One of our favorite rants here is the choice of wheels found on so many cars from the sixties (or later) other than stock. Yes, one would expect a mean looking 427 ’66 Impala coupe to be sporting some 20″ billets, if not the ubiquitous silver Rally wheels. But these aren’t exactly the “stock” bare wheels and dog dishes either.
It’s a bit hard to make out, but these are the 15″ ventilated/slotted wheels that came with the optional disc brakes, starting in 1967. Essentially, they were the same wheel as the Rally, but painted body color and with a very small little hubcap that looked right out out of the thirties. I’ve seen a few other Chevys with these in more recent years. But back in the day, the only time I ever saw them was on police cars; specifically the ’68s that Baltimore County bought. Pathetically, disc brakes weren’t even available on the ’66s, so they’re not exactly “stock” in any sense of the word on this mean-looking Impala. But it sure beats the alternatives.
And the tires are of course at least three times as wide as the pathetic undersize tires that came standard on Chevys back then (rant on that subject here).
Totally bad ass!I love it,I could see Tig from Sons of Anarchy driving this it’s so mean looking.
As a fan of the looks of the 66, I guess I won’t gripe too much about the wheels. As you say, they could be the ho-hum Rallys. My question, though, is that roofline. That does not look like the right roofline for a 2 door sedan, yet there appears to be a center pillar there. Also, this is an Impala, not a Bel Air or Biscayne (at least judging from the taillights.) Did someone do blackout trim on the hardtop’s chrome trim on the quarter window? Or am I missing some sort of rare Impala-only pillared coupe that I have never noticed before?
I do believe you are correct, that this is an Impala to which the owner has blacked out the B-pillars. The back of the roof on the 2-door post Biscaynes and Bel-
Airs was much more upright. This is a black car done right.
I don’t care much for black cars but your last statement nails it perfectly. Nice car. All business.
That “center pillar” is some sort of addition. Odd. Guess he wanted it to look like a “Pillared Hardtop” 🙂
I think Paul’s right. IINM, there were distinct 2-door rooflines in 1966 for the Caprice, Impala and Biscayne/Bel Air. The Caprice and Impala were pillarless hardtops, while the Biscayne and Bel Air were pillared — a style that Chevy called a “two-door sedan”. This car clearly has the Impala roofline, but with a pillar; such an animal did not exist in 1966. It appears to be an Impala 2-door hardtop that has been modified to have, or at least to look like it has, a pillar. If Chevy had offered a “two-door (pillared) coupe”, as opposed to a “two-door sedan”, this is what it would have looked like.
My guess is that whoever customized this car that way wanted to build a car that would look like the proverbial “bottom-end stripper ordered with the largest possible engine”, but liked the looks of the Impala 2-door roofline better than the looks of the 2-doors that came in Chevy’s actual stripper trim lines.
Yes, yes, yes!
A few years back, Car Craft had a feature titled “Wolf in Grandma’s Clothing.” It was a black ’65 Chevy Biscayne coupe that looked entirely stock from the outside except for some wide tires on modified steelies & dog dishes. Oh, and it had a 502 BBC crate motor under the hood. That feature car has been my “ideal” for a decade now—an engine swap, very-close-to-stock appearance, and in an attainable car that I very much like the look of anyway.
This car hits all the same notes—anyone else notice the 427 badges? I’m pretty sure the 427 could only be had with a manual transmission, hopefully a 4-speed in this case.
I’m completely gaga over this car. So, so close to my idea of a perfect driver. Made my day to see it here on CC!
The 390 hp hydraulic cam 427 was available with the THM, but not the 425 hp version.
This was a specific police (and possibly taxi) cap that was available starting in 1967. The “civilian” disc brake cap had a different design. I’m inclined to think that they were discontinued some time in 1968 – the ’68 CPD Biscayne in this period photo has the common “derby” caps while other photos of ’68s have the flat caps.
So what did the ’67 civilian 15″ disc brake look like? No pics in the brochure, and I’ve never seen one.
These – I believe they were available on the Impala SS in 1967.
I could be wrong on this, but I think the only civilian 15″ wheels were on Corvettes and Z-28s in ’67. Hard to believe these big Chevs rolled around on 14″ wheels but they did. There was a special “disc brake” rim designed to clear the caliper but in my recollection it looked pretty much the same as a standard rim from the curb side. Not sure about ’67, I’ve seen very few factory ’67 Chevys or Chevelles with disc brakes. You may have had to take the rally rims that year. I think ’67 discs used a 1 year only 4 piston caliper as well.
I used to know all this stuff by heart, but it’s been a long time.
I really like that ’66, but I’m scratching my head about the blacked out B pillars. Seems a little hefty for simple blacked out window trim. Cool ride anyway.
I did my homework, at oldcarbrochures,com. Here’s the snip below. I suspect those discs needed 15″ wheels to clear the caliper.
The wheels are shown in this ad for the SS convertible…
Stumack: Those are the full-on Rally wheels. What if you ordered disc brakes on a Biscayne?
I can’t find any evidence of a 15″ wheel cover, and at least one web source claims that the rally wheel was what came with disc brakes on any model.
And as I said in the post, the ’67 Balto Co. cop cars had those 15″ wheels and disc brakes, with the little hub caps like this ’66 has. That was why I did this post; I remembered them from those cop cars.
Yep, you’re right. Like I said it’s been a long time. Looks like a very worthwhile option back in ’67, given the marginal brakes and tires that came with drum brake cars.
That B-pillar had me continue to wonder, too, but I went back and looked at pix of the 66 Biscayne 2-door post and the front window frame is different-back of the frame slants back, where the “frameless” Impala window is more upright. If you look at the last picture, you can also see that the front window is clearly frameless. Still, that vertical line is bulkier than would seem to result from just blacking it out. We need Paul to go back and take a side view shot!
But I still like those wheels. They make such a nice alternative to the Rallye wheels, which seem like the standard go-to for any Chevy of that era.
Love that model Chevy and they sold well in NZ new not the 2door versions unfortunately and I’m a no hubcaps black steel blackwall kinda guy as my Citroen and Hillman are witness to. Must spray the factory alloys on my Nissan black soon it makes my driveway look uneven, Cool car.
I’m with you, Bryce. I kinda want to go this route on both of my cars. The roads here suck to begin with and are now potholed to shit after all the cold and snow… plus I just think it looks cool. Both already have (factory) alloys, but the Saab is mismatched so anything would be an improvement in looks. Not really sure about the Buick, but I’d only use them in the winter anyway.
This is my current favorite (looking) taxicab. Transit Connect with all blacked-out trim and the wheel covers having fallen off revealing beautiful black. Not sure why they even bother with the plastic, the design of this wheel is cool enough to stand on it’s own and they look good painted other colors as well. When these end up at auction with 500,000 miles on them in a few years I’d love to get one and make an EcoBoost fit under the hood.
‘I got me a 67 Chevy, she’s long and low and black,
Someday I’ll put her on that interstate and never look back’
Steve Earle, wrong car (Chevelle) and wrong year, but I love those lyrics.
I’m pathetic in that I like the stock as a rock look, but cars like this 66 are too good.
Sweet Little ’66 – Steve Earle
Now i’m a pretty big man around this town
I got me the hottest little chevy around
My sweet little ’66
She got a yellow front fender and a gray one on the back
But my income tax is comin’ and i’m gonna paint her black
Sweet little ’66
She got the 396, she got the four on the floor
And those stickers in the window ain’t just for show
My sweet little ’66
Now old bubba and me built her back in ’79
Then he went into the army so now she’s all mine
Sweet little ’66
I used to run her down on river road and make a little dough
Can’t afford another ticket so i’m laying kinda low
Me and my ’66
Now she ain’t too good on gasoline, she burns a little oil
But she was built by union labor on american soil
Sweet little ’66
So when your subaru is over and your honda’s history
I’ll be blastin’ down some back road with my baby next to me
In my sweet little 66
Ha! Guitar Town; hands down best album of the 80s.
Steve Earle is who Bruce Springsteen would be if Springsteen grew up in the south instead of New Jersey.
I think Guitar Town was the album that sent Bruce from Born in the USA to Tunnel of Love. Just caught him last weekend, he opened with a version of Acca Dacca’s Highway to Hell with Eddie Vedder. Good show.
I like when the hot rod crowd goes to a place like Stockton Wheel and gets old steel wheels widened to accommodate modern rubber, that way they can slap the original hubcap back on or give it a tasteful center cap. IMHO it makes the car look classier and I love that you don’t immediately realize the changes until you get behind the car, see how wide the tires are, and go… Whoa!
Yeah, except this owner forgot about the fronts. The wheels look like they came off a Rambler.
I think it only looks that way because the tires on the back are so ginormous. I’m betting the fronts are 225-235 width at least.
Some time back I picked up some junkyard steelies from Pick-A-Part for my ’66 Biscayne. The fronts measure 15X7, while the rears are 15X8. I’m having them sandblasted and powder coated satin black.
Some repro 66-67 caps from Classic Industries and I’m good to go!
Of the lowest-tier cars, Chevrolet had the absolute worst looking dog-dish hubcaps, with Dodge having the best. It seems like the Fratzog (or Plymouth spear, for that matter) just looked a whole lot better than the Chevy bowtie or Ford oval.
A Dodge factory hotrod with dog-dishes said the owner meant business and was more interested in investing his money in go-fast parts. A Chevy factory hotrod with dog-dishes said the owner was just a cheap ass.
Until the Dodge’s owner comes up against a 427 / 4-speed Biscayne that he can’t outrun 🙂 .
I doubt it would be much of a problem with just about any big-block, B-body Mopar.
But an early Plymouth Fury with a 440/4-speed would be an interesting race.
This is just about perfect!! I love both all-black-everything cars and fullsize ’65-’67 Chevrolets. The wheels are right up my alley as well, and bonus points for being factory equipment (albeit from a different year). The only thing I’d do differently is slightly thinner rubber on the back, looks just a wee bit too wide. I even like how the fakeout hardtop treatment looks with the tinted windows and painted B-pillar, convincing enough without being totally silly.
I understand why they went away, but this is one post where I for sure miss the GIANT pictures that were available on CC.
They’re still here AFAIK, I think this one is only smaller because that’s what was uploaded to Flickr.
On a semi-related note, are CC pages loading extremely slow for anyone else with all the Facebook/Tweeter/etc. equipment installed? Big slowdown for me and I notice my browser status bar is cycling between this site, gravatar.com, facebook.com, twitter.com, etc. several times before pages load. My computer is crazy old, too, but it’s now slower than the site was prior to the most recent server upgrade.
I’ve seen many of these cars swapped over to disk brakes. It’s a simple safety issue, the drums, especially with the Big Blocks, were not even close to enough stopping power for a car this heavy. To drive one in today’s traffic would be suicide so anyone who wants to drive one as his daily ride has converted it to disk brakes.
+1. Originality has its practical limits.
I have a ’65 Chrysler with drum brakes all the way around, and those “dinky” 14″ wheels. In the last 12 years I’ve driven it about 80,000 miles and experienced scary brake fade exactly once, and that was absolutely due to my driving like a moron. I guess I just don’t drive aggressively enough huh? 😉
I will admit that if you deal with mountains, or a trailer drums could be a pain.
On the other hand, how did anybody manage to drive on bias ply tires?
I can’t be sure, since I’ve never driven a Chevy with drums 😉 but I think the Mopar front drums were larger so they didn’t overheat and fade as readily. I used to drive a ’66 Chryslers with drums as my summer daily driver and never had a problem. I actually had more problems after I changed the car to discs, but I got that sorted out. My brother still uses his New Yorker with drums as a summer DD and he drives like a maniac.
I will second your opinion. I drove drum-brake C body Mopars for several years in the late 80s and 90s. Granted, I live in flat country, but I never had any quarrel with the brakes. As someone said, if you drive in mountains or pulling trailers, then most drums are likely overmatched. The only ones that I found really wanting were on my 71 Scamp, and that car had the little 9 inch drums that were fine until you had a high-speed panic stop, in which case the car would slalom all over the road until you finally got stopped. But for the most part, keep them out of deep water and avoid multiple successive panic stops from high speed and (properly sized) drums do just fine.
I also never ran out of brakes with my 300L.
I found that, at least on 300’s, the 14-inch steel wheels had more offset on the 1966 models than on the 1965’s. I discovered this because I found a nice set of 1966 300 spinner wheel covers and found that they wouldn’t fit the wheels on my car because they weren’t offset enough. Oddly enough, the wheel covers are still on a shelf in my garage.
1. I drive a 1969 Charger almost daily and it has 11″ manual drum brakes and BFG Radial TA tires. I keep them adjusted to factory specs and on panic stops, I never felt like I couldn’t control the car. I have a 43 mile drive one way on mostly interstate and country roads with only the last mile or so in city traffic. Drum brakes have more braking area than discs and as a result should brake more efficiently than a comparably sized disc brake system. Its only their resistance to heat loss that makes them prone to brake fade. So goes the old saying that drum brakes are only good once.
2. If anyone doesn’t like that Chevy, you need your man card revoked. Its everything that’s right with musclecars.
I like this. Most importantly, it looks like it’s driven and enjoyed. If it’s driven and enjoyed anywhere in NYC, then the practicality of not running 20’s becomes even more important with all the potholes and bumps in Metro NYC roads.
In that era, those crossed flag front fender badges usually meant business. It’s an iconic symbol lost forever in this era of one engine for all brands GM think.
Even though I believe the Chevelle was used in Nascar during this time frame, this bruiser does have that Nascar look to it. It looks ready for the high banks of Daytona. Q-ship. I love it!
Some people may have run Chevrolets in NASCAR during this period but they would have been also rans, and it wouldn’t matter if they were using Chevelles or Impalas. Between the Chrysler hemis on one side and the factory backed Fords on the other, the GM brands were struggling for scraps in the mid and late 1960’s. The General pulled the plug on its factory backing in 1963 and it took years for them to get caught back up.
I think I’m more open-minded on the use of aftermarket wheels than most of you guys, at least the vocal ones. Generally, wheels are easy to change without modifying the car at all, so if someone wants to put aftermarket wheels on their ride to make it their own, all power to them. I look at the fitted wheels and tires on their merits and decide whether I think the car looks good with them.
I do have strong opinions on what looks good though. The largest wheels I’ve ever seen fitted to a car from the 60’s that still looked reasonable to my eye were 17″. Anything bigger definitely gives the car an unnatural Hot Wheels car look. I also think 5-spoke wheels and white letter tires can look good on 60’s Dodges or Plymouths, but not on Chryslers.
Speaking of spoke-style wheels, am I the only one annoyed that 5 or 6-spoke aluminum wheels seem the be the default choice for all new vehicles? Minivans and most plebeian cars should not be riding on 5-spoke mags. They look dumb. Even if aluminum is the material du jour for factory wheels, do they all have to be the spoke style?! (I think Paul, with the red steelies on his xB, would probably agree with this.)
Even cars with factory steel wheels have spoke-style wheel covers today. After a few years of winter road salt exposure, you can see the rusty wheels through the wheel covers, and they look like garbage.
Additionally, I think 6-spoke wheels look wrong on cars, though they’re okay on SUVs and trucks. I’ve only seen one car where I though the 6-spoke wheels looked good; it was a Subaru and they were aftermarket wheels.
Those are gorgeous on that car. I am glad to see the trend away from the obnoxious chrome wheels. But i would guess those wheels are just a bit custom, I don’t think those tires would fit on the OEM steelies. Maybe they were widened? Its hard to tell from these pics but is it possible these are even 16″ steels?
I do like the looks of this car. I’m usually the type that thinks that Crager S/S wheels usually improves the looks of a car like ketchup improves the taste in food, but I could go w/the steelies/small cap look, especially on Mopars. I also don’t care too much for modern wheels/tire combos, especially on older cars.
love this car and love steelies and dog dish caps. why? cause back in the day custom wheels stood out. now nearly every new car has stock custom looking wheels so steelies stand out.
Sexy Beast, boys!