Nope. What makes you think panel alignment was much better than this in 1955? I think it's perfect just the way it is, anyway, it's a driver, not a show car. I've got a bunch of old cars, and I've never owned anything newer than 1975. They are all drivers. I drive them everywhere. Most people in town, they only get to see an old car if they head out to a car show. My cars show up all over town, any day of the week. Used to be me and an old lady driving her four-door '69 Chevelle, not a show car, just an old car that she never stopped using as daily transportation. I used to see her all the time, and all over town. I'd wave, she never waved back, even when I was driving my Chevy, a '63 Corvette, so she's not a car guy, just someone still using an old 60s car for what it was built for. I haven't seen her, or that four-door Chevelle in three or four years, so I guess I'm the last guy in town using these old things as daily drivers. I don't know why, used to be a lot of us. They are so easy to work on, and so fun to drive, and you can keep them on the road forever. Technically, I bought this '55 for my daughter, but to be honest, it's been my primary daily driver since 2018. It's almost as reliable as my Vette (and it seats more people), and with it's little Pontiac 287 V8, it's slightly better on gas......and way better on gas than my 440 six--pack Road Runner. It needs a front end alignment and four new tires, other than that, it's perfect, and ready to drive anywhere, wont get there fast, but I'm never in a hurry anyway. I love this '55, and from what I can tell, none of the panels have ever been off the car. I can't say for sure, because it was painted flat black when I bought it. Under the flat black (some of which had flaked off) it's just the original Castle Gray paint job. I'm just saying that it was never red or blue, or anything like that, but I'm sure there's plenty of bondo and bad body work under the flat black, but the body fit isn't all that bad in my opinion. All the panels are where they should be, and probably where they've been since 1955. This car is no time capsule, but the seller found it in a large storage building with a bunch of other old cars, and I have no reason to doubt him, I got it at a bargain basement Pontiac price, a fraction of what people pay for Chevy's, and he didn't tell me the history of the car until after I had paid him for it, and was about to drive it up on my trailer. I was just happy to buy a running driving car for a change. He says it was in storage since the '70s, then he bought it, and his mechanic got it road worthy again. That's good enough for me. It's still got it's VIN stamped original engine, and the original four barrel carb, oil bath air cleaner, generator, fuel pump, and starter. If I pulled a cylinder head, and found a standard bore, it wouldn't surprise me at all, but I'm not making any predictions. The starter was the first to go, and mostly I'm into 60s cars, that's what my daughter grew up driving around in, and getting dropped off to school in. She's not into 60s, cars, she likes the lines on 50s cars. She spotted a four-door '55 Pontiac for sale locally, and fell in love with it, it was very very cheap, but it had no power steering and three-on-the tree, so not the perfect '55 for her. When I shopped ebay, I found this one in Kansas. Long family road trip to get it, but I like family road trips. Anyway, the starter goes, and being used to 60s cars, I look online for a replacement starter. None of the parts stores sell one. So I take the starter to the local automotive electric shop, luckily we still have one. Are you an old car guy? Have you noticed that a lot of the shops have disappeared? All my cars still have copper / brass radiators in them (except the Vette that still has a vintage '63 aluminum radiator in it, as that's what they came with from the factory), have you tried getting a copper / brass radiator re-cored lately? Used to be a radiator shop in every small town, not anymore. Just not profitable, I guess, not when you can buy a cheap aluminum radiator from China for such a small amount of money, or a quality USA built aluminum radiator that outperforms any vintage copper / brass unit.....but damn it, I like copper / brass radiators. Of course there are still specialized radiator shops, just not many, and not in my state. Chrome shops disappeared as well, had to drive to Tennessee to get the bumpers rechromed for this '55. Drove it around town with no bumpers for a couple months. Times are changing.....have changed. Anyway, the old guy that rebuilt my starter told me it might be the original starter for the car, because back in the '50s and '60s, if your starter, generator (or alternator for most 60s cars), or carb, or fuel pump went bad, you didn't go to the parts house, you probably went to your local garage and the guy there could rebuild anything. Or you went to the parts / service department at the dealership, but Tony at the garage would have been cheaper. I grew up on the tail end of that, those guys were still in business in the 80s, but I suppose they were already in decline by then, things were changing in the car world. Like I said, this '55 wasn't perfect when I bought it, but for it's age, it wasn't bad, the seats have been reupholstered, but the rest of the interior is all original, even the original cloth headliner is still in one piece, I've owned a lot of old cars, and that one thing alone amazes me. The original cloth headliner in my '61 Studebaker is in absolute tatters, and all of my other 60s cars lost their original headliners decades ago. That '55 headliner won't last forever, but that's okay, it's not like I'm afraid to drive an old car because at some point the original headliner will completely deteriorate and come apart on me. Everything can be fixed, even the body fit.
The guy I bought it from got it running and driving, and I bought it to drive it and fix it when it breaks. It's a simple game plan, and a simple car to work on. It rarely breaks though, almost 5 years, and it's been very reliable transportation. I don't get out much these days, and when I do, it's just around town, but it gets me around town just fine. Some guys see a car like this, and they want to bring the body fit up to modern standards, ditch the original Pontiac V8, and install a modern fuel injected SBC, ditch the original dual-range 4 speed Hydramatic, for a modern overdrive automatic. Ditch the four-wheel power drum brakes and go with power disc all-around. Ditch the factory 15" rims for a set of 18" rims? I mean if everyone in the hobby is doing the same exact thing, then it must be the thing to do, right? I'm just not that guy. I don't even get those guys, seems like they want it to be a new car? But they want it to look like an old car? Just buy a new car and be done with it. And to be fair, when I see them around town, they are driving a new car or truck....and I'm in a '55 Pontiac, but I'll see their restomod, the next time they pull it out of the garage and shine it up for a car show. Oh well, to each their own, I do what I want with my cars, they can do what they want with their cars. Some day, my daughter will have her own house, and her own garage, and she can do what she wants with this '55 Pontiac, and the '63 TBird I gave her. That's how it works right? I just put a cheap Maaco paint job on this one, only because the flat black was depressing me. If it was still original paint, and no flat black, I wouldn't have touched it. Maaco had the car painted in exactly two weeks, not a single day longer, being a daily driver that I relied upon, that was worth a lot to me. I've had a good body and paint man take as long as six months on one of my cars, and I've been on waiting lists for years on other cars of mine. Is it really a waiting list, when it's just a "list" in the guy's head, nothing written down? That's not a list, that's just a guy that doesn't want to paint my car. They have that luxury, to pick and choose their work, and I don't blame them. They never say no, it's always, well it'll be six months to a year before I can get to it. I was on one guys "waiting list", he had two cars that he was working on in his barn. He did good work, but he dropped dead with both of those cars still torn apart. I've got a friend that had his '67 Mustang at a guy's shop, again, all torn apart, then the COVID hit, and all his guys quit on him. He folded shop, and told my friend to come pick up the unfinished Mustang. It's not like the old days, it's tough out there. I finally gave up and started doing my own body work, and painting my own cars, like this one: ruclips.net/video/BeO9nFfL1_0/видео.html And these two: ruclips.net/video/AmQMVVTU2Is/видео.html ruclips.net/video/L4lDwohNILw/видео.html After the first two, I gave up on the painting, so now I just do the body work, as well as I can, and let Maaco paint it in their paint booth. I'm no pro, but the pros are in high demand, and the collision body shops only want insurance work. Also, some of my friends are paying $10k or more (sometimes a lot more) for quality body and paint, and I can't afford that. The most I've paid is $3,500, about 25 years ago, and that almost gave me a heart attack. So I'm a cheap bastard with a cheap Maaco paint job on a '55 Pontiac, but the door jams, firewall, and inside the trunk haven't been touched by Maaco or anyone else on that '55, they are still the original Castle Grey. The cheap Maaco paint job on my '75 Bronco still looks good after 24 years, no telling how long the cheap Maaco paint job on this '55 Pontiac will last, but it's only paint, and it's only on the exterior of the body. It can easily be sanded away some day, and if my daughter one day has the means to have it professionally done, more power to her. And if she wants to ditch the whole car (and her '63 TBird), that's fine as well, but for now, she loves this '55 Pontiac, and that's good enough for me, because I love it too. Anyway, this video was never to document panel alignment, I only made this video, because some guy saw me at the bank, adding brake fluid a few days ago. He looks at the body tag (1:48 in this video), and he looks at the "66" written on the firewall (0:05 in the video), and he tells me what a great car it is, because it's the number 66 car, probably built on the first day of production. I knew he was wrong, because the first thing I do is decode all the numbers, on all of my cars, and I knew there was nothing special about this '55. I decoded this one back in 2018 though, and I didn't remember any of the specifics, so I didn't even know what this guy was talking about. I looked at the body tag, where he was pointing it out to me, but without my reading glasses, I couldn't read any of it. How are his eyes still so good? He was mid to late 60s, at least 15 years older than me. I had no idea what he was seeing. Anyway, he was talking like he really knew his stuff, and he was a really nice guy, so I just told him, hey thanks, that's great to know, then I closed my hood and drove off. I made this video, so the next time someone tells me something like that, I can show them the video. And of course this video clearly shows that he was looking at the trim code, which is 66. It's all fun though, and I do like talking about cars. Hopefully this video lasts, even if Tik Tok or some other platform sends youtube to an early grave. Might last, who knows how this internet stuff will pan out? I checked Myspace recently, and amazingly all my car pics are still there, and I haven't used Myspace, since everyone jumped ship in 2007 or 2008. Mostly I use youtube to document what I know about my cars, because when I'm dead and gone, those cars aren't likely to be crushed, it's more likely that they'll end up in the hands of new owners, and one or more of them might want some history on the car. The only car I know the full history on, is my Vette, Vette guys love to keep logbooks, and that car has 297,851 miles on it. It's the only car that I know the true mileage on, since they all flip to zeros at 100k. This '55 Pontiac shows 13,986, but is that 113,986 or 213,986? No one will ever know. I can't even make an educated guess based on the headliner or brake pedal wear, I'd have to pull a cylinder head and measure a cylinder bore, and even then, it's still just a guess.....and I'm not likely to pull a cylinder head unless I have to. The Vette's original owner documented every time he got gas, the date, the odometer reading, how much he pumped, and how much he paid per gallon, going back to the first time he put gas in it, on 25 May 63. The odometer showed 4.8 miles and he pumped 8.4 gallons of premium, at 35.9 cents a gallon. That set him back 3 bucks, but I suppose you could do a lot with 3 bucks back in '63. He also used his logbooks to document any repairs he made on the car. He was an engineer, and did all his own work on the car. He even estimated his mileage, when his speedometer wasn't working for a short period of time, based on how far his commute to work was. The trip odometer stopped working in 1980, and on 12 May 80, he disconnected it from the main odometer and manually set the broken trip odometer to read 196.3, and of course that's what it still reads today, "1963". Log books are fun, at least for me, ruclips.net/video/l7veKIdqANw/видео.html I'm not even the guy that noticed that trip odometer, I sent a bunch of photos to a friend in Texas who owns a really nice '64 Corvette. It was when I first bought the car, and I didn't even have it running yet. He replied and asked if I had noticed what the trip odometer was set to, and of course that was way before I had read all of what's in those old log books. I bought that '63 Corvette in 2011, and from day one, I kept a log book of my own in the glove box, documenting everything, in the same style that the original owner had. Just the Vette though, I don't keep any log books for my other cars. For them, it's mostly just youtube videos, and whatever lands in the video description or comments section. So yeah, this video is just to document the numbers off the body tag and VIN for a run of the mill 1955 Pontiac Chieftain. And to decode those numbers for what it might be worth to anyone in the future. I only added a bunch of photos to kill time, while the song plays.
Panel alignment should have been addressed before the nice, shiny finish was applied.
Nope. What makes you think panel alignment was much better than this in 1955? I think it's perfect just the way it is, anyway, it's a driver, not a show car. I've got a bunch of old cars, and I've never owned anything newer than 1975. They are all drivers. I drive them everywhere. Most people in town, they only get to see an old car if they head out to a car show. My cars show up all over town, any day of the week. Used to be me and an old lady driving her four-door '69 Chevelle, not a show car, just an old car that she never stopped using as daily transportation. I used to see her all the time, and all over town. I'd wave, she never waved back, even when I was driving my Chevy, a '63 Corvette, so she's not a car guy, just someone still using an old 60s car for what it was built for. I haven't seen her, or that four-door Chevelle in three or four years, so I guess I'm the last guy in town using these old things as daily drivers. I don't know why, used to be a lot of us. They are so easy to work on, and so fun to drive, and you can keep them on the road forever. Technically, I bought this '55 for my daughter, but to be honest, it's been my primary daily driver since 2018. It's almost as reliable as my Vette (and it seats more people), and with it's little Pontiac 287 V8, it's slightly better on gas......and way better on gas than my 440 six--pack Road Runner. It needs a front end alignment and four new tires, other than that, it's perfect, and ready to drive anywhere, wont get there fast, but I'm never in a hurry anyway.
I love this '55, and from what I can tell, none of the panels have ever been off the car. I can't say for sure, because it was painted flat black when I bought it. Under the flat black (some of which had flaked off) it's just the original Castle Gray paint job. I'm just saying that it was never red or blue, or anything like that, but I'm sure there's plenty of bondo and bad body work under the flat black, but the body fit isn't all that bad in my opinion. All the panels are where they should be, and probably where they've been since 1955. This car is no time capsule, but the seller found it in a large storage building with a bunch of other old cars, and I have no reason to doubt him, I got it at a bargain basement Pontiac price, a fraction of what people pay for Chevy's, and he didn't tell me the history of the car until after I had paid him for it, and was about to drive it up on my trailer. I was just happy to buy a running driving car for a change. He says it was in storage since the '70s, then he bought it, and his mechanic got it road worthy again. That's good enough for me. It's still got it's VIN stamped original engine, and the original four barrel carb, oil bath air cleaner, generator, fuel pump, and starter. If I pulled a cylinder head, and found a standard bore, it wouldn't surprise me at all, but I'm not making any predictions.
The starter was the first to go, and mostly I'm into 60s cars, that's what my daughter grew up driving around in, and getting dropped off to school in. She's not into 60s, cars, she likes the lines on 50s cars. She spotted a four-door '55 Pontiac for sale locally, and fell in love with it, it was very very cheap, but it had no power steering and three-on-the tree, so not the perfect '55 for her. When I shopped ebay, I found this one in Kansas. Long family road trip to get it, but I like family road trips. Anyway, the starter goes, and being used to 60s cars, I look online for a replacement starter. None of the parts stores sell one. So I take the starter to the local automotive electric shop, luckily we still have one. Are you an old car guy? Have you noticed that a lot of the shops have disappeared? All my cars still have copper / brass radiators in them (except the Vette that still has a vintage '63 aluminum radiator in it, as that's what they came with from the factory), have you tried getting a copper / brass radiator re-cored lately? Used to be a radiator shop in every small town, not anymore. Just not profitable, I guess, not when you can buy a cheap aluminum radiator from China for such a small amount of money, or a quality USA built aluminum radiator that outperforms any vintage copper / brass unit.....but damn it, I like copper / brass radiators. Of course there are still specialized radiator shops, just not many, and not in my state. Chrome shops disappeared as well, had to drive to Tennessee to get the bumpers rechromed for this '55. Drove it around town with no bumpers for a couple months. Times are changing.....have changed. Anyway, the old guy that rebuilt my starter told me it might be the original starter for the car, because back in the '50s and '60s, if your starter, generator (or alternator for most 60s cars), or carb, or fuel pump went bad, you didn't go to the parts house, you probably went to your local garage and the guy there could rebuild anything. Or you went to the parts / service department at the dealership, but Tony at the garage would have been cheaper. I grew up on the tail end of that, those guys were still in business in the 80s, but I suppose they were already in decline by then, things were changing in the car world.
Like I said, this '55 wasn't perfect when I bought it, but for it's age, it wasn't bad, the seats have been reupholstered, but the rest of the interior is all original, even the original cloth headliner is still in one piece, I've owned a lot of old cars, and that one thing alone amazes me. The original cloth headliner in my '61 Studebaker is in absolute tatters, and all of my other 60s cars lost their original headliners decades ago. That '55 headliner won't last forever, but that's okay, it's not like I'm afraid to drive an old car because at some point the original headliner will completely deteriorate and come apart on me. Everything can be fixed, even the body fit.
The guy I bought it from got it running and driving, and I bought it to drive it and fix it when it breaks. It's a simple game plan, and a simple car to work on. It rarely breaks though, almost 5 years, and it's been very reliable transportation. I don't get out much these days, and when I do, it's just around town, but it gets me around town just fine. Some guys see a car like this, and they want to bring the body fit up to modern standards, ditch the original Pontiac V8, and install a modern fuel injected SBC, ditch the original dual-range 4 speed Hydramatic, for a modern overdrive automatic. Ditch the four-wheel power drum brakes and go with power disc all-around. Ditch the factory 15" rims for a set of 18" rims? I mean if everyone in the hobby is doing the same exact thing, then it must be the thing to do, right? I'm just not that guy. I don't even get those guys, seems like they want it to be a new car? But they want it to look like an old car? Just buy a new car and be done with it. And to be fair, when I see them around town, they are driving a new car or truck....and I'm in a '55 Pontiac, but I'll see their restomod, the next time they pull it out of the garage and shine it up for a car show. Oh well, to each their own, I do what I want with my cars, they can do what they want with their cars. Some day, my daughter will have her own house, and her own garage, and she can do what she wants with this '55 Pontiac, and the '63 TBird I gave her. That's how it works right?
I just put a cheap Maaco paint job on this one, only because the flat black was depressing me. If it was still original paint, and no flat black, I wouldn't have touched it. Maaco had the car painted in exactly two weeks, not a single day longer, being a daily driver that I relied upon, that was worth a lot to me. I've had a good body and paint man take as long as six months on one of my cars, and I've been on waiting lists for years on other cars of mine. Is it really a waiting list, when it's just a "list" in the guy's head, nothing written down? That's not a list, that's just a guy that doesn't want to paint my car. They have that luxury, to pick and choose their work, and I don't blame them. They never say no, it's always, well it'll be six months to a year before I can get to it. I was on one guys "waiting list", he had two cars that he was working on in his barn. He did good work, but he dropped dead with both of those cars still torn apart. I've got a friend that had his '67 Mustang at a guy's shop, again, all torn apart, then the COVID hit, and all his guys quit on him. He folded shop, and told my friend to come pick up the unfinished Mustang. It's not like the old days, it's tough out there.
I finally gave up and started doing my own body work, and painting my own cars, like this one: ruclips.net/video/BeO9nFfL1_0/видео.html
And these two:
ruclips.net/video/AmQMVVTU2Is/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/L4lDwohNILw/видео.html
After the first two, I gave up on the painting, so now I just do the body work, as well as I can, and let Maaco paint it in their paint booth. I'm no pro, but the pros are in high demand, and the collision body shops only want insurance work. Also, some of my friends are paying $10k or more (sometimes a lot more) for quality body and paint, and I can't afford that. The most I've paid is $3,500, about 25 years ago, and that almost gave me a heart attack. So I'm a cheap bastard with a cheap Maaco paint job on a '55 Pontiac, but the door jams, firewall, and inside the trunk haven't been touched by Maaco or anyone else on that '55, they are still the original Castle Grey. The cheap Maaco paint job on my '75 Bronco still looks good after 24 years, no telling how long the cheap Maaco paint job on this '55 Pontiac will last, but it's only paint, and it's only on the exterior of the body. It can easily be sanded away some day, and if my daughter one day has the means to have it professionally done, more power to her. And if she wants to ditch the whole car (and her '63 TBird), that's fine as well, but for now, she loves this '55 Pontiac, and that's good enough for me, because I love it too.
Anyway, this video was never to document panel alignment, I only made this video, because some guy saw me at the bank, adding brake fluid a few days ago. He looks at the body tag (1:48 in this video), and he looks at the "66" written on the firewall (0:05 in the video), and he tells me what a great car it is, because it's the number 66 car, probably built on the first day of production. I knew he was wrong, because the first thing I do is decode all the numbers, on all of my cars, and I knew there was nothing special about this '55. I decoded this one back in 2018 though, and I didn't remember any of the specifics, so I didn't even know what this guy was talking about. I looked at the body tag, where he was pointing it out to me, but without my reading glasses, I couldn't read any of it. How are his eyes still so good? He was mid to late 60s, at least 15 years older than me. I had no idea what he was seeing. Anyway, he was talking like he really knew his stuff, and he was a really nice guy, so I just told him, hey thanks, that's great to know, then I closed my hood and drove off. I made this video, so the next time someone tells me something like that, I can show them the video. And of course this video clearly shows that he was looking at the trim code, which is 66. It's all fun though, and I do like talking about cars. Hopefully this video lasts, even if Tik Tok or some other platform sends youtube to an early grave. Might last, who knows how this internet stuff will pan out? I checked Myspace recently, and amazingly all my car pics are still there, and I haven't used Myspace, since everyone jumped ship in 2007 or 2008. Mostly I use youtube to document what I know about my cars, because when I'm dead and gone, those cars aren't likely to be crushed, it's more likely that they'll end up in the hands of new owners, and one or more of them might want some history on the car. The only car I know the full history on, is my Vette, Vette guys love to keep logbooks, and that car has 297,851 miles on it. It's the only car that I know the true mileage on, since they all flip to zeros at 100k. This '55 Pontiac shows 13,986, but is that 113,986 or 213,986? No one will ever know. I can't even make an educated guess based on the headliner or brake pedal wear, I'd have to pull a cylinder head and measure a cylinder bore, and even then, it's still just a guess.....and I'm not likely to pull a cylinder head unless I have to. The Vette's original owner documented every time he got gas, the date, the odometer reading, how much he pumped, and how much he paid per gallon, going back to the first time he put gas in it, on 25 May 63. The odometer showed 4.8 miles and he pumped 8.4 gallons of premium, at 35.9 cents a gallon. That set him back 3 bucks, but I suppose you could do a lot with 3 bucks back in '63. He also used his logbooks to document any repairs he made on the car. He was an engineer, and did all his own work on the car. He even estimated his mileage, when his speedometer wasn't working for a short period of time, based on how far his commute to work was. The trip odometer stopped working in 1980, and on 12 May 80, he disconnected it from the main odometer and manually set the broken trip odometer to read 196.3, and of course that's what it still reads today, "1963". Log books are fun, at least for me, ruclips.net/video/l7veKIdqANw/видео.html
I'm not even the guy that noticed that trip odometer, I sent a bunch of photos to a friend in Texas who owns a really nice '64 Corvette. It was when I first bought the car, and I didn't even have it running yet. He replied and asked if I had noticed what the trip odometer was set to, and of course that was way before I had read all of what's in those old log books. I bought that '63 Corvette in 2011, and from day one, I kept a log book of my own in the glove box, documenting everything, in the same style that the original owner had. Just the Vette though, I don't keep any log books for my other cars. For them, it's mostly just youtube videos, and whatever lands in the video description or comments section. So yeah, this video is just to document the numbers off the body tag and VIN for a run of the mill 1955 Pontiac Chieftain. And to decode those numbers for what it might be worth to anyone in the future. I only added a bunch of photos to kill time, while the song plays.