Remembering the ’47 Chevy

When do cars get to be “old?”

When and for how long is a car “new?”

Our 1947 Chevy Fleetline was our very first really “new” car, in the sense of having just come off the factory assembly line, and having no previous owner and no previous use. Prior to our new ’47 Chevy, we had always driven new “old” cars. Back during the 1940s, very few people that we knew drove really new cars. Most everyone’s cars back then had had previous owners and usually had a fair accumulation of travel miles. Very few people could afford a really new car. After all, a new Chevrolet could cost you from $800 to $1,000, and who had $800 to spend on a car? Besides that, during the war, from 1942 to 1946, new cars were not being built at all. The factories were devoted to building tanks and trucks and Jeeps and other equipment for the military. So when it came new car time, we usually traded for a new “old” car. It might not be new, but, back then, having a “new” car mostly meant that it was “new” to us, not that the car itself was new. As the 1950s arrived, things began to change. The economy was coming out of its Depression and War mode, and people were beginning to be a bit more prosperous. So, people began buying new cars.

We were a family who considered our new car to be new for at least four or five years. By the mid1950s some people were doing well enough to take on a pattern of trading in their “old” cars every two years, and a few were trading for a new car every year!

We weren’t that rich, and by that time new cars were costing nearly $2,000. Our ’47 was still running well, so we were keeping it, and still considering it to be our new car. However, by 1956, car styles had changed, and our black sloping Fleetline was looking a bit drab and dated in comparison to the new ’55 and ’56 Chevy Bel Aires. Many of the new Fords and Chevys were coming out in bright colors and two-tone patterns and high-performance V8 engines. So we bought a new family car, a red and white 1956 Chevy with Powerglide transmission, automatic choke, nice radio and all that good stuff. Oops! It had a 235 six-cylinder! That wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t like a V8. Anyway, our now “old” ’47 was getting demoted.

The mid-1950s did bring demotion to our good old ’47 Chevy Fleetline. It pretty much became a farm utility vehicle. We didn’t have a farm truck, and we were farming a fair acreage with one Ford 8N tractor. So the ’47 Chevy kind of became our “mule.” We hauled feed in it for the cows and the chickens. We pulled the hay wagon with it when the tractor was busy. We even raked hay with it, pulling the old dump rake. That was something to be the man on the rake when the car was pulling the rake. Dump rakes of course were made to be pulled by horses and mules. Cars, on the other hand, are not made for going slow. With the car pulling, when you dumped, the tines came up so fast that they tended to stay up, and you would miss 10 to 20 feet of hay beyond your pile. You had to get on the lever and rip those tines back down as quickly as possible. I was usually the one who got to ride the rake behind the car. That was work! I would have been glad to have our old horses Mike and Pat back to do the raking. Still, the old ’47 pulled off a kind of gallant couple of years as our “farm truck!”

Then, after the mid1950s, the status of the old ’47 had a rejuvenation. During the farm utility vehicle period, we boys, myself and Ben and John, learned to drive, all learning at the wheel of the old ’47. It gave us experience in managing the starting of an old-type engine, managing the choke while the car “warmed up.” We learned to handle the clutch, and to shift the manual transmission with a measure of skill. By 1958, I had my own car, and the old ’47 Chevy was becoming Ben’s car.

I’m sure that not even when it was new did it have pampering such as it got when it became Ben’s car. Ben would often spend nearly all of a Saturday washing and detailing the car, cleaning the trunk, clearing any dust around the door latches, freshening up the floors and even the engine compartment. After rarely getting a bath during the utility vehicle years, now the ’47 was almost always shiny and spotless. Soon it was time for a little “jazzing up!” Ben had the exhaust manifold split, installed dual exhaust pipes with glass-pack mufflers, and added white sidewall tire flaps. The old ’47 was beginning to look stylish and now had that throaty exhaust sound that we boys liked. With dual pipes and glass-packs, the six cylinder engines would give off a loud splatty sound, sometimes called “racking off.” Get up to about 55 miles an hour in second gear, and it would really sound jazzy.

Today’s cars are sooo quiet. Maybe that’s why men go for Dodge pickups with the Cummins engine, or why they ride Harley motorcycles. They rumble with authority. Back in the ’50s we could make our cars rumble, too. Those were the days!

Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister and on the board of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. The views expressed are the author’s. He can be contacted by email at joe369@ centurytel.net, or 621-1621.