THE HISTORY

How did you you come to own it?

While living on the West Coast we constantly saw great looking vintage cars used as daily drivers. When we were being transferred back to NY in 1989, Judy said she was not leaving without a Chevy. In 1989 you could buy a 55-57 Chevy for as little as $2000 at a used car lot. She started searching for a 55-57 Chevy that we could bring back home. Judy found this one on consignment at the Memory Lane Motors classic car dealership in downtown Portland. Because it wasn't a Bel Air model but did have low mileage, we paid somewhere around $3000 for it.

Do you know much about its history or previous owners?

We are the second owners, the car was purchased on August 25, 1955 (Carl’s Dad’s birthday). It was supposedly the “company car” for the wife of a lumber company and sawmill owner in Springfield, OR. Fast forward 34 years and she had gone into the hospital and asked her minister to look after it. After the woman went into a nursing home it was taken to Memory Motors to sell. So it’s a real cliché – literally owned by a little old lady who only drove it to church. Had only 55,000 miles on it when we bought it. Looked like the back seat had never been sat in. Still had the plastic wrapping from the factory around the trim on the bottom of the front seat. The only body damage was front bumper dents from her hitting her trash cans when she parked it in the garage.

In the mid 1990’s we took the Chevy down to Guptill’s Ice Cream for their annual summer car show. This guy came over and started taking pictures of the Chevy and asking questions. He had noticed our custom plates “OREGON55” and was wondering what the car’s history was. Told him that we were the second owners and that the car was originally bought in Springfield, Oregon. He starts to tell us he thinks the car was the Chevy parked in front of the Delta Tau Chi frat house in the 1978 Animal House movie with John Belushi! The movie was shot at the University of Oregon in Eugene which is less than 4 miles away from Springfield. His logic is that our 210 is rare and how many Ivory over Navajo Tan 55 Chevys could have been in the Springfield/Eugene area in 1977 when the movie was shot?! A few months later we get an email from this guy telling us that he runs a website that deals with cars from famous movies and that he has posted ours on his website under Animal House movie cars (acmewebpages.com). The site is now defunct but if it was on the internet it must be true?!