Felix Chevrolet / 1959 Bel Air

[427TJ]

Note the "Fuel Injection" chrome script on the front fender near the headlights. Yes, you could get a Fuelie 283 in a '59 Chevy. Pretty rare, I'd guess.

[Pantera]

I don't remember seeing one (283 FI) back then. Everybody was boat anchor crazy (348 tri power) and they would eat the lunch of a 283 in that heavy of a car. Hard to beat cubes sometimes. considering the tires of that time it was a no brainer to go for the bigger cubes.

If that is a originl car then it should be a very rare car. I grew up back then and never saw one in anything but a vette. I am sure that someone could have ordered one tho.

My first car was a 57 210 post that I got in jan of '61, from my mother and then put a slew of go fast intake setups on it. It actually ran best with the factory 59 vette injector on it. Then I got one of the first 340 hp vette shortblocks in town thanks to my cousin being the parts mgr of Bill White Chev here in Tulsa. I cleaned house around town for about 4 months till everybody got wise and would not race me for money.

The 68 and up impallas were just too heavy to be really fast like a lighter car. My 57 with a 4:11 and a 58 vette 2:20 low 4 speed was a solid 14 sec street car. With some tires it would go into the high 13's. I was 17 in 62 and got one of the first Hp 327 shortblocks in town thanks to my cousin. I had spun a bearing with the three duce setup on the old 283 with a duntoff cam. So called him and $158 later I was tearing the competion up till they learned about the little finger place on the front of a 327 ci block.

Boy were those the good old days.... Sigh....

[LVCamaro]

Then you returned all the booty from those earlier races during that 4 month period, right??? There was a guy like you at my high school too And those definitely were the good ol' days.

[Charley Lillard]

30 plus years ago I used to know a guy that had a white 58 Impala convert with the FI engine. It was a old beater type car that he drove all the time. He took the Fuel Injection emblems off the fenders and kept them in the glove box so nobody would know it was a car worth stealing.. Cool car.

[Verne_Frantz]

The F.I. was definitely available in full size passenger cars in '57, '58 & '59. I even have an old ad for the '59 version. It was offered in 2 horsepower ratings. The 250hp version could be had with the Powerglide, 3-spd or 4-spd. I think the other rating was 280hp and could only be had with either of the manual transmissions. There are 2 different model numbers on the air plenum tag which are unique to the passenger car F.I. The air filter duct work is also unique to the passenger car compartment.
No one has surfaced yet with bonafide production numbers, so the rumor mill has worked overtime spreading speculative numbers from 17 to 200, so who knows? I've seen (and documented) 4 of them, but believe they were all "made" cars........ except for one rusty Belair I found in a junk yard which was missing everything, but had the holes in the front fenders for those rare emblems. The last set of NOS F.I. scripts and flags I heard of sold for $3500. The script is not the same as for the Vette.
Just as with any rare and valuable car, it's the right paperwork trail that makes all the difference. A restored red and white F.I. 4-spd Belair (with original gray interior) recently sold for $45., and I know for a fact that car was a "creation". It had no paperwork trail what-so-ever, other than the bills from the shop in CA that made the car.
Verne.

[Belair62]

Verne there was a hi-po 59 cvt 4 speed for sale years ago with dog didh caps...it was in Hemmings and I think it may have been a hi-po 348 car.....I think it was white and out east...do you know of a car like this ???supposed low mile original

[Verne_Frantz]

Well, we're digressing from the '59 F.I. topic, but yes, I am very familiar with that car. It is a very legit "real" hi-po (335hp, late production) 348 4-spd car. Believe it or not, that car came out of the same garage where the Jenkins/Strickler '63 Z-11 Ol' Reliable IV was stored for many years. The second owner of the Z-11 (who re-lettered it with his own name) also owned the '59 convt. (The '59 was also raced and had 14Kmi on it). While he was racing that car, Jenkins was racing a black '59 convt. The two cars were parked side by side in his shop in Pitman, NJ. Jenkins bought the Z-11 back in '84 (I believe) and had it repainted and re-lettered as it was when he and Dave raced it, but left everything else untouched, including the engine and peeling white paint on the frame. He brought the car to the Super Chevy meet at Maple Grove in '85 and ran it. (I was also running my '62 convertible at that meet and somewhere lost is a photo of my car next to the Z-11 in the pits). Anyway, back to the '59. Sometime in the late '80s, Chip Gerst (who lived in NJ at the time, but later moved to CA to broker cars for Boyd) bought the car, then sold it to Joe Carfagna of Franklin Lakes. Joe was just a young kid at the time, but with access to plenty of family money, and supplementing his income by "turning over" cars. He had a "restoration" shop set up behind a friend's house in Hope, NJ (up near Island Dragway) where they re-did the car. I hate to say it, but it was a terrible restoration. Just a quickie job with tons of problems and poor workmanship. The car was in the car corral at Carlisle, offered at $85K, with a sign indicating it came out of the same garage as the Z-11 (somehow thinking that would add value to the convertible). Less than a year later, the car went to the Netherlands for $80K. I have the car completely documented, with good photos of it "un-restored". In my opinion, the car deserved better........

Verne.

[Belair62]

Yep...that be the one !!! And I remember Joe too....last off-topic question....there was a 62 red/red 409/409 Belair or Biscayne wagon for sale years ago that was nice...know where it is ???

[Verne_Frantz]

Nope, I'm not familiar with that one. And by the way, Joe also had a hand in that red/white F.I. Belair I mentioned. He supplied some parts.

Pantera,
Those old memories are very precious. As for Dickie Harrell, I'm not aware of him ever having a mystery motor. I think they all went South. But apparently, Chevy had plans for dragstrip use for that engine, since a very few dual quad intakes were made for it. There's a fellow in WA putting one together now for a '63 Impala to see what it will do on the 1320.

Verne

[Pantera]

Oh I agree that it was available in the big cars. There just were none around Tulsa area back then because the "fat Blocks" as we called them had more power and or appeal.

So how many of you went on a wild goose chase in fall of 63 looking for 6 mystery motors that were liberated off a freight train? That was one I fell for along with two other guys. They had this hot tip that some guy out in a very rural area had got 6 motors off a freight at a siding and he had them for sale. All we had was directions and they were not acurate.

Everybody wanted a 396 before they were avaiable to the general public. These were the hot setup and I got hooked into covering about 30 square mi of gravel backroads in the quest to go faster than anybody else.

Boy were we excited about that one. Dammm I had fun back then. Funny how the mind remembers things like that. I had forgoten that one.

?Rob?

Was it Dickie Harrell that had one of those motors and ran it a Cushing dragstrip in the summer of '63 to test it for Chev. I seem to remember seeing it run there? '63 impalla ragtop. We were there with a 63 409 and he was dam sure faster that we were by over a second or two.