My first introduction to what a muscle car was came in 1992. Do you remember the big-ass JCPenny Christmas catalog that had everything from clothes to furniture, board games to appliances in it? Yeah…at that time I was in a foster home and the parents had asked me to go through the book and make a wish list. They were clear that they weren’t buying the exact thing from the catalog (damn!) but that it would give them an idea for when they went shopping. I understood, and went straight to pawing through the book. I quickly zeroed in on the three 1:12 scale model cars: a 1970 LS6 Chevelle SS, a 1969 GTO “The Judge”, and a third car which eludes my memory. I just thought that it’d be cool to have a giant-ass Hot Wheels that looked super-realistic to play with. I was told that they weren’t toys and weren’t meant to be played with roughly, that they would break. I was then told about that magical time period full of wicked Buicks, radical Mopars, thunderous Fords and even about the mental AMC products. And was given a couple issues of a musclecar-oriented magazine to check out, which I wouldn’t let go of.

If there was one truth to what I was told, it was that you can’t play with one of these cars roughly and not expect it to break. Spun bearings, blown-out rear axles, transmissions composed of five neutrals and a reverse that’s barely hanging on, I’ve seen it all. But mechanical carnage can be fixed. For this 1970 Chevelle things went beyond mechanical. This poor beast went for a roll that left no panel straight. It’s not horrible…it looks like it would lot-drive perfectly fine…but the amount of work that this A-body would need to bring it back to any kind of straight borders on the clinical. It’s a Malibu, not a legitimate Super Sport and certainly not the top-tier big-block cars. You’d love to just start pushing out the dents and sourcing new front sheetmetal. But looking at the forward roof, the windshield area…it breaks your heart.

Copart.com link: 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu