Restoring a Canadian-Made Impala—and Keeping It Canadian—Is a Challenge

I'm intrigued by oddball automobiles, cars that are a departure from the ordinary. Machines that are of special interest because they differ from their automotive siblings in significant-though sometimes subtle-ways. The '66 Chevrolet Impala pictured here is just such a car.

Because this Impala is equipped with Chevrolet's L72 425-horsepower, 427-cubic-inch big-block engine, it would be a rare and desirable machine even if it was just one of the run of 1856 L72 full-size cars that Chevrolet produced for the U.S. market. But what makes it extremely rare and absolutely fascinating, at least to a fan of unique vehicles, is that it's one of fewer than than 39 Chevrolets built in Canada with the brand's top-of-the-line, big-block engine. I say "fewer than" because while a total of 39 L72-equipped '66 B-body GM cars were built in Canada, several of them were Pontiacs!

Now this Canadian-built Chevy wouldn't be of special interest if it was identical to a similarly-equipped car built stateside. But it's not. According to Leigh Scott, a Chevy B-body restoration expert and retired General Motors executive, the car is unique in various ways. And over the course of four years that Scott has spent restoring it to showroom-new condition, he documented some of the little things that make it an obstinately different Canadian.

The foreign-born Impala belongs to Jim Adams of Edmonton, Alberta. Adams is a collector of big-block Chevrolets, primarily the rare and powerful L72 models. In addition to the car pictured here, he owns five more, but none is as unique as this car because they were built in the U.S. He told me that the Impala's original owner ordered the car from a Chevy dealer in Canada, and then drove to the GM Canada factory in Oshawa, Ontario, to pick it up.

A few years later, that first owner died in a motorcycle accident. His Impala apparently sat for a while until another Canadian named Bob Ransom bought it from the estate. At the time, the car had clocked 46,000 miles. At some point, it was repainted silver. Unlike most U.S. L72 Chevrolets, it was not an Impala Super Sport but rather an Impala with SS trim, the top-of-the-line offering in Canada. The Impala Super Sport wasn't specifically offered north of the border, although the distinction is more a matter of semantics than content.

Ransom eventually decided to sell the car and listed it in Autotrader. Adams saw the listing and called on it, only to learn that a U.S. buyer had already committed. He appealed to Ransom's patriotism, telling him the car ought to remain in Canada. That worked, and Adams was soon the owner of the rare Impala. It sat in storage for another eight years before Leigh Scott was commissioned to restore it.

Scott is a perfectionist. After completely disassembling the car, he discovered that many components were marked "Made in Canada." Some of those parts differed from those he had seen on the U.S.-built Impalas he had restored, and many of those parts were in distressed condition. The easy way out would be to replace those with reproductions or new parts that are widely available for U.S.-built Impalas, but that would render the car inauthentic. To both ensure that the car would be restored to showroom condition and to keep it purely Canadian, Scott decided that he would repair and restore those Canadian components.

The L72 427 engine was seized after having been in storage for so many years, but all castings and internal parts were found to be identical to U.S.-spec parts. The engine had originally come straight from GM's Tonawanda, New York, plant where both Canadian and U.S. engines were built. Thus, only a conventional-but exacting-rebuild was required.

Some of the external engine components, on the other hand, were found to be exclusively Canadian. For example, the ignition coil was in an unpainted aluminum can and was labeled "Delco, Made in Canada." U.S. spec coils are in steel cans and painted black. Thus, Scott retained the original-equipment coil and polished its aluminum can until it shined like new.

Other components were nearly identical to U.S. parts but were likewise marked "Made in Canada." Many of these were disassembled, glass beaded, then replated and reassembled to make them as good as new.

Every nut, bolt and washer was removed and catalogued. Scott was surprised to see that no lock washers were used in the Canadian build. Thus the Impala was reassembled without lock washers. The bolts and nuts were not identical to those found on U.S. cars, so when it became apparent that some were missing, Scott asked a Canadian friend to visit a junkyard and retrieve some fasteners from another GM car that had been built at the Oshawa plant.

Although the Impala had been painted silver, it had to be restored to its original Aztec Bronze. And it was Aztec Bronze all over. The firewall of a U.S.-built car would have been sprayed with black paint, but the firewall of this Impala had been painted in body color. Scott surmises that GM Canada did that so they wouldn't have to set up a different paint system for the firewall.

As he disassembled the car, he saw that the trim plate had been sloppily masked and hit with overspray when the firewall was painted. A photograph of the trim plate was taken before disassembly to record the size and position of the tape lines, so Scott was able to duplicate the original overspray on the restored trim plate when the car was repainted.

That's called attention to detail, but that's what Scott is known for. And because he's restored more than a dozen full-size Chevrolets with big-block powertrains, he knows every inch of those cars, so he was able to discern ways in which the Canadian car differed and preserve those details.

Scott's restoration process has been documented in a previous Hagerty feature, and suffice it to say that it's very complete. The bare body is stripped of everything in a tank of alkaline stripper, then it's electrocoated with primer. Every piece of the automobile, including the smallest fastener, is made new before reassembly.

"Of all the cars I've restored, this was the most challenging," said Scott. "I could have put U.S. parts on it, but it wouldn't be original. The owner appreciates that I've gone through all this trouble to preserve the car's Canadian identity."

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