Here's one you don't see much of anymore

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My sister's first car was a '65 Biscayne in dull metallic aqua with 6 cylinder and 3-speed column shift. A family friend worked for GMAC and the Biscayne came in as a repo. My dad got it for like $250 or so in 1969. It was so stripped down that the AM radio didn't have any selector buttons. I suppose that was a step up from no radio at all. I learned to work a clutch in that car. It was much more forgiving than my dad's '50 GMC.
 
My sister's first car was a '65 Biscayne in dull metallic aqua with 6 cylinder and 3-speed column shift. A family friend worked for GMAC and the Biscayne came in as a repo. My dad got it for like $250 or so in 1969. It was so stripped down that the AM radio didn't have any selector buttons. I suppose that was a step up from no radio at all. I learned to work a clutch in that car. It was much more forgiving than my dad's '50 GMC.
Yes, Ralph those old American cars with a 3 on the tree manual trans were very easy to master the clutch on. Much easier to drive than a Volkswagen with a 4 on the floor and their terribly temperamental clutches. The older more expensive cars in the 30’s and 40’s had so much torque that you could drive all over town in 3rd and never lug the engine, rich folks and women drivers in those days didn’t like to shift any more than they had to. With a 3 on the tree unless you came to a full stop you really only needed to shift between 2nd and 3rd during most driving, easy peasy. I’ve never personally driven a manual trans car with more than 5 speeds. But I’ve seen that there are now manual trans cars with 6 or more forward gears. That’s just too damn much unnecessary shifting for moi.

Eddie
 
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Glenn, thanks for posting the photos. That was a special order ‘69 (maybe a ‘70 they look almost the same) Chevy Biscayne if I ever saw one.

That’s a 427 V8 390 hp, paired with it looks like a 4 speed, I can’t see the shift knob. With the special order of the 427 engine I’m pretty sure they sprung for the performance 4 speed trans too. The rest of the car is pretty much like company or salesman’s coupe would have looked other wise. But the standard power train woulda been a 250 inline 6 with a three on the tree. It’s really in pristine condition and I’ll bet it goes like a bat outta hell!

Eddie
 
It just came to me that my first partner way back in the 70s bought a used old 68 or 69 Biscayne 3 on the tree. I don't remember though if it was a 2 or 4 door sedan only that it was a light blue. I only drove it a handful of times as I had a 72 Centurion for a bit and then the 75 Electra coupe. You could pick up old cars back then for a few hundred bucks in fairly nice shape seeing as in Vancouver they didn't salt roads so rust was never a problem like it was back here. Biscaynes were popular as taxicabs.
 
I always thought the 1969 full size Chevys were the nicest looking. My neighbor (our pastor) had a light green wagon his son learned to drive in, and I rode shotgun in it for many hours before I got my license. This was from a time when GM was actually trying to build worthwhile products, as compared to today's $50k and up fiascos... And I agree, rust was the universal enemy. Nearly all of these are gone in the northeast, where I grew up, but they still turn up on a regular basis in the southwest. Sometimes with no rust at all -but unless they lived their whole lives in a garage, the interiors are usually burnt to a crisp.
 
Well, looking back, I realized my sister's first car was actually a '56 Bel Air 4-door sedan with 3 on the tree. It was shared with her best friend who lived next door. It was a German-made car and the speedometer had KPH instead of MPH. AAA cut them off because they had called in for tows and jump starts way too many times. It used so much oil that my dad would give it the drained stuff from our family car.

Eddie, I know what you mean about the older cars. My friend in Sebastopol let me drive his '27 Lincoln that had only like 8K miles on it, and not only did its huge wheels make railroad tracks barely noticeable, but yes, you could slow down to just a few miles per hour and still not have to shift down from 3rd to proceed. The torque on those big engines was really something.
 
Ralph I remember that when I first started to drive most service stations kept a barrel of used motor oil that they collected from oil changes and they sold it to drivers of oil burning old heaps like your sister’s ‘56 Bel Air for something like 10 cents a quart. Back in the late 60’s I think you could buy a new quart of oil for less than 50 cents. My first car was ‘69 Volkswagen and my step father taught me how to change the oil and I believe that I paid 32 cents a quart for Castrol.

Eddie
 
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