On a fine warm day in 1957, 12-year-old John Hager saw something whiz by his classroom window that would change his life forever.
It was a brand-new `57 Chevy. Right then and there, the boy fell in love with the car.
Thirty years later, Hager is still smitten. At last count, he has owned 37 Chevies, all of them `56s and `57s. He gives them girls` names: Trixie and Sheila and Cheri and Donna. . . .
”I fell in love with the body style, the grille, the fins,” he said, his eyes getting a faraway look. ”It`s a truly great car.”
The `57 Chevy: classic, low-slung lines, the graceful sweep of the tail fins, the massive front end. This is a car. Once you know what one looks like, you will never mistake it for any other automobile.
Next to one of these shining behemoths, modern cars look wimpy and insignificant–like little tin boxes on wheels.
But the `57–what a highway-eater. ”The Road Isn`t Built That Can Make It Breathe Hard!” trumpeted a magazine advertisement for the `57 Chevrolet. The car was shown cruising up a steep mountain road, with a poor sap in the background kicking his stalled, overheated hot rod.
`A WHOLE NEW BREED`
”They were fast, fast cars,” said Jim Billinger, current president of the Rocky Mountain Classic Chevy Club. ”It was a whole new breed of car. It started a rock `n` roll trend.”
The `55 and the `56 are also very collectible, but the `57 continues to command the highest prices among classic Chevies: A mint-condition `57 Bel Air convertible (a real dream machine) with all the options can cost $25,000–more than seven times its original price.
What makes the `57 so special?
For one thing, the engine was the first offered on a standard production car that managed to achieve one horsepower for every cubic inch of engine displacement–a big power boost over Chevy`s previous engines. In addition, it came with optional fuel injection, another nifty new development. And Chevrolet paired it with a new transmission, the Turboglide, which was considered superior to its predecessors (a point now endlessly argued).
Classic Chevy owners spend thousands of dollars restoring their cars
–tracking down the right door handle or radio knob with the single-minded tenacity of bloodhounds. Detail is everything.
GENUINE OR NOTHING
Although some owners stoop to non-Chevy parts, the real fanatics won`t touch anything that isn`t the genuine article. They use either original parts or newly manufactured parts that are exact copies of the old.
Norm Smith of Denver owns a fuel-injected, four-door `57 sedan, a beautiful two-tone model in adobe beige and sierra gold, the original colors. It`s his fourth `57 and his favorite–but of course it is not finished, even after 10 years and $6,000. One never ”finishes” a classic Chevy. That would take half the fun out of owning one.
What about the `58?
Aargh, say Chevy buffs. They speak of `58s the same way baseball fans talk about the early New York Mets. Meaning, they don`t.
”It just didn`t make it,” Billinger said of the `58. He looked puzzled that someone would even ask. ”They kind of ruined the styling; the car got heavy-looking. I would not own one myself.” —
