The Story
I was fifteen when I bought his first car. I bought it from a man in the neighborhood, some time in the 1970s.
Decades later that same man still had a 1966 Impala SS in his garage. Factory 427, four-speed, and twenty years of standing still. People had been asking after that car the whole time. He turned all of them down.
He sold it to me and we started taking it apart and rebuilding it. We had both served in the Armed Forces, and it was our therapy project.
He died before we finished it.
The car went from Chicago down to Missouri in pieces, and it took two years to put back together. The four-speed is a Tremec five-speed now. There's QA1 level-2 suspension under the front and Wilwoods at both ends — six-piston in front, four-piston at the rear. The 3.31 Posi rear end is the one it left the factory with.
So is the steering wheel. It tilts and it telescopes, and 1966 was the only year Chevrolet offered telescoping — only about 1,700 cars got it.