1974 Chevrolet Impala Reviews, Pricing & Specs

I think these are the best bang for the buck antique car you can find these days. You can get them cheap and sell them for thousands more. For a big car, they hold the road pretty well and can't be beat for a long trip. You can beef up the suspension pretty nicely on top of that to make them handle like a BMW, well..almost. They last forever, aside from rust issues. If you can find one with high miles that you actually want to drive the wheels off of, they are very easy and inexpensive to maintain. Insurance is cheap too. They turn heads ...everyone gives you the thumbs up and waves.Jan 04, 2008

The interior is A-Typical for this generation, sporting only the barest of essentials. Putting the climate controls to the left of the steering wheel instead of the right as most later model cars have converted to can become tiresome with a passenger who cannot stay warm or cool. The lack of instrument gauges on this model only leaves you to rely on the "idiot lights" for your piece of mind. The comfort level of the interior is worthy of a cross country drive. This is of course pending your ability to drive long distances with out the luxury of changing positions as with todays power seat's. The ride quality is second to none. It's a HEAVY car weighing in at 5700 lbs and the suspension is top notch. This is with the original delco shocks still at all four corners running on 275/60/15's. As for the performance of my particular car. It has the highly restricted 170hp 400 small block with 2bbl carburator. The power could be improved easily with the exchange of the 2bbl intake and carb with any of the small block chevy 4bbl intakes and a quadrajet. As for the Transmission, it shifts flawlessly and smoothly. This particular car uses a mechanical kick down via a second cable mounted to the gas pedal. This is both nice and not so nice depending on your style of driving. In my case, I have gotten used to being able to "jab" the gas pedal to down shift to 2nd gear for passing. On vaccum operated kick down models the transmission reacts in conjunction with the engine's demands and not the position of the gas pedal. At speeds slower than highway speeds it's any ones guess as to weather the transmission will react to the pedal actuated kick down or try to rely on the engine's power to gain adequate acceleration. I often find that manually shifting into low 2 while accelerating eliminates the hit and miss characteristics of this particular set up. The asthetics of the vehicle are flawless in my opinion. This is a very heavy, very long car who'se lines flow through out the length of the car. It's cadillac like long front and gigantic trunk balance out the appearance of the car well. My particular model is a two door with the solid back side windows and concave rear window.The most asthetically pleasing body style in my opinion. This year produced two body styles in the two door versions and two in the four door configuration. The sport coupe with roll down rear windows and the Impala standard and Custom shared two doors. This was also the year for the Spirit of America of which both the sport coupe and Custom was used. The four door models available were the post and sedan. The post was built with pillars and posts surrounding the windows and a divider support at the joining portion between the two doors. The sedan had no pillar or post and no support around the windows. Giving a full open look to the car with all the windows down. Because of the weight and strength of the post type four door sedan they are very popular with demolition derbies. The Sport Coupe seems to be the style of choice for most of the gear heads and the 2 door standard and customs with the concave rear window and fixed side passenger windows seem to be the style of choice for the Texas Donk. A "pet" name for Impala which derived from the Mexican equivalent for Impala which is Donkey. Somewhere along the lines the "ey" was dropped. Over all, I love the car and it being a very low mileage original makes it hard for me to NOT drive it. But even at the rate I'm going, which is about 6 thousand miles a year, the car will not roll over for another ten and a half years. By this time the car will be nearly 44 years old. I hope those who read these words enjoy the Impala's as much as I do. Mar 22, 2007