California finds are always close to a dream come true leaving many of us in other localities jealous and envious of Cali’ finds. Although a bit weathered this ’58 Impala two door is a rock solid project that has a tremendous amount of potential, as well as a fresh drive-train! Very complete, but still needing finishing touches, this Impala is offered for $19,999. Check it out here on craigslist out of Camarillo, California. Thanks to Michael for sharing this rock solid Cali’ Find!
Despite the weathered exterior, the engine compartment has a lot to show! The freshly rebuilt 283 V8 is the original numbers matching unit, as is the automatic transmission according to the seller. All of the front suspension and frame section is clean and freshly painted, to which I am sure this Impala would be a great driver with all of the suspension work. Looking over the paint, the engine compartment, and the fresh front end parts, I am curious if this Impala caught fire at some point in its past? The fire wall appears to be very bare, and the exterior paint is worn in a rather unique way.
The interior is very original, but could use a little help. The front bench needs to be reupholstered, but the rest of the interior looks like it could be cleaned, and tidied up enough to be enjoyed as “original”.
With a lot of factory paint remaining, the paint on the trunk area and rear quarters is still very shiny. There is paint wear on the roof, and on top of the fins as well. The hood has been replaced, and the front fenders and trim show signs of a fire in the past. The driver side trim looks crisp and shiny, but the passenger side looks hazy and rusty. Despite this issue, I would faux patina the hood to match the rest of the car, or this car looks to be a grand start to a restoration as there seems to be no rot present. Very complete and solid, would you preserve or restore this fine two door?
Defanetly a fire victim, but on its way back to road worthy.i think this is one of the most stylish cars ever produced by gm, in fact I’d tack this over a 57 any day. With fire damage on the front fenders and the fact that the hood needed to be replaced tells me things got really hot up there. If this were my car I’d put a red leather interior in it with a black body and red roof. It would look killer and would be a life long keeper in my books.
agree with your assessment and plans but would you pay $20,000 for it right now? i think that too expensive.
I’m on board with most of that Mark, but I gotta say the tail end of the 58’s has always looked “butt” ugly to me. That pun was honestly unintended but it works so I added the quotes…
Dad had a 58 Biscayne (?) black with the red interior. I wonder if the corrosion/fading of this BF car on the passenger side is from being parked for years inside a carport open to the elements?
I certainly agree that it shows definite signs of having an engine compartment fire. However, it’s hard to tell if the fire did any damage outside of the engine compartment. I’m suspicious in the fact that there are no pictures of the dash area of the car, that could have had some damage the excessive heat.
Good project car but, too expensive. As is…considering rebuilt engine and tranny….$12,000.00. Still has a lot of work to be done, and that is going to take some cash.
In good ol’ Burnaby North HS, Vancouver Heights, our Grade 12 teacher bought a new one – we won’t go into it here, but based on the current sentiment, he would be fired, and quite likely jailed for his activities!
Non-the-less – I always have had a soft spot in my heart for this model (unlike him!)
A 58 with 283, and driving one stock was a messtake awaiting to happen.
Best thing to ever happen to this model year came later as toddlers redone everything on them.
Still for the oooooh ahhh American grafitti bubble gummers they costomed slightly, w/ minimum of 348 tripower, make a great leisurely look at me cruiser,.
Hard to pass on as an easy cosmetic fix up would be a profitable flipper, as damn near everypart is available on aftermarket.
What?
Every Part??? 58 is a one year wonder. Better hope every piece of trim is in decent shape.
Wow, Hide Behind, your statement was hard to read but I get what you are saying…it took two generations of youngsters to appreciate and upgrade this model into a nice cruiser. When I first read “toddlers redone everything on them” my first thought was infants puking in the back seat and throwing ice cream cones around the cabin. This, I did, in my parents 58!
I don’t know what it is about the styling of the 58, but in red with white trim, or in black with red trim, this car is beautiful to me. A buddy of mine had a red Impala with the tri power 348 and 4 spd. It was a beautiful car and went like stink.
it did scare the $^## out of us one night, when after launching from a light, the three carbs stuck wide open. My buddy dived for the ignition switch, and managed to shut it down before it blew up. We found out afterwards, that this was not an uncommon problem.
If I owned the car, I would find a W engine, and do the body up in Red with white interior and trim.
Bob
Red and white paint with red and white paint, 348 minimum. Would really like a 409, dual quad.
There was one of these sitting in a farmers field by my work, that could only be seen from a set of train tracks. More than a couple of my co-workers asked if he was willing to sell it…you know how this ends. The old story “I’m going to restore it one day”. It eventually got towed away when it was too far gone.
This has always been one of my favorite bowtie models (even though I prefer Ford). I’ve seen a restored black on black and a restored red on red that were stunning, but the best one I saw was black with red interior that had the Continental kit… what a beautiful car.
If (that’s a real big if) I were to buy it, I would finish the restoration with a black exterior and red interior.
I don’t think the price is great, but I also don’t think it’s unreasonable. I bet the owner would turn over the keys for $18K.
American Graffiti made these cars cool
They were cool on their own. American Graffiti just publicized them more.
Went night hunting in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) back in 1961 in my friends ’58 Impala convertible. My friend saw a pair of eyes and shot it, only to discover that it was one of the next door farmer’s cows! We had to high tail it out of there but his wife was so cross with him that a big shouting match erupted. When we got back to the car my wife and I got into the back seat and his wife followed us as she wasn’t going to sit next to her boy friend she was so fed up. Lucky for her, as he was also cross, and threw the 410 Express rifle I think it was, down on the front seat where it went off, blowing a smallish hole in the inside of the door and a BIG one on the outside!! That quietened every one down in a big hurry. One helluva night out I can tell you.
At first glance, I thought this car had suffered the same fate of my dad’s ’58. Less than a month after he purchased his brand new Biscayne, the hood latch failed and the bonnet took flight. Dad bought more than 30 new Chevys over the years, but he was loaned a ’54 Ford wagon while the Biscayne was being repaired and THAT’S the car I fell in love with. Four-year-olds can be fickle.
Somewhere in my poorly organized photo albums from the 1970s, there is a picture of my neighbor’s 1958 Chevy. It’s 16 year old owner brush painted it orange, added chrome reverse wheels, and moved the shifter from the column to the floor. If you stood back far enough, it looked pretty cool, even with its green interior. As Howard recently observed, one of the great things about Barn Finds is how it transports back to another time with fond memories.
One mans patina, is another mans fire.
My friend in high school used to borrow his Dad’s ’58 Chevy wagon for all of us to stuff all our surfboards in the back for a surf trip. This way only one vehicle took the trip and we all saved fuel! The extra cash went to donuts and milk and tacos in the afternoon! Great car!
Acquisition cost too high, but go ahead, fix it and drive it.
My brother bought a 1958 Impala Black on Black when they first came out. It was loaded with everything, including the 348cu. in. V8 w/Turbodrive automatic transmission. Very pretty and very fast.
OMG!!!! Its a salvage title!!! Its not worth more than the sum of it’s parts!
Duh! Such dumbasses… I’m so sick of whiners today. I haven’t read all the comments here for this particular car, but I have enough of others in the past that, I just had to speak up and say that this is such a rare example of the model and year, that to accuse it of being anything less than a rare survivor is simply an ignorant travesty.
A simple example to consider; nearly 50 present of the existing ‘restored’ 1970-71 Mercedes-Benz 280SE 3.5 coupes OR cabriolets, fetching well North now of $200K were once all; what would be considered “salvage” cars in Europe. In whatever condition they eventually ended up here in this country, they all received “Clear” and thus, “Clean” titles! Imagine that!?
I apologize beforehand, if I insulted anyone commonsense, but I just had to rant about what I have found to be a trend lately(to put it mildly)…
When I was in my early teens (13/14) I could have bought one w/348 w/trips for $35.00 with a cracked block. Complete car without any dents or scratches. I never knew any better
Ron, I passed on a “57 Bel Aire with a dented quarter panel and a blown 283. It was a 3 speed manual and clean as a whistle for $150. (1965) that same year I could have bought a ’59 Vette (bushel basket but mostly there for $50) Whey were they so cheap? Because that’s all they were worth back then. (crocodile tears)
hind sight being 20/20… I agree.
I had a 58 BelAir in high school. Had a 61 348/350 HP, 3 deuces and a 3 speed on the floor. That damned car got me two driver’s license suspensions my senior year. Man, it was fast.
My All time favorite and Dream car could not buy one in the day and sadly beyond my hopes today. A great candidate, but WAIT: Some body PLEASE Send this to THE PICKERS. Mikey knows it is worth 100K offered 50k for a Convertible recently that the Present owner said 100k was his number and Mike likes them “Sweaty” and I’m sure he probably would tell them it iworth more. This is what people are talking about when they say these shows have ruined the hobby today
Even though it is a victim of an engine fire and it did put a lot of heat up there between the hood and the windsheild ( it looks a lil toasted ) I think this would make a nice car. I don’t even mind the Corral Color not every chevy needs to be black or red ya know. I’m thinking 14 to 16K for that car. But them is NC prices not california prices. LOL
I dated a gal in high school who drove a 1958 2 door sedan, 348, 4 bbl. 3 speed on the floor. Her father ( Johnny) had purchased the car new. When I asked him if it was fast, he said not this one. (He was at the time driving a ’67 SS Chevelle with a 496, 4 speed and hone-o-drive overdrive). When I questioned “this one”? I was told that this was the replacement car for the first one that was stolen. “That was the fast one!” Equipped exactly the same way the first one was “Oh my god fast” and was never beaten in a stoplight Grand Prix. ” We beat the wrong person one night and it disappeared.” In 1967 a police department in a neighboring suburb ( Chicago area) called to inquire about the stolen car. It seems that it had been found “IN A BARN” when some bank robbers had been apprehended. It had been used in at least 9 bank jobs and had several bullet holes in the trunk lid. Johnny requested to buy the car back from the insurance company. But they would not even entertain that possibility.
Now that my friends would have been a Real Barn Find!
By the way the car was black with red interior!
If it was equipped the same way, why was it faster I wonder?
496? I think you mean a 396.
In 1958, Nebraska highway patrol used 58 derays with 348 tri power, three speed I believe overdrive trans. Cops said it was the fastest things they had ever driven, but they had a hard time stopping them. They would auction them off when they had around 70,000 miles.
Vin_in_NJ has it right. Make it into an American Graffiti cruiser. White with red trim and interior.
Little Cars, It had to be one of those factory freak cars. (where everything was just right for lots of fun) I never really put much stock in that belief until I had the “JOB” of test driving about 25 brand new 1988 Mustang Highway Patrol cars. (I was the service manager at a Ford store that won the bid for the Mustangs.) Back then all of the cars had to be in service for a week with no problems before the check was issued from the state for payment.
I thought that in the day of computer controlled cars that “factory freaks” would no longer exist. I was way wrong! The difference between the cars was amazing. Most were in fact quite similar with minor differences. A couple were flat dogs. We checked those over extensively and never found anything wrong. (And they never came back for any warranty work.) But one was OH MY GOD fast. I thought that I had a supercharger engine under the hood. When I got home with it. (I drove each one home and gave it a 120 MPH run for about 5 miles, traffic permitting. Who is going to pull over a Highway Patrol Mustang?) I popped the hood and expected to find a mistake and that we had received an R & D car. Nope, everything looked stock. We checked that one at the dealership also and found nothing out of the ordinary. It came out of the hole so hard that I bet if I had abused it I could have gotten some daylight under one of the front tires. (No it had the same 3.27 gears in the diff. Checked the tag and the RPMs at a specific speed.) The car was an animal. One of the troopers that I knew would be getting one of the new cars, so I clued him in as to which one to grab. I later heard that when they were running a speed trap out in the boonies. There was a dead time that they clocked the car with the airplane and registered a 142MPH time. Haven driven many, many Fox Body Mustangs and Capris. I have to tell you that kind of speed in a notchback Mustang is a REAL handful. Especially if there is just a hint of a breeze. The officer really enjoyed that car. I also gave a friend a heads up who bought the car at auction. He also had a blast with that car for many years.
The same thing happened with the Camaros when I worked at the dealer in 1987.
Some were just faster than others.
Wednesday cars were usually the good ones.
“Tolerance stack-up”
Nope, a poked and stroked 454.
Does anyone who has been living in California for more than a week use the shortened name for the state, “Cali”?
It’s really not that tough to say “California”, or that much more time consuming to say the full name of the state rather than the four-letter abbreviation. “Cali” doesn’t sound right, isn’t cute….it’s dumb and annoying.
I agree. My wife is from Bakersfield. She gets a kick out of people to “talk Californian. Makes you think of this SNL sketch?
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