meet Matilda

Matilda, out front of World Headquarters.

She sits with her nose in the air, but don't think she's a snob.  She's just waiting for a big block.

Comfortable in the garage, at last.

Bumpers already removed, pulling off trim and front grille to get her ready for bodywork and paint.

Front grille and trim removed.

The expansive dashboard.  There are two giant gauge pods.  The one on the driver's left is split into quadrants for a fuel gauge, temperature gauge, oil pressure gauge and ammeter.  The one on the driver's right is a giant manifold vacuum gauge.  It's actually probably closer to the passenger than it is to the driver, and for some reason I find its size and location hilarious.  I think I might replace the giant speedometer with custom-mounted gauges for a speedo, a tach, and some small gauges for temperature, oil pressure, volts and fuel. Then I could relocate the giant manifold vacuum gauge to the driver's left and I think there are factory clocks that will fit in the spot where the manifold vacuum gauge is now.  It's a great looking dash, though.  On the one hand, I hate to spoil its 1960s style.  On the other hand, I'd like to have a tach somewhere, and I think the modified dash would give more of a "race car" look.  Although, I once got to look inside a real 1966 NASCAR stock car, and I think it only had a tach and an oil pressure gauge.  But I'd like a little more than that, though.

I probably should have taken pictures before I started gutting the interior, but there wasn't really a whole lot here even as the car was received.  I pulled out the back seat and used a Shop Vac to suck a bunch of garbage out of the car before taking this picture.

Out on the patio, here is the bottom half of the back seat, and the crappy bucket seats that weren't even bolted down in the front of the car.  From the looks of them, I'd guess they came out of a late-model minivan in a junkyard.  They're still on the patio now, but Monday is the city's next day for "bulky item" trash pick up.

Looks like a great place to put a Mark IV big block V8.

"It's all relative."  The Corvair was Chevrolet's first "compact" car.  It doesn't look real "compact" by today's standards, but here it is with the Impala's bumper on the floor in front of it.  The edges of the bumpers are lined up on the driver's side, and it can be seen that the Impala bumper is a good foot past the Corvair's bumper on the passenger side.

The gas tank is out, and on the floor.  The exhaust is removed, cut up and on the floor, too.  I guess sometimes it's a little strange what I get excited about, but I was delighted to see the track bar rear suspension.  The track bar, or "Panhard rod," as Europeans might call it, is the long bar that runs diagonally down, left to right in the picture above.  It locates the rear end laterally under the body.  It is a design that is sufficiently antiquated that even Bertha didn't have one, and yet it is used to this day under NASCAR "stock cars."  So, modern NASCAR's roots can be seen here, and Matilda's NASCAR roots, too.

identity crisis

All right.  I'm calling it.  A large part of the reason for the long pause between posts was because I've been struggling to decide what to call the Impala.  But there comes a point where you just have to make a decision.

I guess it wasn't clear to some people that the Impala was supposed to be called Bertha II (and/or Bertha, too).  The idea was that I wanted Bertha to live on through the Impala, and there just really isn't any name that's better than Bertha.  But, I guess some people didn't get that, and other people keep telling me that the Impala should have a different name.  Perhaps most importantly, I'm starting to realize that it's just confusing to refer to both cars by the same name.  So I guess it is time to pick a different name.

The first name I considered was Maybelline.  This would be kind of a natural progression, because Bertha was named after one of Darrell Waltrip's race cars, and at the same time that he was racing Bertha, his team had another car named Maybelline.  There's also this classic Chuck Berry song.  On the other hand, Maybelline just doesn't sound as rugged and reliable as Bertha, and as for the song, I hate to think of myself broken down on the side of the road, asking my car, "Oh, Maybelline, why can't you be true?"  Plus, the song refers to "my V8 Ford," and we already know my position on Fords:  OK for Mark Martin; not OK for me.  So, no Maybelline.

The next name was Roberta - sounds more rugged than Maybelline, almost has the name "Bertha" contained in it.  But most importantly, I ain't mad at you, so don't you be mad at me.  This was really the front-runner until I thought of...

...Matilda.  This name is awesome, and it shares a number of characteristics with the name Bertha.  (1) it sounds rugged, (2) I don't know of any songs about it, (3) it's an American name with German roots, (4) military equipment has been named after it.  Also, it means "mighty in battle," which is pretty awesome.

So anyway, it's settled, the Impala is Matilda.  Long live Matilda.  If you have other ideas about what the Impala should be called, please feel free to let me know (be prepared to be ignored).

In the meantime, I've been pulling stuff off of Matilda to get her ready to go to a body shop.  The bumpers and the front grille are removed, and I pulled out most of what little bit was left of the interior.  The exhaust piping has been removed, and the gas tank.  I still need to remove the taillights, a little bit of interior stuff, and various other miscellaneous items.

While removing some of the exhaust hangers, I noticed that the underside of Matilda smells a lot like what I remember of Uncle Howard's farm equipment.  I would like to think that this means that Matilda was once used as a get-away car after a bank robbery that went wrong, and she was driven through a soybean field while fleeing from the police.  But, she was built in Arlington, Texas and has probably been in Texas her whole life.  So in all actuality, it was probably just a barren field of dirt, and not a soybean field.

Also, I looked up Matilda's VIN, and it turns out that she's an original SS car, so that's pretty cool.  It won't really have much impact on how I build most of the car, but I feel like it entitles me to get the cool door panels with the SS logos on them when I re-do the interior.

Now that that's all settled ... pictures should be coming very soon.