Mostly I haul Turds.....today was different.
 

Mostly I haul Turds.....today was different.

Classic American Iron. 1973 Chevelle SS 454

It was my buddy's mom's car. Been sitting for quite awhile. Since she went into the home.

Slammed the door and it was like Pig Pen from Charlie Brown appeared.

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Took my 5 year old grandson with me to haul the car. He had such a good time with Rick the owner of the car he wants me to adopt him. :)






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You were supposed to be here an hour ago.

Cool!, a friend in high school had a black one. Not my favorite iteration of Chevelle, but pretty unique . You do not see a lot of them

Pretty cool Mom to be driving one of these.......

https://imganuncios.mitula.net/1973_...6555161371.jpg

What's going to happen with that car?

Very cool. Maybe not the coolest Chevelle possible, but still cooler than most of the crap since. And it's old enough, that a bunch of the power lost since the same motor just a few years prior could be easily regained.

Each of those doors weighs about 200 lbs. ... maybe more. The Camaros of that time had the same problem resulting in hinge pins and bushings failing with oil change regularity.

The car was in his parents garage in a small town a couple hours West from here. The parents both passed within 6 months of each other. He sold the house and possession is today. Moved up from the end of the month. So the car went to a small (2 man operation) restoration shop where it will be first brought back to life (gas drained, all fluids replaced, lubed, ect) and then it will go into the queue of projects being done where it will be restored to new quality.

The owner told me today gas was $0.453 a gallon when his dad brought the car home. :)

+1

If I read correctly only 2,500 of the SS Chevelle's were built in 73. 600 with a manual 4 speed. That is a drop in the bucket for Chevy sales numbers. The below Hemmings article says trim parts are rare given low numbers. Not sure if that count is all SS's or just the 454. Regardless, not many.

245/375 performance figures and that is net hp not gross like before 72. 15.5 quarter. That's fast for 1973 and being an "old" full sized car @ 4,000 lbs.

The Trans Am 455 SD was 290/390 with 14.0-ish second quarters. Far more rare.

On a side note: 8.5 MPG for the Chevelle. :D

https://www.hemmings.com/magazine/hmn/2007/07/1973-Chevrolet-Chevelle-SS-454/1483632.html

That car would be best left alone. It can always be restored. It can never be un-restored. I'd get the mechanicals sorted out and leave it alone. In a lot full of restored, more valuable cars, it would probably get the most attention.

Thanks for sharing.

I had a 70 454 my senior year— won thirteen drag races the first Friday night after we overhauled top end and my wife had a red 73 454 Corvette. (Back in the 70’s)

I wouldn’t mind adding a Malibu of any type to my garage again.

The '73 SD 455 is my grail car...

Why is the front license plate on backwards?

So you can read it in your rear view mirror. Duh... :D

That car is a bit of a pink elephant, sort of a vestige of the last dying breaths of the muscle car era. All of the muscle had been removed by then but it still had the emblems and unfortunately ugly 100 lb. bumpers on each end.

I could see how it could have enormous sentimental value, however, if it had been in the family for decades. I would give anything to have any of my dad's cars from 1967-1976.

Exactly. The "muscle car" era only ran for about six to eight years, and came to a crashing halt in about 1971. They still used the names, but performance had suffered mightily by then, as had styling.

My dad and my uncles had some amazing iron in those days. They were the ones that planted the seed for me, a decade later, to go search out what they were driving when I was a kid. As a result, my first car was a '67 GTO 400 four speed. After that came a bunch of 383 and 440 MOPARS, but none newer than 1969. Some of the 1970 models were still o.k., but definitely by 1971, they were just stickers on overweight, underpowered turds.

That’s about $2.50 in today’s dollars. And it got a lot worse in the late 70s before it got better. At 8 MPG I can just imagine the pain those gas fill ups caused.

Never liked the '73. '72 was the last year I liked the body style.

I agree with Steve. The SD 455 somehow got under the radar.

Edit adding YT video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4tV426_Ih8

A lot of truth to that...

But if it were mine I would leave the body/interior stock, save all the parts and hotrod the crap outta it.

1973 the smog regulation killed the 454, save the OEM block, bump up the compression, headers, a nice intake setup and that thing could be... interesting. ;)

Zackly why I would make it into a hot rod.

YMMV

Curious do cars in Winnipeg rust as badly as they do in Southern Ontario?

They use more salt down there due to the temp differences. So I would say no. :)

That's a pretty rare piece indeed, especially unmolested. Not sure if the market will ever be strong for that car, but none the less, I would preserve it as is. It's a piece of automotive history

It's too heavy to be a hot rod. The doors weigh probably 100 lbs. each. This model was the beginning of what is now referred to as, "the dark days of Detroit..."

These were tough times for the auto industry, especially Detroit although there were some serious nose-dives in European performance as well. Think of the difference between a 2.4 911S and a mid-year 2.7 911S. This is of course reflected in collector values of the various cars.

Some pretty heart-wrenching compromises had to be made by automakers with new regulations and the lag time in coming up w new technologies to meet them. Of course later, they all made cars that burned cleaner, were safer and ran circles around anything from the old days in terms of performance.

I remember working at a local Pontiac dealer as a teenager, they were also a British Leyland dealer so Jags, MG, Triumph and Jenson cars as well. I distinctly remember that it was 1975, the first year for mandated catalytic converters on domestic cars. American cars had to accept and run on unleaded gas beginning in 1971 but in 1975, it was unleaded only w cats and little stickers near the gas filler necks.

A saleslady pulled into the service lane w a brand new Pontiac Lemans or Grand Prix, it was running on, (dieseling), and would not shut-off. Something in the regurgitation system or something, wow was that embarrassing. She had a potential buyer on a test drive and the car would not turn off.

I saw that and other running problems in brand new cars a lot more that year. It was a nightmare for the front and the back of the house, as they say in the car business.

FWIW, Pontiac Trans Ams still had some balls in those years w the 400 and 455s but really, they were boat anchors compared to really quick cars of the recent past at the time. :)

Lots of things are parts of automotive history best left buried. I don't mean to pile on but just because something is old and "a part of history", does not give it value.

As I stated before, if it has unique sentimental value to the owner, that's a different thing. For anyone else, it's close to valueless. And the Chevy 454 of the '70s was a garbage truck engine.

Interesting note - all of Detroit, but for 1 division of GM, choose the easy way out to deal with unleaded fuel and other smog devices.

It was Pontiac, who under the leadership of John Delorean that had engineers rework existing engine designs to make power with new restrictions. Sadly though, it was a very short run until '75 or so.

I did a quick look to see what it was worth and it appears ones with nice shinny paint go for between $40,000 and $50,000.

As to the value of these cars because of it's age those last years (the third generation 1973-1977) were never much in demand. Big, heavy and low HP (this one is 245 hp). Start of smog equipment. If anything happened to them they were crushed because there was no demand. Because of all that there are probably not a lot of them around and are becoming more collectable. It's so ugly it's beautiful. :)

As the car was his mom's car and they (his family) have owned it since new there is very small chance that he will ever sell it. He doesn't need the money. :)

It's just old enough to still be interesting even if, like I said previously, it's not the coolest or most desirable. There were a handful of cars that were still interesting up until the mid 70s even if they had much less power by that time. I would think that in many/most places, those cars (at least pre-74 or pre-75 when catalytic converters were on all cars) are now old enough that they could have free flowing intakes and exhausts and "smog-free" carbs and maybe a mild cam update added and be much more fun and peppy. I wish I had time, money and space to find something old and interesting.

$40-50K sounds sky high to me.

I agree. Way way WAY too many nice cars available at $40-50K -even with the CDN exchange rate factored in- for the '73 Chevelle no matter what is under the hood to be on a list of gotta haves for most people......

That red one that Baz posted is nice looking, though!

Ok, do what I did......type in "1973 Chevelle SS 454 for sale" into whatever search engine gods you choose and then take a average of the results. Let me know what you get? :)

I only looked a 3 or 4 cars, so I could be wrong. :)

few even know of the 71 only ho 455 round ports and hi-compression
in the t/a only
I had the block 4 bolt in my 68 GTO but never found the heads

I could not find any for sale in a search but here is the Hagarty guide, ~$24k in showroom/concours condition. And you have to realize that almost any car made is worth $20k in concours condition. That means NEW.

https://www.hagerty.com/apps/valuationtools/1973-Chevrolet-Chevelle-SS

Is it a manual or a stick?

Good one. :Dhttp://forums.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/wat4.gif

https://classiccars.com/listings/find/1973/chevrolet/chevelle $43,000

https://classics.autotrader.com/classic-cars-for-sale/1973-chevrolet-chevelle-for-sale $41,000 & $43,000

The two '73s are the same car, much better condition, maybe a different 454, and including a 4-speed. The $41,000 is a much more desirable '72. Bad comps.

From what I've seen on TV auctions, I'd think that one you hauled might bring $20-25K in great condition. As mentioned above, I agree the best way to go is to clean it up as-is, get it running, and sell as a survivor.

i'd prefer the same vintage but the 442.

Those are not comps. Comps are cars that have actually sold for some amount of $$, not batschit asking prices on auto trader for cars that are actually worth less than half.

Show me an actual finished auction on one of these cars, even on ebay, and that would be a comp. :cool:

It would cost $20k to make it into a $20k car. My $8.00 Misubishi parts runner truck would also cost $20k to put back in showroom condition and I could ask $20k on auto trader for it. That doesn't make it worth $20k, (or that old Chevelle worth $42k), unless and until some moron actually pays that for it.

The muscle car bubble was incredibly strong and long lasting, covering about the last 25 years. If any domestic car has any collector appeal at all, there should be dozens of confirmed sales or auction results online. Google 1972 911S or "Hemi 'Cuda" and read for days. Absolutely no one on earth collects 1973 Chevelles, at least not intentionally.

The only way that it has any value to anyone is if it was their mother's car, and it's purely sentimental value. It's a shame that mom didn't get the urge for a big block SS Chevelle 3 or 4 years sooner. Then you might have something w some collector value. :cool: