.187 304 Stainless
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This was my first car: '72 Heavy Chevy Chevelle. Smooth, powerful ride with 350 V8 and manual 4-speed transmission. While researching this today, I found that there were about 9,800 Heavy Chevy models made and only 272 of them had the 4 speed transmission.
There seems to be a mis-mash with the specs as they do not show the 4 speed coupled with the 350 V8. Might have been more of a rare animal than I imagined!
Never got better than 15 MPG. It seems I was going to the gas station all the time. Gas prices were about $0.75 cent per gallon. But wages were very close to $3.35/hr. That does equate to 1/2 days wages to fill the tank!
An interesting note was that the Heavy Chevy was marketed as being inexpensive and they purposely designed/distinguished it different from the SS so that the insurance rates would be less.
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Is that you and your car?
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That is the 18 y.o. me. This trip was from Fairbanks to Anchorage (about 330 miles one way) in the winter of 1975. My friend and I decided the night before that we would go to Anchorage to do Christmas shopping. Meanwhile a snow storm hit Fairbanks and there was about 12 inches of fresh snow on the ground. Our parents were not up when we left (about 6 am).
We were young and ignorantly stupid. Probably should have cancelled the trip. I did have mud and snow tires on the rear. We were about 100 miles from Anchorage so we stopped to change the rear tires to the mag wheels. I needed to look as cool as possible when we hit the big city, you know! That is when we discovered that the entire rear bumper had about 4 inches thick of frost covering the tail lights. It flaked off easily since it was probably 10 below at the time.
We probably met only 2 cars during that first 200 miles of travel. That is what tells me we should not have been out there. It was before the snow plows got out on the road. At this point, when the picture was taken, all the roads were plowed.
Interesting place to grow up. If you were to get stranded, it could be life threatening. There were only 2 places to stop for gas on that highway between Fairbanks and Anchorage (we called it the “new highway”). One gas station was 56 miles from Fairbanks (and it was closed when we passed it) and the other was about 80 miles from Anchorage. If you timed it wrong, you were out of gas and you could be up to 20 milles or more from any house or business.
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Now is that a dent in the door and finder?? What did you hit?
My mom’s first car was a green Chevelle named George. My dad was going to buy one as a teenager from the tales it was a beast. His insurance company wouldn’t approve it. He decided not to buy it even though my grandfather said they could switch insurance companies.
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It is. That was there when I bought it. I remember when my friend took the picture “We used the wrong side of the car!” But it was the more picturesque scenery side. The other side would have shown scrub brush trees. Plus we were freezing. We dressed more for looks than for function even though we had warmer clothes in the car: Always carried a snow suit and snow boots, gloves and hat.
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Smart and a ladies man … How often do you tell your wife how lucky she is 
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Chick Magnet!
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Sweet …an 8-Track!
fade out, click-click, fade in (if you know, you know).
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I had a friend at the time who pulled the 350 and dropped in a 427 (blueprinted if that means anything). Used to scare the $hit out of me riding with him!
EDIT: It might have had the 383 originally…
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Not saying that it wasn’t a 427…I don’t know that much about cars, but from the factory the largest engine you could order was the Turbo-Jet 402 with a four-barrel carburetor, then came the Turbo-Fire 350 with a four-barrel carburetor. I don’t know if mine was the “turbo-fire”, like I said, I don’t know that much about cars. The guy that I bought it from said he could squeal the tires in the first 3 gears. When you stepped on it, the front of the car lifted up about 6 inches. It was quite the feeling. With that driving behavior you could watch the gas gage needle move!
I did learn that you can’t leave a car out in 35 below zero for 8 hours with regular weight differential oil. It totally froze up and I burned out the clutch trying to get it to move on level ground. When it finally eased up a little, it started to move but the rear wheels were locked up as if the brakes were on. Talk about a bad smell: that clutch was shot.
So @Zen, how did you get such clean cuts on stainless? It looks superb!
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Oh, it WAS a 427 but he installed it himself and sold the 350 to someone wanting to upgrade. However, you made me think a little deeper on this and it was a Chevy Nova, not a Chevelle.
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