When I shared a sadly discarded bread-and-butter full-size 1965 Chevy with straight-six and three-on-the-tree last week, I got some static from readers who felt that such a car never was and never will be treasure. Never mind that the term refers to a vehicle's historical significance and not necessarily its monetary value, because today's Junkyard Treasure is one that even the hardest-to-please aficionado of vintage Detroit iron must respect: a '71 Chevy Impala pillarless hardtop coupe with a fuel-swilling Rat motor under its hood.
This car currently resides in an excellent family-owned independent yard just south of Denver, in the same row as the '65 Biscayne we admired (or, for some of you, reviled) last week. Its interior is in rough shape from decades of outdoor storage, but the body is solid.
In 1971, the Caprice was at the top of the full-size Chevrolet lineup, and a Caprice buyer with a taste for options could easily spend more on a new Caprice than on its Oldsmobile or even Buick platform-mates. The Impala was one step lower, but still a credible luxury machine at a good price. The MSRP for a 1971 Impala Custom Coupe was $3826 ($29,016 in 2023 dollars), but that was for a car with 350-cubic-inch small-block V8, three-on-the-tree manual transmission, and no air conditioning. The out-the-door cost for this car would have been plenty more, as we'll see.
Chevrolet offered five engines for its full-size cars in the 1971 model year: a straight-six with 250 cubic inches (4.1 liters), small-block V8s displacing 350 or 400 cubic inches (5.7 and 6.5 liters), and big-block V8s with 402 or 454 cubic inches (6.6 and 7.4 liters). This car was built with the 402 big-block, labeled as the "Turbo-Jet 400 V8" by Chevrolet that year.
The small-block 400 was called the "Turbo-Fire 400 V8" and got the same 400 fender badges as the 402. It's easy to tell small-block and big-block Chevy engines apart at a glance, but giving two unrelated engines what amounts to the same name has been causing parts-counter mixups for more than a half-century (see: Ford 351).
The 402 was a bored-out 396, and Chevrolet confused everybody by retaining the 396 designation for some models while calling it a 400 in others. This one was rated at 300 hp, down from 330 from the previous year due to an emissions-related drop in the compression ratio. However, GM switched from gross to net power ratings during 1971 (because California law required such ratings starting with the 1972 model year), which meant this engine's nominal output dropped to 260 hp without losing any actual power.
The interior is well-roasted by the High Plains sun and the entire rear axle assembly is gone, but this car could have been upgraded from "hooptie" to "pretty nice" status without spending too much more than the cost of just buying a decent, drivable '71 Impala Custom Coupe.
The new flow-through ventilation system for 1971 passes the Smoke Bomb Test.
1971 Chevrolet Impala Big-Block Coupe in Junkyard
