Classic wagons don’t get enough love. It’s as if the average American gearhead’s obsession with 60s American iron starts and ends with Chargers, Chevelles, and Shelby Cobras. You know, the poster pin-up heroes. But it’s easy to forget that wagons sometimes left the factory packing heat in the mid 60s. Take this 1965 Chevy Impala Wagon for example. Though the model year and body style aren’t the most desirable, everything under the hood sure is.
This was the first model year in the fourth-generation Impala, 1965, which was an introductory year for GM’s clientele, eager to test out Chevrolet’s new breed of full-sized B-body muscle cars. Available in a hard-top coupe, sedan, drop-top convertible, or, of course, a wagon. The real special sauce of the gen-IV Impala was its nearly unparalleled selection under the hood. With no less than four different small block V8s, five big blocks, and a 4.1-L straight six engine to choose from between 1965 and 1970, buyers could tailor-suit their Impalas to their specific driving tastes, ranging from a geometry teacher to full-on weekend speed racers.
But this particular ’65 Impala wagon is special for another reason. As only one of 82 examples in the world made for the 1965 model year, this Impala Wagon sports the ultra-rare combination of an archaic two-speed Powerglide automatic transmission and the elusive 409-cubic-inch (6.7-L) variant of GM’s Turbo-Jet big block V8. Why anyone in 1965 thought two speeds in their automatic transmission were sufficient enough to handle almost seven liters of cubic displacement is beyond us. But then again, you can at least sleep well knowing the gearbox in this car is so antiquated that it doesn’t have enough parts in it to break.
Sensibilities of the day were just different when it came to automatic transmissions, one can only assume. But even so, the rest of this Impala is looking pretty spiffy. So the advertisement claims this wagon was found in a more or less derelict condition out in some undisclosed location in New York State. After towing the rusty hulk from New York across the country to Indiana, a meticulous and painstaking restoration operation was started with the intent of keeping this Impala as numbers-matching as possible.
This includes items that enthusiasts might not find all that exciting. Most notably, that hideously ugly bright red vinyl interior. No, seriously, it looks like somebody took a few cans of red Duplicolor spray paint and went to town on the seats and headliner. But hey, that’s just another why tastes have changed in the last 59 years. These days, we like our red leather interiors to be just a little bit more subtle. But taking the originality and rarity of this Impala into account, an asking price of $38,000 might not be all that unreasonable.