1955-1957 Chevrolet's, save for the Corvette, are referred to by some as "Tri-Fives" and I believe my apathy towards them stems from a lack of context seeing that I saw very few of them when I was growing up. Although, my first cousin, who's twenty-four years older than I am, had a '57. However, by the time I became even somewhat aware of it, it seemed woefully ancient; blame planned obsolescence for that. She replaced it with a 1969 Buick LeSabre that seemed space-age modern whereas the old Chevy seemed like something out of an old, boring, black and white movie.
This '56 popped up on my Facebook Marketplace feed recently and to overstate the obvious, there's apparently something to these cars seeing this non-number's matching, pillared, "Two-Ten", that needs at least a paint job and pricey interior work, has an asking price of, hold onto your bobby socks, baby, $28,000. And, get this, this car is priced fairly well. A Buick LeSabre convertible in "Concours" condition couldn't grab twenty-grand. My cousin's LeSabre was a four-door.
The "Tri-Fives" were Chevrolet's first all-new automobile since 1936 and everything, save for the famed Chevy "Blue Flame" six-cylinder engine and it's transmission options which carried over, was new. Styling was evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary, you don't really notice how different the previous models were from the newer ones. The subtle but not so subtle changes in appearances had to have been part of the plan seeing that GM had a lot to lose if their cash cow laid an egg. And not a golden one at that. Lest we forget that not all new post war designs were guaranteed hits as Ford found out a scant three model years later when they launched the Edsel.
Under the hood, the "Tri-Five's" are almost as famous for having Chevrolet's first V-8 engine since 1918 as they are for anything else. Whatever our '56 came from the factory with, however, is long gone. The ad makes no reference to what the car had originally but they do note that this engine here is a 327 cubic-inch "Chevy" from a 1964 Corvette. Yum. I'm not into resto-mod's per se but a period correct engine swap, 327's were quite the common engine swap before the Chevrolet 350 came along, that would improve drive-ability is more than welcome. The fact it came from a Corvette adds a dollop of extra cool to this whip as well. Although, what appears to be no power steering or brakes would make this car a handful to drive.
That floor-mounted shifter is attached to a Muncie four-speed manual transmission. That's a real nice touch but the lack of power steering is a real deal killer for me. As if I would be serious about this thing in the first place.
"Tri-Fives" came in three lines in seven different body styles. There was the "150", that name derived from shortening the car's "1500" production series name. The mid-level "Two-Ten" was named the same way although in sales brochures the car was known as "Two-Ten" where as the "150" was "150". The Bel Air was the top-of-the-line Chevrolet as it had been going back to 1950.
Like I said, there is something to these cars as even my twenty-four year old, quasi car enthusiast son, who has impeccable fashion sense, adores these things. The '55 and '56 models even more so than the tail-finned '57's. That's saying a lot too since he won't give most older car's a second glance. He says they're too bubbly, too swoopy. I just think they're too damn ugly and all look alike. Like father, like son I guess.
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