I've heard it said that you never forget your first car or your first girl. In my case, it is a 1958 Chevrolet Impala. The cars of the '50's - '60's were individual and unique. You could tell a Chevy from a Ford from a Pontiac from an Olds. Now its just so many boxes moving down the road. I am consistently astounded by how many cars look like so many other cars. I remember years ago that Ford was advertising their new model as "you can't tell it from a Mercedes." Well, I thought that was weird. Why would you want to make a car that looked like someone else's? I like unique, individual identity. I haven't really researched it, but my belief was that retooling every year got overly expensive. So they concentrated on safety and convenience over new retooling every year.
So, this was my first car. I loved it. It was a 283 CID (Cubic Inch Displacement) bored out to 301 CID with a 4-barrel Holley carb., automatic converted to a floor-shift stick. It was a hot-rod, for sure. I'm sure it developed a gas-line leak out on the freeway one night. Back then, the radiator cooling fan was run via a fan belt driven by the engine. So as long as the engine speed was up, the fan would blow air back over the engine. but once I slowed down, that blowing wind decreased, allowing the leaking gas to spray up over the hot engine. That, of course, caused an explosion and fire. I was 20 miles out in the country at 9 P.M. Best I could do was sit and wait for a ride into Romeo, then call out the FD. Glen, the fire truck driver, told me later that he burned his hand on the door handle. He recognized the car, so tried to open the door to see if I was inside.
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- 58 Impala 01.jpg (27.99 KiB) Viewed 90 times
A clunker will sell for $12,000.
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Continental Kit and Fender Skirts. I didn't care for either. In those days, the spare tire laid flat on the floor in the trunk. Some cars had a 'tire well' to hold your spare standing up on one side. Both were to save room in the back. Finally they came out with the center tire well, which saved even more room. The fender skirts were simply aesthetics.
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Pretty cool cars. I want a clip of the car being driven taken from the inside, but a good one is hard to find. A search brings up cars for sale, and someone buying one of these doesn't want someone else driving it all over the place, lol. But, yep. Cool way to flow 'in the good old days.'
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So what was our favorite? Was it your first? Show us some pictures.
