The caption where I found this picture suggests that they’re police cars. Not likely, given that they’re six cylinder cars and don’t have the vented (Rally) wheels we saw the other day on the ’67 Chevy police car. More likely taxi or a fleet. Company fleet cars back then were often cheap strippers, as we saw in the lead picture of Jason Shafer’s post the other day.
These do remind me of the ’70 Biscayne taxi I drove in San Diego.
It was six years old, had about a half million miles on it, with the six, Powerglide, and manual steering and brakes. What a great drive that was! But still better than the ’71 I got after the ’70 sheared a ball joint and dropped to its knees.
My college friend had one of these. Biscayne 2 door sedan, sticky vinyl seats, no carpeting, the eternal Chevy six cylinder, 3 on the tree, manual steering, manual drum brakes, a huge Sear & Roebucks “knee knocker” add on air conditioner (this is New Orleans).
It was his first car, he loved it.
I drove it once and never again.
These look quite handsome with the body-colored wheels here, better than with hubcaps. Sturdy, economical (for the time), and long-lasting while generally considered somewhat boring, the Camry of their day, right?
Butterfly hood, split windshield, “step” fender.
’66 or ’67 GMC J 9500. No side markers and the early ‘thermos bottle’ hood latches. Probably 6-71 powered, the only other diesel offered in the 9500 those years was the DH637 Toroflow.
Yea, that Toroflow engine was a real piece of junk, a precursor of things to come. 5.7, 6.2, 4-53 and the 8.2, five swings and whiffed on them all. Finally got a hit with the 60 Series and them sell it to Penske. Same with the Allison transmissions. Allison finally figures out how to build a bullet proof transmission, The Allison World Transmission, the premier automatic transmission without a doubt and GM sells that too. There are Deadly Sins (DS) and then there are Dumb Ass Sins (DAS)
This brings up an interesting point–the full-size, low priced lines of the big 3: the Biscayne, Custom 300, Plaza (later Savoy)–what percentage of these were bought for fleet use vs. typical consumers for personal/family use? These models are presented in the brochures as “thrifty” choices for buyers seeking low-cost transportation, and are essentially the same cars as the higher priced models, but without “frills”.
However, most of the late 50s thru ’60s Chevys I remember seeing were Impalas, most Fords were Galaxies, etc. Occasionally I’d see a Bel Air (with 4 taillights, not 6), and Biscaynes were pretty rare. If a very large percentage of Biscaynes became police cars and taxis, they would have gotten chewed up pretty fast, which would explain why so few survive despite the high production numbers.
So is there any data on how many Biscaynes (and equivalent Fords and Plymouths) were bought by consumers vs. fleet operators?
Probably depends on where you lived at the time. In bigger, more affluent cities, that was undoubtedly the case. In Iowa City, Biscaynes and Bel Airs were more common. The thrifty and modest Mennonites drove them. Old school thrifty farmers did. The dad of one of my friends in elementary school was in grad school, and he traded his ’59 Rambler American in for a ’64 white Biscayne six. I used to ride with him in it to orchestra, it was so much more roomy than the American. And it even had carpeting, by this time!
In Towson, I remember several of the “White Sale” big Ford Customs in our neighborhood, from ’65 and ’66.
Maybe it was because no one noticed them?
And, no, there are no stats on fleet vs. retail sales from back then available, to the best of my knowledge.
Absolutely the case in my neck of the woods. Lots of 6 cyl Bel Air’s and Biscayne’s were to be found, along with the 300’s and Savoy’s/Belvedere’s . Most were owned by the older frugal folks from the depression and WWII eras.
My dad drove 6 cyl Ramblers up till ’67 when he bought a new Fury III wagon with a 318.
While featuring an Impala instead of a Biscayne, and aimed at business fleets rather than taxi or government fleets, I figured I’d share this 1968 Chevy fleet ad – it’s always fun to look at ads for lower-priced versions of large cars:
I knew 2 people with 68 big Chevys. One was a guy I worked with around 1978 who drove his parents’ tired old Biscayne 2 door sedan with a 6 and 3 speed. The other was a friend of my mother who had an air conditioned Caprice 4 door hardtop. For being the same basic car, they could hardly have been more different in personality.
Very nice elderly couple lived down the block from my parents house. They had a ’68 Bel Air 4 door sedan, 307 with a Powerglide, white with a blue interior. Car was clean, but didn’t run right. Too many trips to ‘Tune Masters’, if spark plugs and an air filter couldn’t fix it….. One day (out of desperation) they asked me to take a look at it. Plugs were new, points were good and dwell was correct. The Rochester 2bbl. was filthy and had a bad choke pull-off. Car still had the original plug wires, which as you all probably remember were quite long and ran under the ‘Ram Horn’ exhaust manifolds. Of course these didn’t, someone re-routed them on top where they could easily arc and get tangled up. So, a carb. kit, choke pull off, 1 can of Gumout, a set of new properly routed plug wires and a Saturday afternoon put everything right. When those cars were ‘right’ I think the ‘Glide made noise at idle than the engine did!
Every Powerglide Chevy when coming home and stopping:
clunk *clunk*clunk (linkage shifting from Drive to Park)
oooOOOOOOOAAHHHHHHH (The Powerglide whine in Park position)
I had a 1967 Pontiac tempest with a O H C 6 And A two speed automatic transmission which made the same sounds .
I dare not call it a power glide because it was exclusive to chevy
If I remember the figures correctly, the base price of a Biscayne 6 in this era was around $100 less than a Bel Air 6. Even then, that wasn’t a tremendous amount of dough for the extras the Bel Air added.
In this era, my father was the VP of sales for a major publishing house, and one of his responsibilities was selecting the fleet car of choice for the sales force. Most years, it was a Bel Air with the smallest V-8 offered, air conditioning, and p/s&p/b.
A Six with air conditioning was a real slug, and probably not significantly more economical than a small eight int the long run. Air conditioning was a must, as Sales Reps in those days wore suits, and nobody should show up for a sales call in a sweaty suit. And a Biscayne just made a fellow look like a cheapskate.
Probably fleet units company cars in those days were many times bottom of the line cars as well. My Dad’s last company car before he left Paragon /Texaco was a 69 Biscayne 6 cylinder power glide, four door sedan. It had power steering and brakes, an AM radio and little else except…it and two others like it were ordered through Spielman Chevrolet with the B90 window moldings, B80 roof drip moldings and B84 body side moldings. Other than these three, I’ve never seen another 69 Biscayne so equipped. Dad’s was fathom green, one was LeMans Blue and one was Cordovan Maroon. Oddly enough the sales brochure for 69 showed both the two and four door models with these moldings. Here’s the salesman’s book showing the options.
Here’s the picture
We had two 68 Biscayne’s in my family. One a four door and one a 2 door. The four door was a 6 cylinder Powerglide with a…… Factory AM radio! The 2 door was a 6 cylinder, 3 speed on the column, radio delete. Bring your Kazoo. Plain vanilla but both were very reliable and both were sold off at over 150,000 miles and back then that was bragging rights kind of stuff. Oh, we were usually the last family to own any given car, but these were just so good that we passed them on to their last owners.
Growing up in a Los Angeles suburb, I never saw those stripper models except in taxi fleets, and Chevy never won police contracts. Cheapskate buyers would downsize to a compact instead. Big families with less money either bought used, or bought a van instead of passenger car.