[skibik]

Originally Posted by not

I graduated in 79 and my first car was a 73 Chevy Impala, 4 dr, with a 350 engine, automatic tranny. It was the biggest pc of crap car, ever, bar none.

Salt rusted out the car, either from outside in or inside out. Pulled door handle once to open the door and the whole latch mechanism fell out as the sheet metal gave out, ha. I actually put duct tape over it and it held, until the car finally caught on fire and I wouldn't let the fire dept put it out until dead. That was 1981 or 2yrs of hell.

Before the fire of pity removed this enigma, I was driving at night and pressed on the bright lights button which was on the left-hand side of the driver's floorboard and it disappeared, floorboard rusted out. I had to pop rivet a pc of aluminum there and put some cardboard underneath the floor mat to keep slush out. Didn't work very well.

Besides the muffler falling off, other maladies included the carburetor catching on fire for no known reason, putting the parking brake on and it never releasing, that was fun to drive home with, rear flat tire and the steel wheel was rusted onto the drum brake cover, took a sledgehammer to get that one off.

But my personal favorite was turning left at an intersection and wondering why I am not going anywhere when I noticed the rear wheel axle housing broke free and my left wheel and tire were a good foot outside the wheel well, ha. After that was fixed, it showed how weak the univeral joints were in the drive axle as they proceeded to give out too.

Never considered the 350 in that car to be a muscle anything. The 73 coupe 2 dr had a nicer rear window and Impalas then were available in a 307, 327, 350, 400 and even a 454, which the last two may have qualified as muscle. But my Impala was more like mucus.

I had the 2 door coupe. I actually like the style of mine, mine had the curved rear window. If I look at it now, yeah it was a big pile of crap, but back then it was the best thing since sliced bread to me. Mine was rusted out, if I was kneeling on one side of the trunk and someone was standing on the other side I could tell you what color pants he was wearing, . Never knew how fast it would go because once you hit 90 the steel slots that were on it had welds in them and literally shook the car at that speed along with the play in the wheel it got pretty dicey keeping it in a straight line at that speed. With the gears it had in it, it was not far above idling at 55, I figured if the speedometer went high enough and if one dared I thought that thing would top out at around the 130 to 140 mark. They do build them a lot better now, that car had roughly 100k miles on it and it was falling apart. Nowadays 150k miles isn't nothing.

Originally Posted by Angrybird 12

Well it depends, if you are talking the most dependable, most comfortable, best handling, best fuel mileage cars yes it is, but if you are talking style, excitement in yearly anticipation of model updates, ease to modify and repair and simplicity of design I would go for 55 through 1972.

Pop the hood on an old Gen 1 Camaro and then look under the hood at some cars these days. I was kind of surprised that the V6 had a considerable amount of room under the hood but still not easy to work on.

Dean.