Ah, The Things You Find...
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Race Director
Joined: Jan 2007
Posts: 11,213
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From: Portland, Oregon
Ah, The Things You Find...
...in the boonies.
A friend and I went out to dinner tonight and decided to catch 'Despicable Me 2' at 9:10 so with time to kill, we went for a drive out in the country and I found myself in an area where I hadn't been in probably four years. Having wound up in this very remote area accidentally before, I remember seeing a blue car parked in the woods with the doors wide open and on a hunch, I headed up a road into the woods and sure enough, there it was. My friend and I surveyed the car from the road and determined it was an early 60s Chevrolet in very sad shape. After growing irked that we couldn't learn more about it from the road, my friend Matt volunteered to get a closer look so I gave him my LED MagLite from the trunk of my car and he headed over the ditch and past the 'KEEP OUT' sign to inspect the car.
Long story short; based on damage, we deduced that the car was hit on the passenger side a number of years ago and parked in the woods, slowly being salvaged of parts to keep another one going. The engine block is still there but the top end and carburetors are gone. The interior has become a greenhouse completely full of moss and other Pacific NW plant life but both front and rear bench seats are still bolted down although the vinyl is completely gone from the seat back, exposing the springs beneath. The dash is still mostly intact with only the accelerator pedal missing and the car is a manual transmission three-on-the-tree.
Could it be restored? Probably. My guess is it's been sitting here since at least the 1980s if not longer and the reason it was is clear to me; it wasn't a classic or particularly desirable car at the time that it was parked here. It was just an old junker whose time had come and in the intervening 30 years, its status has changed although its condition has worsened.
I initially believed this to be an Impala but when comparing the shape of the open door to extant examples, realized this was not the case. I briefly believed it might be a Biscayne but a quick search of Chevy's 1961 lineup revealed it to be a Bel Air Sedan, although not the Sport Sedan model without the B-pillars.
A friend and I went out to dinner tonight and decided to catch 'Despicable Me 2' at 9:10 so with time to kill, we went for a drive out in the country and I found myself in an area where I hadn't been in probably four years. Having wound up in this very remote area accidentally before, I remember seeing a blue car parked in the woods with the doors wide open and on a hunch, I headed up a road into the woods and sure enough, there it was. My friend and I surveyed the car from the road and determined it was an early 60s Chevrolet in very sad shape. After growing irked that we couldn't learn more about it from the road, my friend Matt volunteered to get a closer look so I gave him my LED MagLite from the trunk of my car and he headed over the ditch and past the 'KEEP OUT' sign to inspect the car.
Long story short; based on damage, we deduced that the car was hit on the passenger side a number of years ago and parked in the woods, slowly being salvaged of parts to keep another one going. The engine block is still there but the top end and carburetors are gone. The interior has become a greenhouse completely full of moss and other Pacific NW plant life but both front and rear bench seats are still bolted down although the vinyl is completely gone from the seat back, exposing the springs beneath. The dash is still mostly intact with only the accelerator pedal missing and the car is a manual transmission three-on-the-tree.
Could it be restored? Probably. My guess is it's been sitting here since at least the 1980s if not longer and the reason it was is clear to me; it wasn't a classic or particularly desirable car at the time that it was parked here. It was just an old junker whose time had come and in the intervening 30 years, its status has changed although its condition has worsened.
I initially believed this to be an Impala but when comparing the shape of the open door to extant examples, realized this was not the case. I briefly believed it might be a Biscayne but a quick search of Chevy's 1961 lineup revealed it to be a Bel Air Sedan, although not the Sport Sedan model without the B-pillars.
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