Deeply mired in a Snohomish, Washington barn, this 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air four door sedan wears thick layers of dust with pride. According to the description here on Craigslist, the V8 Chevy drove here under its own power and hasn’t left in decades. Few signs of human activity mar the classic, though gravity and the passing of time haven’t done it any favors. Looking completely stock, the top-level Bel Air rests in peace, waiting for an optimistic historian to fork over $7600 for the right to change it from an industrial paper weight into something resembling an automobile. Thanks to reader T. J. for spotting this true barn find.
Even the radio looks original on this old Chevy! Presumably black and white inside and out, this sedan is far from a lost cause, though the seats are almost certainly shot. The two-speed column-shifted Powerglide automatic transmission backed up the new-for-’55 V8 engine.
After touting the smoothness and torque of its inline six cylinder engines long after Ford’s V8 hit the scene, Chevrolet gave 1955 buyers an optional 265 cid V8 mill boasting 162 HP, according to OldCarBrochures. A source of pride even in infancy, no one in the ’50s could have predicted that Chevy’s “small block” V8 would become the world’s go-to hot rod engine for decades.
The iconic Tri-Five (1955, ’56, and ’57) Chevy represents a rolling emblem of the American 1950s, a simpler time when, well, a bunch of stereotypes applied that no longer hold water in the 21st Century. Many changes since then represent equity and promise, but today’s automotive designs are rarely as inspiring, and we don’t even have flying cars yet!
A collection of parts accompany the sale, including a replacement for the damaged driver’s door. Having seen piles like this before, I’d guess the owner scavenged a donor car before sending the carcass to the scrap yard. If this ’55 can be saved, that energy will not have gone to waste. Do you think this Bel Air will come out of the mud in one piece?
It would be foolish to pay any amount of money for this car as it “sits”. The owner should put the effort into freeing it from the barn so that potential buyers might get a look underneath.
that’s the holloween surprise.
$7,600? HAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, good one!
It must be a barn in Havana.
The first pic looks like it was found sitting 10,000 leagues under the sea by the Nautilus.
. . . to be pedantic, it’s ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues’ etc ….
@max- Maybe they only had to take her down to 10,000 to find it.
There are no barns in Havana, but they have the best restoration outfits in the world. If you’re a car lover, make a trip.
Going to need more than a winch on a trailer. I really don’t think their are all the parts you need to get this back running, don’t see a frame. Asking price is nowhere realistic unless they just watched some televised auction.
“Going to need more than a winch on a trailer.”
Indeed. I’m thinking razing the barn and airlifting the thing.
I believe that the owner is more optimistic than any historians would be.
Like a lot of others here, I truly believe there may be next to nothing left under this old girl. Sadly I think all you’ll get from this is an origami BelAir. 😢😢😢
I bet that time capsule 1957 Plymouth Belvedere drove up to the edge of the hole under its own power too.
UGH! what a sad sight.
4 door, rust, rot, the asking price is off by a zero. Running/driving 4 door 55’s can be bought for less. Its not a Mopar.
💲7️⃣.6️⃣0️⃣❗
Parts car. Never seen one inside a barn that had sunk this far into the dirt!
It’s not IN the barn. It is OF the barn; remove it and the building will fall down.
Snohomish is 210 miles from the Mount St. Helens volcano. Looks as if the ash from the last eruption found that barn.
That is exactly what I was thinking. Just plain dust will not leave you standing 1′ in it. Although my house may seem that way.Lol
If the owner believed in “equity?” He’d be asking $500.
Looks like a Pompei survivor after the eruption of Vesuvius!
Definitely in the area of Snohomish that floods every few years if you buy it make sure your up to date on your Tetanus shot there’s no telling what life killing bugs are in that mud, since when that area foods it hangs out for a few days or weeks I’m betting the frame is rusted to
why in the world do we even waste space on this site with this and others just like it. It is disrespectful to the auto community to waste space on this site. Too many POS entries lately.
Jonathan, for you there is a simple solution for that.
It’s called barn finds
We do it for love! …. Seriously some of the best conversations are sparked by just this type of car; there are 40 comments on this one. It’s great to have a debate about value or lack thereof. Or what the seller should really do. Or what we would do if this hulk were dropped into our driveway. Part it out? Scrap it? Use it as a planter? Make it a 500/500 car?
Optional bumper guards might be worth a Buck or two . . That’s about it . .
I found a 66 corvair just like that that at an old cement plant in Birmingham AL. I wanted it just for the engine, which was free if I could get it out. It took a full day, some heavy machinery (courtesy of the cement plant) to pluck it out of the ground and get the engine out. About an hour of that was heating nuts and bolts glowing white to extract them from what was left of the car. It looked pretty good from the cement (ground) on up, but there was literally nothing but solid rust underneath … not even fixable in anyone’s wildest dreams.
$7,600 for a DOWN UNDER ?
Better go through the dried mud under the car after pulling it out; don’t want to forget any parts that stuck to the mud.
And the extra doors are from a `56 210 sedan, but probably are the same under the trim.
Why????
I can just imagine hooking on to the front bumper and pulling the body off of the rusted out frame.
Smart buyers will pass on this one. If you dug it out, the frame
would be held together by the rust. This one’s been through more than one flood. Looks like the interior is full of mud also.
Frank S. I thought that looked like volcanic ash as well. But did not know it was near Mount Saint Helens.
ashes to ashes
dust to dust
(finish the thought . . . )
this car to ? ________________
Complete garbage. Frame and underside is rotted away.
Parts car at best. The days of these tri 5s has passed. They should have sold it when it was parked.
$76, maybe. That’s a good photo, though.
I don’t normally comment, but this time I will. There was a complaint about why barnfinds were posting listing like this. Yes some of them are laughable, but lighten up people – it is good to see absurd things occasionally! More importantly I learn things. I have has an interest in old cars for over 40 years, but still only have a fraction of the knowledge of some of the other members here – even though I have owned and wrenched on about a dozen old cars. It’s the little nuggets of information that can help when considering bidding on an auction or not, working out what is a lost cause, a fake or has structural issues that means the car will consume large amount of time and money for a lost cause. Good on you barn finds for creating a platform to enjoy and learn from
Completely agree. It’s not like some other car wasn’t featured because this one was.
And I just don’t understand why people who hate a posting waste even more of their time making a comment about how much they hate something.
No one is forcing anyone here to click and look at anything. There are a lot that I skip over simply because they don’t interest me. Then, there are these type of posts that I click on just for the comments – like was said above: LIGHTEN UP!
I agree absolutely.
That 265 block is worth something as they are getting harder to find for people wanting to do restoration. Maybe a few other odds and ends. Definitely a parts car.
First scrape the barnacles off the chassis..
Kiwi, I LOVE posts like this because they provide a moment of much-needed levity in today’s world.
Mudlark…
Everyone keeps talking about a chassis…..there probably isn’t one😀
$7600?
You know there’s one guy out there contemplating snatching this nugget up just for the VIN tag…..lol.
Need an archaeologist for this one. Dr. Jones?
Looking at the photo of the spare parts, methinks they parted out the wrong car!
If I owned the barn I would pay someone 100 bucks to drag that pile out of my barn.
Just my two cents, the cover pic of it in a barn covers in dust sunk to its spindles made me open this article. This is barnfinds after all. I love looking at dirty old cars abandoned in barns or junkyards backyards I find them very intriguing, they also bring back so many memories from my younger days. Looking at this covered in dirt and god knows what else imagine what it looked like rolling off the assembly line. This has some extra chrome options v8 I bet this was a really nice family car back then. I personally appreciate this type of article and hope you keep posting these dirt old relics, certainly not a waist of space on your pages. I do think this guy is nuts with his asking price and should at the very least take the time to pull it out of the barn and give it a wash , posting both before and after shots.
I totally, absolutely agree. For those who feel it is a waste of time, use your freedom and common sense, and STOP READING!!!!
Sellers who say “it drove when parked” Leave it conveniently When that was. I bought old Jukeboxes for years and would laugh when the seller would point to a box covered in dust and say, it played when we plugged it in last. Sure, when was that dude, in 1969? C’mon folks!
Yes, it’s like saying grandma walked before she died…..
Derik,
That reminds me of the time I was selling a 1947 Studebaker Champion sedan out of a car collection I had recently bought. It had not run in at least 30 years and was basically good only for parts. A guy came out to look at the car and kept asking how well it ran, and I kept telling him I didn’t know as I had just bought it and the car didn’t even have a battery.
He took out a flashlight from his coat pocket and found it’s batteries were missing, so he asked me if I had 2 D cell batteries. I went to the trash can in my parts department and fished out a couple of old D cells that I had recently discarded and knew were dead.
I gave him the batteries and he stuck them into the flashlight, only to discover it was still dead. He asked me why the batteries didn’t work, and I replied, “They don’t work? They were fine the last time I used them!”
Someone should do a docudrama on the removal of this thing. That is where the money would be. I would watch with great interest.
Richard, that is a brilliant idea. Derek Bieri comes to mind. I’ll be dipped!
. . . I think that’s all we’re waiting to see happen! Any other possible comment has already been made …