My friend in Moncton has a real 66 396 Impala 4 speed wagon (has GM doc.s) car was sold in Manitoba and the ownership/bill of sale was second party.. Carl 3 was going to get it,(bill of sale) and put in his name, and then send back... anyway, wondering if the frame was available in the green 65?
here is a pic of a 83 Olds Cutlass Cruiser Wagon that I did for my wife. It was our daily driver for about 5 years. pulled the 14 Boler across the mountains to Vancouver Island with it . Nice car to drive. Even had winter and summer Torq Thrusts for it!!
-- Edited by rabbit64cs on Saturday 5th of January 2013 10:21:31 AM
Hello Mike, you and i have spoken in the past. I know your sweet 57 Pontiac wagon all too well. I am a friend of the wagon's previous owner who owns a 1955 Chev wagon. I came within two inches of buying your very wagon. Beautiful car brother. Cheers. George.
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1957 Pontiac Pathfinder Deluxe sedan restored 261 six
1974 Chevrolet Caprice Estate wagon low mileage original 400 V-8
I do love wagons. George, I love your '74. Like you I accompanied dad to the dealer when he bought his '74 Chevy Biscayne sedan. Unfortunately he didn't order it himself, it was found on a dealer locator system. No HD suspension for the 1st and only time. The dash on ours cracked, as was almost guaranteed on the 1971-76 Chevrolets. In 1976 he had the dealer replace the cracked dash & ripped seats, plus the Uniroyal radials all had their belts shift & had to be replaced, the standard shocks were ready for the garbage when the car was brand new, the bodyside moldings fell off, dome light fell off, carpet was not laid down properly, the heater peed on the floor when the car was brand new. Dad was so put off by his experience that he never bought another GM car for the rest of his life after being a staunch GM guy since 1960. It got 9 mpg in the city and usually 13 on the highway, with 15 being occasionally seen. That was with the base 350 2-barrel & I think 2.73s. 11 mpg towing a boat or camper.
Back in my teens I lost my license in a friend's 1975 Laurentian wagon. It had a 400 4-barrel Chevy that had more power than it should have. Many times it produced tire smoke from the right rear LR78-15 tire, all just from torque. I remember in Hamilton being between 2 Corvettes on King Street that intended to have a little speed contest off the lights. The wagon beat the 1 Corvette but couldn't quite keep up with the other one. Boy did that Corvette driver looked surprised.
Back in '89 I tried to get the local Chevy dealer to special order a Cavalier RS wagon with a V6 manual, but substituting analogue gauges rather than the digital mess they were selling. No dice.
My daily driver is a VW Passat wagon. I bought it new to replace my 2003 Passat wagon that was a 4-cam V6 with a 5-speed manual. The 2010 I bought took months to get because I insisted on getting a 6-speed manual, a combination that VW didn't offer on the Highline trim level or at all in the U.S. They brought 2 Highline manual wagons into Canada with that combo, but quite a few more on the lesser Trendline & Comfortline trim levels, including the one I test drove and was sold on.
Here's a 2010 picture of both my old grey wagon with 275k that I traded in when I bought the new black one beside it:
2005 pic of my 2003 wagon:
Here's a current picture of the 2010 from summer 2018. It was approaching 250,000 kms but still looks & runs almost new:
It has a 2 litre turbo 4 gas engine that pulls just as hard as my previous V6 but gets about 10% better mileage. It was never as smooth or quiet as the six though. The Highline comes with HID headlights that self-level & steer, 600-watt 10 speaker stereo, GPS, leather, dual-zone a/c, and very importantly, sport suspension with fat stabilizers, rolling on 18s with 40 series Pirellis. Today I can't replace it with a manual wagon with the same capacity so I am holding onto it. The car is worth a lot more to me than what any blue books says. Hopefully I never need to make an insurance claim because it wouldn't be worth much now with a quarter million kms. on it. My old Corolla GTS looked like new when it was written off at 14 years with 375k on it. With an appraisal & receipts in hand I got $4200 for my 14-year-old Corolla with high miles. Here's a pic of the Corolla just before I wrecked it (6-cars involved but the 2 that started the chain reaction took off):
Other than fading on the seat backs it pretty much looked like the day I bought it, said the astonished salesman who sol it to me 14 years before. I still have 2 complete decal sets for it because I was planning on stripping the car & repainting it with the glass out. Such a shame.
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67 Chevelle Malibu Sport Coupe, Oshawa-built 250 PG never disturbed.
In garage, 296 cid inline six & TH350...
Cam, Toronto.
I don't judge a man by how far he's fallen, but by how far back he bounces - Patton
As for my friend's '75 Laurentian Safari, it looked just like the one in the brochure except that it didn't have bumper guards but it had full wheel covers instead of dog dish caps. I doctored the image from the brochure to look 100% like my friend's car:
The funny thing is we used to cruise in that car, sometimes down to Stelco Steel where we witnessed the very scene above with the pouring of ingots. It was January but when we were on the road outside it became like the hottest summer day, man that place held a lot of heat!
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67 Chevelle Malibu Sport Coupe, Oshawa-built 250 PG never disturbed.
In garage, 296 cid inline six & TH350...
Cam, Toronto.
I don't judge a man by how far he's fallen, but by how far back he bounces - Patton
Cam, i am sorry to hear that your dad had so many issues with his car My dad only had one issue with the car the whole time that he drove it. The right rear power window failed after about eight years. I replaced the motor for my dad at that time. Maybe your dads car was built on a Friday or Monday. The fit and finish on my 74 is actually very good other than three paint drips on the door jambs area. I hear all these horror stories about seventies cars yet i really have no complaints on my 74. Cheers.
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1957 Pontiac Pathfinder Deluxe sedan restored 261 six
1974 Chevrolet Caprice Estate wagon low mileage original 400 V-8
Cam, i am sorry to hear that your dad had so many issues with his car My dad only had one issue with the car the whole time that he drove it. The right rear power window failed after about eight years. I replaced the motor for my dad at that time. Maybe your dads car was built on a Friday or Monday. The fit and finish on my 74 is actually very good other than three paint drips on the door jambs area. I hear all these horror stories about seventies cars yet i really have no complaints on my 74. Cheers.
Yup, dad ended up with a bit of a lemon. Because of the fuel consumption he bought a little 4-cylinder sedan and typically used the Biscayne for trailering. I notice that your dash isn't cracked. I have been watching these cars for decades and can honestly say it is unusual for the dash not to crack. Dad replaced his in 1976 but it had been cracked since the car was a year old. They used a new '76 dash pad & sprayed vinyl to match the interior. In the 10 years that followed the dash never cracked. The seats were replaced as well and they ripped & split within 6 months. The cloth was the culprit. The same cloth was used on the '74 base Malibu series and it was ridiculously fragile.
The Uniroyal Zeta 40 radials on the car were the new GM-spec radials that allowed competing brands to be able to be used interchangeably. The belts shifted on them so he replaced them in '76. By 1977 the replacement Uniroyal Zetas shifted their belts also, so dad pitched them and bought a set of Michelin X radials. They improved the car so much and were on the car when he sold it in 1986 to some young guy for $175 that wanted it for the 350. Mom said the car drove away smoothly & silently.
Take a look on the back of your 1974 Canadian Chevrolet wagons brochure where it lists the colours. It mentions the regular 2-tones with a white roof, but it teasingly says "other combinations available". Indeed. There was a '74 Bel Air 3-row wagon about 2 blocks from my home that was Sandstone with Bronze 2-tone on the top of the roof and also along the sides more or less where the woodgrain would go on a Caprice Estate. I've only seen 2 in my life with those special 2-tones. I wish I would have taken a picture back when it was new. They also offered it on Canadian '73s but it was a slightly different scheme with the accent colour on the very top & way down low on the sides where the body curves inward towards the rockers. Only seen one of them and that was when it was new.
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67 Chevelle Malibu Sport Coupe, Oshawa-built 250 PG never disturbed.
In garage, 296 cid inline six & TH350...
Cam, Toronto.
I don't judge a man by how far he's fallen, but by how far back he bounces - Patton
Can't believe I didn't add to this thread years ago! It will be a bit jumbled.
I saved this car from the Edmonton Pick A Part in about 2006, stored it thinking I would swap in the drivetrain from a 1996 Caprice police car, but ended up selling it to someone else. Good solid body that someone snagged the engine, trans out of.
Then there was my Caprice wagon that I bought in Niagara Falls in 2004 and drove home to Grande Prairie, Alberta when I lived there. I sold it 2 1/2 years ado before moving to Victoria.
Great car with an LT1! Probably my favorite car of all!
I've been lucky to own a number of wagons over the years, among them a 56 Chev 210 2 door, a 58 Ford Country Sedan, and a few 67-68 Chev B bodies. At present I have only one, a 69 Chevy Kingswood from California via Florida, with a fresh 396/T400 power train.
Urban Suburban & Dualquadpete have got spectacular '64 Pontiac wagons! 65post also has a really cool one in that '71 Concours Estate. I remember when Mike Pigott owned that car after his winning bid on eBay back in early 2006.
StriperSS, that was a cool early 90's Caprice. Also that '73 Chevelle SS wagon is the first one I have heard of actually sold new in Canada. I knew those were available way back in '73 but I never saw a single one until 1984 in Atlanta.
Yes, John (GParis7) has a cool '69 as well. I see the rare light monitoring system on it. Also, does that car have wide rocker moldings? If it does, combined with the lower grille edge molding that I see, means that car has the 1-year only, Impala-only Z21 Exterior Decor option which on the Impala coupes, sedans & convertibles it also included Caprice trunk moldings.
-- Edited by CdnGMfan on Sunday 6th of January 2019 09:31:35 PM
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67 Chevelle Malibu Sport Coupe, Oshawa-built 250 PG never disturbed.
In garage, 296 cid inline six & TH350...
Cam, Toronto.
I don't judge a man by how far he's fallen, but by how far back he bounces - Patton
