Bruce Neubeck was the oldest son of the family that lived directly across from my family on Overlook Place in Baldwin, New York and he bought a '54 Chevrolet like this in the spring of 1975. Bruce was more than ten-years older than the rest of kids on the block and I remember like it was yesterday the day he recruited a bunch of us to help him "push-start" it, a practice to start a manual transmission car that has a dead battery that I still find fascinating.
Once or twice he popped the clutch it stopped dead still and our faces all went splat into the chalk board straight trunk lid; the day and age it was I'm sure our parents laughed their asses off if they saw that. Nowadays lawyers would be summoned. The midwestern wholesomeness of the whole thing combined with how ancient I felt the car was made me feel as though I was in an episode of "Happy Days", my favorite TV show at the time. I loved every fleeting second of it.
This literal and figurative rerun is for sale on Facebook Marketplace near my current home in Cleveland, Ohio with an asking price of $6,500 and, no, I'm not about to make an offer on it just to recreate that moment. Although, I wouldn't mind taking this for a spin. No push starting, though, as it has a Powerglide (automatic). Comes with factory power steering and brakes (wow!) and has the "Blue Flame 125", inline, Chevrolet six-cylinder it was born with. That in and of itself is remarkable in that some time during the last near 70-years, no one has swapped it out.
Poster of the ad is helping their father sell this thing. He or she either copy and pasted some flowery prose about old cars or studied to be a real estate agent and aced the part about writing nonsensical copy to hawk houses.
"Are you looking to own one of the most iconic Chevrolet's of the 1950's or to relive your glory days and cruise like the old days with your loved ones on your main boulevard with a cool classic car? This cool 1954 Chevrolet 210 2 door sedan could be just the ticket to cool summer nights and car cruises across the valley!"
This isn't for me but but someone looking for a foil for an "LS-swap" might construe this a bargain. Looks pretty free from rust and the interior is nice and tidy in that charming 1950's librarian\utilitarian kind of way before everything GM made was a "luxury car". Trunk apparently is full of extra parts.
1954 was the last year for Chevrolet's first post-war models that debuted in 1949 and received a mid-production cycle styling update for 1953. Our subject here is a "210", 2-door sedan meaning it's a mid-level (between the entry-level 150 and top drawer "Bel Air"), pillared (center post) two-door and not the more desirable and valuable Bel Air Sport Coupe with its glorious hard top. Although less structurally sound, hard tops, so called because they lacked the center post "sedans" had and resembled convertibles with their tops up, are much more valuable.
Bruce didn't keep that '54 very long. He and his father flipped cars regularly which annoyed my father to no end; he claimed they were running a used car business out of their garage and that was "code violation". Whatever, dad. When he go off like that I'd just sigh, stare at their cars or go back to emulating Fonzie.
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