Back in the 1960s there were typically two types of buyers for these less glamorous bare bones 2-door sedans-grandparents and drag racers.
Grandparents liked them because they were functional and cheap.
The missing doors weren’t a factor because kids left home like clockwork in their late teens and early twenties back in 1964.
Drag racers liked them for the weight advantage and the strength of the extra roof post and, like the grandparents-they didn’t care for radios or power windows.
It’s fairly clear that this Chevy post is nothing like the car it was when the Beatles met Ed Sullivan in 1964-far from it.
That’s why Barry Cunningham bought this monster.
This is clearly not a “grandfatherly” bare bones Chevy with sticky plastic seat covers and a tepid 6-cylinder motor– this is a full-blown street brawler with a 454 cubic inch big block under the hood.
It’s a manual transmission-just like your thrifty grandfather would have ordered, but this is a Borg Warner T-10 4-speed. In other words, nothing like the slushy “3 on the tree” manual transmission that Grandpa would have ordered.
There’s a very good reason for the difference-this is a 600 horsepower, ground-pounding, brute power motor-with the kind of torque that would grenade your Granddad’s transmission in about 1.5 seconds.
It’s a fairly sedate car from a distance because the color is the kind of sensible shade of blue that Gramps would have ordered but get closer and the secrets unveil themselves. This car has no inner fenders, a fuel cell and a battery in the trunk-in other words it’s not built for grandfatherly trips to the drug store. This baby is built for shorter trips-1/4 mile at a time.
Barry’s happy with the car-as he says, “I’ve always wanted a post car and it’s a great 100 foot shoot out car” but there’s a good chance he wasn’t inspired by his grandfather’s non-optioned, stripped down ‘64 Bel Air 2-door sedan.
Because it didn’t have a roll bar…
Jerry Sutherland @mystarcollectorcar.com