Death of the Impala...

Here’s mine...

 

There was an article in Car and Driver back in the mid seventies where the author opined that old men would sit around one day, and talk about their Impalas like the older gents of that time remembered their Model T's.

 

loveoftiki, nice Chevy. I lived right around the block from you up to 5 years ago, I recognize the neighborhood very well.

 

So I guess it wouldn't be wise to post a photo of mine, the last rear wheel drive V8 car.

 

I've owned two; a '64 SS, and a OT '66 SS. Both V8 4 Speed cars with the '64 being faster but I liked the styling of the '66 better. GM touts the debt was repaid, with at the time shares of stock worth $4.00 a share once valued at well over $100.00 a share. Japanese cars have taken over and followed up where WWII left off and they are beating us economically where they couldn't militarily.

 

There is more than one thread on here, about '65-'66 Impalas.

 

Still thinking about earlier post: "GM lost the race in 1974 and never caught up".
I think that was also the beginning of Detroit's downward spiral.
So sad.

 

Don't get too worked up. "Impala" is only a cluster of letters that were attached to a lot of different car models over the years; a name chosen by a faceless committee in a windowless office, and deleted by another faceless committee in another windowless office! They could just as easily have chosen "Gazelle", or "Hind", or "Doe", or "Gnu", or "Wildebeest", or even just plain "Deer"! You never know what a committee will do. There's no mystique behind the word "Impala"! It's just another name.

 

Just how much heavier was a 1958 Impala than a like equipped 1957 Chevy? Was a 1959 lighter? Bob

 

I think a 1957 Bel Air was right about 3450 lbs, a 1958 Impala was a touch heavier at 3550 lbs, and a 1959 Bel Air was getting heftier at 3750 lbs. (couldn't find the Impala weight quickly). I remember being surprised at the 1958's weight being that light when I first heard that.

 

That's NOT an Impala!

 

My 62 SS 409 4/speed car is one I will never be able to afford to replace.

 

This is the only post I read worth replying to on this subject...and one of the only ones that made any sense.

 

As new cars go I actually like the looks of the current Impala.

My sister has one from the previous generation though and I can't get in and out of the damn things. The windshield is leaned so far back I keep trying to hit my head on the A-posts. I suppose it doesn't help I've only driven vans the last 10 years or so, and a couple squarebody Chevy trucks before that. But borrowing my dad's '13 F150 I didn't have that problem. Maybe that's why people want the pickups, SUVs and crossovers, more squared door openings.

Sad to see it go, and I see some stories indicating there was some political impetus behind what choices were made to close, but that's a discussion for elsewhere. Ultimately I don't see me owning one, except perhaps as a flip car.

 

It was the last model of car, as far as I know, which had a Nguni name. But as @67Coug says, it's just a badge. Recently there was a thing about the Toyota Corolla supposedly joining the ranks of the Model T and VW Beetle, but we all realize that that is nothing of the sort. "Corolla" is just a word which has appeared on a very large number of car badges attached to a variety of fairly unrelated cars.

As for GM's failure to adapt, I'd more characterize it as the Big Three having taken a gamble and lost. Certainly GM is in trouble: dumping Opel/Vauxhall and farming a huge chunk of worldwide Chevrolet production out to Daewoo should tell us that. And I agree that it would have been better if GM had not been bailed out. All the bailout did was to provide a highly visible example of what had been going on behind the scenes since 1933.

The mistake we make is in supposing that there really is an adversarial relationship between the motor industry and the State. Thus we are unable to consider that the motor industry itself is the originator of the regulatory environment we have today, and the concomitant misshapen market form, dependency structure, and tendency to overproduction and overconsumption. Put simply: c. 1960 the Big Three see a way to dispatch both major threats to their market share, i.e. imports and used cars. By the same expedient they could both force European and Japanese manufacturers wishing to operate in the US market to uglify their products with goggle-eye headlights and platform bumpers, and undermine the viability of keeping any second-hand car running through its phase of maximum depreciation. The killing made in platinum-series mining interests was just a bonus.

Where the Big Three made their mistake was in failing to anticipate that the European and especially Japanese manufacturers would take up that gauntlet and rise to the challenge. It is the classic American weakness – no offense intended: I'm sure most of you will agree. The result is that Toyota now enjoys the position of State-backed privilege which GM built – and internationally to boot.

 

A little bit of trivia...the last vehicle produced with a bench seat option...Chevy Impala

 

My buddy has a new 2000 something Impala with the LS V-8 motor and another has a 2007 Monte Carlo with the same LS V-8 engine, both of those cars are a blast to drive! They handle like there on rails. My view is, today, most Americans are mechanically retarded and wouldn't know quality if it bit them in the ass so why bother. I thank God every day for giving me the time period I grew up in.. Young people have no idea what normal is today. My dad used to say, 1967 was the last normal year.. In 1967 I had a badass Huffy Drag Bike with five speeds!! I wanna go backkkkkkk!!!!!

 

More like "Death of the Return of the Son of the Impala".

 

Impala was probably chosen because it is one of the top ten fastest running animals, reaching speed of 50 mph.
Hence, the GM name suggestion a fast car right out of the box.

 

Look at some of the new Chevy cop cars here, Australian imports. The taxi industry abandoned them too. Chevy screwed the pooch with ditching the SS variant. It could have been a lot sportier and attracted younger buyers. I had a lot of Impalas myself, one '61, untold '65-'66 models (lot of Super Sports), a few from '67 to '68.