Back in Black
The results speak for themselves.

A 425-horse 396 provides the motivation for this Super Sport. The mill features a solid cam, rectangular port heads, aluminum intake manifold and a Holley 4-bbl carburetor.

Over the course of the last two years or so we’ve chronicled the restoration of this 1965 Super Sport Impala in Restoration Review. In the series noted restoration expert Gilbert Propes has passed along countless tips on how to perform a concours restoration. Throughout the series you’ve seen bits and pieces of the car as it came together, but you haven’t yet seen the complete, finished product. Well, the time has come to show you the completed car.

Of course you know the muscle car in question is a ‘65 SS Impala. It features the 425-horse 396 Mark IV big block, a heavy-duty Muncie 4-speed and a 4.88:1 geared 12-bolt Posi rear axle. The black beauty is one of only 1800 425-horse 396 cars built in ‘65, and is owned by muscle car collector Floyd Garrett and is on display in his new Musclecar Museum in Sevierville, Tennessee (see the Museum Review elsewhere in this issue).

The car is black & very black, with black interior and precious little in the way of comfort options. If you’ve been reading our series on this car, you may remember the rear cross member was heavily cracked where it ties into the frame. With the high-horsepower big block, the 4-speed and the super-deep 4.88 gears, you now see why it was cracked. Actually, it’s fairly amazing a car with this kind of equipment was as complete as it was. After all, no one checked off those particular drive train options for hauling the family around!

The new-for-’65 396 Mark IV V8 was a development of the infamous Daytona Mark II “Mystery Motor” that caused such a stir in the Speed Week festivities in ‘63. The Mark II engine was deemed a non-production engine after the ‘63 season, and work commenced on a production version set to debut in ‘65. Introduced as the successor to the popular 348/409 “W” engines, the new Mark IV entered production in February, 1965. For a short time, the 396 actually shared showroom space with the soon-to-be-a-memory 409.

The Impala engine is virtually identical to the 425-horse 396 installed in the Corvette. The mill features a healthy 11.0:1 compression ratio, high-performance rectangular port heads with 2.19” intake and 1.72” exhaust valves inside 109cc combustion chambers. An aluminum intake manifold provides the perch for the Holley 4150-series 4-bbl carburetor. The camshaft is a mechanical (solid) lifter type with the following published specs: Lift 497” intake, .503” exhaust; Duration 348° intake and exhaust. Forged pistons mate with heavy-duty forged rods and swing from the forged steel crankshaft, resulting in an extremely stout bottom end.

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