Two Chevrolets

Two Chevrolets arrived this week. They couldn't have been more different! The Impala is a huge, wide car with totally pointless but very impressive fins at the rear. With chrome everywhere at front, back and even running along the sides this is the classic American saloon car. The other, though, is really quite sad in comparison. You almost feel sorry for the Corvair with its faint resemblance even to a Hillman Imp at the front. It even has an engine at the back which is simply the wrong place for an American car to have an engine.

The Impala comes in a sickly shade of brown, topped in cream and could pass for a caramel wafer at a distance. This is somewhat better than the salmon pink used for the earlier version! All these 'second' versions are in this colour scheme and were only produced for a little under a year so are actually surprisingly rare in good condition and prices reflect that. I had always thought they were common and cheap but that may be because the first model sold well, despite being pink or pale blue, and there were also lots of public service variants too which made the Impala a feature of everyone's collection.

Corgi made this second variant by slicing through the old model horizontally and inserting the chrome piece from front to back. It works well and they used a similar system on several other models like the Mustang and Sting Ray.

The Corvair is an earlier Corgi so we shall forgive them a little. It came in several shades of that blue colour including a distinctly odd dark bright blue which I shall try to get hold of. Like the Fiat 2100, they put a Ventian blind in the back window just to remind us that the weather in other countries was much sunnier than ours! That certainly wasn't something you saw here in those days.

The Corvair is in good condition, with fixed wheels and an opening engine bay. There is one annoying mark on the bonnet which spoils it a bit. It is not very expensive anyway. The Impala is good and just has a few marks on the chrome and paintwork but the window has dropped and the roof seems slightly out of shape. I think that it will have to go on the Black List and I need to find another one. So the dull and boring Corvair will be the survivor after all.