David’s 1964 Impala
In 2023, I was commissioned by one of my accounts to photograph one of his cars, which had never before had a formal shoot, for a cover feature. It was his 1964 Impala, as original as if it had rolled out of the factory, and it was completely unrestored - only cleaned and detailed. Even more, it looked brand new in every respect. David (whose full name is being left off at his request) has written a story about the car, and I thought it was important, fun, and interesting enough to include here, in its entirety:
“ADRIAN’S CAR”: 20 YEARS BUT WORTH THE WAIT
It was a hot summer day in Niles, Michigan in August of 1988. We were in town visiting my mother and I was returning home from running some errands. About three blocks from her house a got a quick glimpse of an old car in a driveway as I drove by so I pulled over to get a better look at what I had seen, and there it was…a gorgeous 1964 Chevrolet Impala SS. An older gentleman, whom I will refer to by his first name, Adrian, had it out in his driveway and was washing it.
I introduced myself and paid him a couple of obvious compliments about the car and he told me what it was and that he was the original owner. As politely as I could I asked if he was interested in selling it. His answer was a fairly blunt “no”. I hung around for couple minutes more in silence watching him wash the car and then excused myself and left.
Not being one to give up easily, every time we returned to Niles for a family visit I stopped to see Adrian to talk for a few minutes and try to get to know him better. As time went by the visits got longer and more cordial and every few years I would gently ask if he had thought about selling the Chevy but his answer was always the same…no…and I would reply that I was sincerely interested in it and hoped that he would give me a chance if he ever changed his mind. Occasionally we would go out to his garage and look at the Chevy but the garage was small and dark so I could only open the doors partway to look inside and I never asked him to pull it out on the driveway to have a better look. But even so I could tell that the car was a real jewel that had been meticulously cared for.
This routine went on for many years and during that time Adrian and I became good friends. Eventually my mother passed away and our trips to Michigan became less frequent so instead of face to face visits I would call him instead. We occasionally talked about the Chevy and once he confided that his worst fear was that someone would get it and turn it into a low rider.
In August, 2008, exactly 20 years to the month that I met Adrian and first saw his car, we were having one of those phone conversations and after about an hour I brought up the Chevy and asked again if he had given any thought to selling it. Expecting the usual “no” I was stunned when he said yes he had and wanted to know what I thought he could get for it. He was going on 80 years old by this time and said he was having trouble with the clutch due to arthritis in his knees. As shocked as I was to hear that answer, I was poised and ready for this moment and had been keeping up with the fair market value of the car. I made him an offer on the spot and he accepted, and just like that after 20 years I had finally bought Adrian’s car without ever once driving it, hearing it run, or even sitting in it. Remembering his worst fear, I promised that I would never customize, modify, or hot rod his car and would always give it a good home to help ease his mind and reassure him he that had made a good decision.
As I began making plans to pay Adrian and get the car I realized this was a good friend I was dealing with, not a used car lot, and it would be disrespectful after 44 years of ownership to send him a check in the mail and have a truck show up to get the car. Instead I flew to Chicago, rented a car and drove to Michigan to hand him the check personally. I spent the whole day with him and took him out to dinner that night. For the first time I was able to get a good look at what I had just bought and noticed that although it was always garage kept it was starting to suffer from lack of use and proper attention. The odometer reading was 38,750 miles and I remembered that it had about 38,000 miles when I first saw it, meaning that it was driven less than 750 miles in the last 20 years (the current mileage is 39,886). I asked him many questions about the car and had him tell me his stories about it while I was writing down everything he said. At one point, he went to his bedroom and returned with an envelope and said it was the title, but in that same envelope were the original window sticker, dealer invoice, shipping receipt, and the dealership bill of sale!
Adrian special ordered the car in late 1963 from Frank Edmond Chevrolet in Buchanan, Michigan. He wanted an Impala SS instead of just an Impala because he thought that they were “the best” and said he had to order it since the local Chevrolet dealers did not have SS models in the showroom or on the lot. He specifically wanted the optional red and white interior, which was only available with a limited number of exterior colors, so he picked the exterior colors (Desert Beige over Palomar Red) so he could get the interior he wanted. I asked why he chose the 327/250 instead of the 327/300 and he said he had talked to guys with the 300 hp engine who had problems with it. The only dealer options he added prior to delivery were a matching passenger side rear view mirror and undercoating, both of which are shown on the bill of sale. He told me the car originally came with one rear slant antenna so he had the dealer add the second one since “that was the style back then”.
When the car was still brand new, Adrian got some red carpet remnants and handmade his own floor mats to cover nearly every square inch of the original carpeting and he put white vinyl floormats on top. He also loosened the screws on the door sill plates and inserted clear plastic underneath to cover the strip of carpeting between the edge of the floor mats and the door sill plates to protect against shoe abrasion. All of this protective material was still in the car when I bought it.
He said that he never took the car out in the snow or road salt, and that it was only out in the rain very few times. He told me that he never raced the car and never even spun the tires. He said that drag racing and spinning the tires on a car was “insane”.
He occasionally drove it to his job at the Bendix Corporation in South Bend, Indiana on nice days in warm weather but quit after three or four years due to auto theft incidents in the Bendix parking lot. He continued to drive the car regularly until he made a trip to Chicago in 1972 for a funeral. When he came outside afterwards he saw a Chicago policeman standing by his car who told Adrian he was guarding it and advised him to never leave a car like that unattended again since it would likely be stolen within a half hour. This incident scared Adrian to the point that he kept the car parked in his garage and drove it very sparsely after that and only to places where he did not have to leave it unattended. Instead, he bought old used cars to use for daily transportation and to go to work. In lieu of driving the Chevy, he would start it up once a month and let it idle for 15-20 minutes and then turn it off again. Of course, 36 years of this was horrible for the carburetor and exhaust system, among other things, which I later found out.
The car arrived in Denver by enclosed carrier soon thereafter and the early days of ownership were often less than endearing. I noticed that it arrived with a little over a quarter tank of gas in the tank that had probably been there for a very long time so I decided to burn up as much as possible and get a fresh tank of gas. I was at the gas station for the first fill-up and had started pumping the gas when an admirer came over to see the car and started asking about it. After about a minute I noticed a strong smell of gas, looked down, and I was literally standing in a pool of gasoline. I put back the nozzle, got in the car and quickly left, leaving the admirer standing there will all that gasoline on the ground. As soon as I got back home I crawled under the car to have a look and discovered that the gasoline filler pipe was connected to the pipe coming from the tank with a short rubber hose. The hose was still original but deteriorated from age with a hole in the bottom the size of a half dollar!
For the next six years I drove the car periodically but was unable to do much with it due to work and family constraints. Finally in 2014 it was time to bring the car back to its full potential and I began what turned out to be a year long cleaning and detailing process and making a few minor repairs that were needed, but not restoring or repainting anything. During this process I learned a lot about how original the car really is. It is totally rust-free and is still riding on all four original Delco spiral shock absorbers that have no leaks and still work fine. All four coil springs still have the assembly line tags on them and several assembly line markings are visible on the firewall, hood and right front fender. The distributor cap is still the original Delco Remy “PATENT PENDING” (no R) cap, the ignition coil is still original, and the spark plug wires are the original Packard Radio 1-Q-64 date coded wires. The engine has never been out of the car and evidence strongly suggests the valve covers have never even been removed. A portion of the VIN is clearly stamped on the engine stamping pad and on the side of the transmission housing. Some original engine paint overspray is still visible on the exhaust manifolds and the car still has three of the four original Guide T-3 headlights.
When detailing the interior I removed the floor mats and uncovered the original carpeting for the first time in half a century and it was still perfect, even the vinyl heel plate was like new. I spent a long time in the engine compartment. The Carter WCFB carburetor had never been off the car and was horribly varnished and gummed up, and the exhaust heat riser passage in the intake manifold was completely carboned up. After taking care of these issues along with doing a complete fluid servicing the car ran just fine. The last thing was to replace the tires with correct 7.50x14 Goodyear reproduction bias plies with a 1” wide whitewall. When the job was finally done the car came out looking nearly showroom new without restoring or repainting a single thing.
All the while I had stayed in touch with Adrian, just as I had done before buying the car, and during the detailing process I sent him several long letters with batches of pictures of what I was doing with the car. I later found out from his next of kin that he saw the final letter and pictures of the finished product literally days before he passed away, but he left this world knowing that I had kept my promise about keeping the car all original. I willingly acknowledge that he is the real hero of this story and to this day I often refer to the Chevy as “Adrian’s car”.