Yes, we know that’s not a real car above. But this model (convincingly weathered by a firecracker) is the reminder on Jared’s shelf that he owns an actual Chevelle, or at least pieces that will someday add up to one. Read the post and you’ll understand. Be sure to check out the rest of our toys here.
My dad and I bought our 1967 Chevelle (amateur SS clone) frighteningly close to a decade ago with no engine, no transmission, unidentified bucket seats from something modernish mounted on the wrong sides of the car and with the wires from their electric motors dangling out the doors, and a plywood center console that I could have bettered when I was three years old. Instrumentation in the center console included two identical vacuum gauges, neither of which appeared to have ever been connected to anything. As of today I’ve got an (almost) completed drivetrain sitting in a finished chassis while the body is being patched and painted at a shop I haven’t visited in several months.
I’ll offer the following suite of excuses for it still being incomplete: I had to go to college and spend the summers trying to pay for college, spent several years after college making barely above minimum wage—I think I did those last two out of order—spent only about six months both making enough money to spend any of it on the Chevelle and living within 30 minutes of the garage where the car was kept, and very recently got married. Now that I’ve sat and listed all my excuses, I feel like that’s reasonable justification for taking eight years to only partially reassemble my car.
In retrospect, we probably shouldn’t have bought this car—we had no idea what we were getting into and failed to notice several issues of varying severity, not the least of which was the unpleasant surprise that both rear quarters needed to be replaced—but Dad was the one to write the first check. I was so surprised when he made an offer that I wasn’t about to encourage him to keep looking around; I figured that whatever head injury he had suffered might heal the next day and then we’d never get a car. Apparently I wasn’t the only one surprised that he bought the car—my mom spent the next two years taking Dad to task for it. Once, when my sister’s erstwhile boyfriend stopped by their house and asked to see it, she said, “Oh, the Chevelle? Everyone should have one of those!” She’s behind the project now, I think.
Once it’s finished, Dad wants to cruise around in it. I say that, if all we wanted was a cruiser, a small block and an automatic would have worked just fine. There’s a reason we built a 454 and a Muncie four-speed, and that’s drag racing. Just one of the thousands of civil discussions we’ve had over the course of the project. It’s been a great father/son bonding experience, but I wouldn’t recommend this sort of thing to those who don’t already have a strong relationship. Tools are too easy to throw.
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