“The door catch won’t hold, so you just have to hang on to it‚” The Fabricator offered, as I moved in behind the wheel of the 1959 Chevy Apache. Where I grew up, they salt the roads and rust eats cars within a decade and half. Not so in Southern California, where this Apache has spent it’s fifty years.
When it rolled off the line, Jack Brabham was Formula 1 World Champion, Ben Hur won Best Picture at the Oscars, and my Dad was still wearing shorts to school, while sharing his classroom with two other unknown Liverpudlian school boys, Paul McCartney and John Lennon. Power comes from the venerable Chevy “stovebolt” straight six, (265ci/3.9 litres) through a 3 speed floor mounted manual with a special “granny” low first gear. Inside, the steering wheel is close to the bench seat, which has been recovered in a particularly slippery black plastic, and, as can be seen, has partly collapsed on the driver’s side, allowing easier entry and, as I was to discover, egress. Of course, it has never had seat belts, even racing drivers didn’t use them in 1959.
The speedo is shaped like a slice of pizza, straight out of the iconic ’55 Chevy, and is a bit of unexpected Art Deco chic amongst all that utilitarian exposed steel. Stepping into the Apache from a modern, the non power-assisted steering is heavy, and has more play than Shakespeare. The brakes feel as if your foot is pushing small blocks of wood onto the wheel rims, and stopping seems to have more to do with not really wanting to move in the first place rather than anything the driver might be doing with the middle peddle. The gearbox cannot be hurried – each shift seems to have two stages – first taking it out of one gear… and… only… then… putting it into another. A few turns around the block, and I thought I had the hang of it, however on one particular right turn, the unwilling re-centralizing action on the steering caught me off guard, and as I used both hands to manhandle the wheel, with one slip, the door was open, and I was half out of the truck, my arse fully in the breeze, only my grip on the steering wheel keeping me from rolling down the street, as when I last fell off a motorcycle. Judging by her expression, it must have been equally engaging for the Mexican woman in a small south east asian car coming down the street towards us, and whom we were now bearing down upon; fortunately The Fabricator was able to grab the steering wheel, avoid the Kiyundai, and bring us to rest against the kerb, whilst I manfully struggled back inside. “Cornering G forces too high for you, Summers?” he asked, after he had stopped laughing.
More photos at Flickr.
