distributor, exhaust cutouts - all the trick shit back then - traction bars (slapper bars). Riding in that thing, I was 10 yrs old and I remember it like it was yesterday when he'd unleash it - it was fukin awesome!

He wrecked that car, passed out drunk and totally destroyed it into a brick pillar - didn't get hurt amazingly.

I can't get the car back for him, if I ever won the lottery I'd have one built for him for sure just to go for another ride when he smoked em up real good.

What I can do, and am in the process of doing, is building him a model. I found one on eBay a while back. Also found some miniture chevy fender emblems. I'm going to build the car to look like his, and put it on a lighted display stand.

That outta water his eyes up.....coming from his nephew.

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Impala%20SS%20Emblems.JPG


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That's really cool.

I'm glad you're on these boards. It's a rare site for an older gentleman like yourself to stick around with us 'kids' and our antics. :thumbsup: We can all learn from you.
 
Very cool stories.

My dad's car (bought off the showrrom floor) that he had to sell b/c of money hardships....1969 Mustang Boss 302. They are 6-figure cars now.....wish I could afford one. I'd love to give so many things back to my dad. He deserves it. He still has the OEM fake wood shifter ($200 value lol)

He always wanted a 63 Vette Split-Window....we might find one of those. He and I have a muscle car fund that will grow once we sell his 47 Chevy 5-window. Not sure if we can find a Split-Window in our price range but it'd be cool to get him the car he has talked about my whole life.
 
my old man had a 442 before i was born... not sure what happened to that car. And a lemans (poor mans gto) that i remember watching get towed away when i was like 4 because the floors were rusted through. my mom used to call it the flintstone car because you could literally move the car with your feet through the floor. heh Junk yard gave him $50 for it i think. He then signed up to be the van driver for work. So, he drove the car pool van for many years. 10 or 12 until the company stopped doing it and 'easy rider' or whatever it is van company came in.

It was a good deal. he basically got free use of a vehicle, personal mileage was docced at like 2 cents a mile. His commute was free, and all wear/tear/gas on the van was provided by the fleet care at the office. All he had to do was hit up two parking lots which were on the way in anyway and pick people up, and be on time every day.
I remember we loaded wood for the new deck in it, went camping in it, went to the drive in movies, etc.... It was our truck that took people to work :)

Somewhere in the middle of this, he bought the '88 blazer. the 2.8 manual s10 blazer. lol the car i learned to drive on during saturday morning paper route. I was 12. :) Dad would help me sat mornings as that was the day the circulars came out in the local paper back in the day (there was no sunday paper back then, and thursday flyers were rare too. So, sat paper was 50x bigger than the rest of the week and was impossible to carry even with 2 bags on a 45+ customer route.) Basically it was a race. Who ever got back to the truck first got to drive it up to the next group of houses/section. I busted my ass. :)
One morning, it was still sandy from the winter. my route was on a big ass hilly road.

I left a 50' one-wheel-peel burn out at 6am when i was 13. Dad still laughs about that one. I kept saying it was the sand. He thought i was going to wake up the whole neighborood and he was going to go to jail for letting a 13 year old kid drive, recklessly, alone. heh
Of course, I did it on purpose. :) But, we'll still blame it on the sand.

I guess that was one of the defining moments when I knew I was into cars and driving. And that automatics sucked.
 
My dad had a 72 Lotus Europa. He rebuild the engine (lots of times, lolucaselectric) and it finally made somewhere near 160whp when he got fed up and sold it.
 
My dad had quite a few cars I'd love to get back for him. His first car was a 61' Impala bubble top. Nothing special but everyone remembers their first car.

I don't know the exact order they came in but later he bought brand new a 68' Chevelle SS 396 375hp with a Muncie M22 4 speed. This one was rare because the factory screwed up and put blue interior in a white car with a black vinyl top. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that it was one of a kind. He threw headers, a race ignition, 5.10 gears, slicks, all that good stuff on it and street raced the Hell out of it. Then he got drunk one night and put it in a light pole. :(

Next came a 66' Tempest (more of the poor man's GTOs) He got it with a SOHC straight six/4 speed combo and again street raced it. Said it'd take down lots of small block cars and eventually they caught on and stopped giving him lengths. No one really knew how to work on OHC cars back then so when the valvetrain started to go he sold it. Never even installed the header he had bought for it and still talks about how he wished he'd done it to see how much faster it'd be.

A few years down the line he had a Mossport Green 66' Vette. When he bought it it was painted a shitty yellow and had side pipes on it. When he and his friends were sanding it down to respray it black they found the original color and convinced him to paint it back to factory. He also ditched the pipes. He was doing some work on a house one day and left the Vette at my uncles house. Well while he was gone a hail storm came threw and did a number on its fiberglass body. :( His friends wanted to again do the body work and get it back to 100%. But for some reason he decided against it and sold it. This car is to him "the one that got away." He's regretted getting rid of it since the new owner drove it away. And I understand fully.
 
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