Go down to the dealer in 1965 and order this? Has complete documentation. Three speed column shift with factory delete plate in consol shifter hole.
My brother's wife bought her first new car, an O/T one. She haggled the crap out of the dealer, even went so far as to have the rear seat taken out because it was an option. Literally. The dealer had to install a "seat delete" plate. I've stopped questioning some people's movitations.
They must have liked the column shift over the floor shift to order it that way. To me, oddball is cool.
Thats rad. Not many 6 cyl column shifted Impala SS's running around, I'd suspect. Cool car, I wouldn't change a thing
I had an Uncle who would do stuff like that. He was a mechanic at a Chevy dealership and had 4 kids so he needed to save money on gas. He would order the most stripped down car he could get, and sometimes he got a BelAire instead of the Biscayne for the nice upholstery, etc, but they always had a 6 stick in them. Must be an interesting story behind your SS. Don
Pity they don't have airbag delete plates, etc. ... I was wondering if it might not be about seating more people, in the manner your cousins doubtless, in the front seat, until I opened the pic and saw the console. WTF indeed.
Imagine how rare it is. Base models like this were produced in small numbers, someone that collects the performance versions would want this car so they had both ends of the production scale
That kind of thing happened a lot more than most people think. There are many reasons. Sometimes things like that were ordered because the customer wanted to make a race car, sometimes the dealer had to order a certain car for some factory promotion and ordered the cheapest thing he could. There were also times the dealer had to order cars that didn't sell to get the cars that sold, ie. order two Impalas to get that blg block Corvette.
That's exactly the thing my dad would have done. He ordered a '64 Dodge station wagon; three speed stick, no power steering or brakes and a radio delete plate. The car however looked great, knockoff spinners on the full wheelcovers, chrome roof rack and those wind deflectors for the rear window, and a two tone paint. He also beat up the dealer till they special ordered the interior in a color that wasn't supposed to come on station wagons. Of course he drove the car home and put in huge rubber floormats and complete seat covers.
LOTS of those downunder... Generally ordered for hire, wedding and funeral companies. Got the 'look' of the flash Yankee limousine (Yes, Chevs in Australia in the 60's were pretty much all considered limos) with the 'economy' of the inline 6. I rode in one after my first wedding in 1970! Cheers, Glen.
The only thing econimical about an inline 6 is that they cost less initially. A lot of stuff that we would call silly has been ordered over the years and we wonder why. For an on topic car, I once owned a '54 Chevy wagon that I bought from the original owner (a farmer down in the ozarks). He ordered it with a Corvette Blue flame engine and 3 speed on the floor. When I asked him why and he said, "well you just can't haul many chickens in a Corvette." If OT is your bag then I know of a '68 Galaxie with the taxi option, 6 cylinder 3 speed radio delete. An 84 Monte Carlo SS with crank windows an AM radio and cloth bench seat. Both documented. There is absolutely no accounting for what people will do. That is why we are on the HAMB to start with, I have one idea and someone else has another, both work but neither works as well for one of us and for the other one. In the end we discover that there are lots of different ways to get the fish into the boat.
You could get some pretty strange combinations back before cars were all "cookie cutter" cars. Back in '64 you could get a GTO with a Tri-Power, Automatic on the column and a bench seat. Or in '67 you could get a GTO with a single 2 bbl 400, Automatic on the column and a bench seat w/ center arm rest. Yep back then you could actually ORDER a car!
i knew someone that had a 64 or 65 chevelle ss factory 6 banger with a slip an slide auto floor shift. nice little car but i would have had to have a v8.
In the late 60's I worked at a Goodyear store in Dallas. A guy came in one day in a fully equipped (wheels, buckets, stripes, etc.) '67 Dodge Charger with a slant 6 and 3 speed column shift. All he could do is go on about how good the fuel economy was.
In the early '90s, my buddy bought a 1964 Impala Super Sport with a 6 cyl & 3 on the tree. Never seen another SS like that until this post.
My sister ordered an '85 Camaro with a 4 cyl... gawd it was aweful- had to lean forward to help it up hills
Will/can you take a picture of the console so we can see the whole thing? I think that the one I have is just like yours
Dragged home a 41 Plmouth business coupe years ago that had a wiper delete plate on the the passenger side, now thats cheap!
My uncle ordered a 71 Galaxie V8 4bbl with a 3 on the tree and no radio. he had to wait 4 months for it beause they kept kicking it back to the dealer. Why? He said, "Because that's what I want. Do I need a better reason?"
I just sold a 67 GTO that came from the factory with a 400 V4 with a 2 speed column shift trans! Odd?
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