Reuniting Grandpa Mel with a ’55 Bel Air, His California Dream

That was the greatest car,” my grandpa says as I hand him a black-and-white photo of his 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible. “I drove that to California … 1955.” I’ve heard this story a lot over the years. When my grandpa turned 91 recently, I prepared a surprise for him. “I’m going to be honest,” I confess, “we didn’t meet here for the food.”

The ’55 Bel Air is a special model in the Wilcox family. My dad grew up hearing stories about this car, and decades later, I did, too. We’ve bought countless ’55 Chevy gifts—toys, posters, whatever—for Grandpa Mel, especially any we could find in his rare India Ivory / Harvest Gold-over-green-interior color combination. It got to the point where he had enough memorabilia to erect a little shrine in his house where one could pay homage to the car and the glory days of Route 66.

The thing is, the ’55 Chevy wasn’t even in Grandpa’s life for very long. He owned his Bel Air convertible for only one year, nearly 70 years ago. Despite his decades-long veneration, no other family members had any first-hand experience with the car. With Grandpa Mel’s birthday on the horizon, I had been reflecting on my family’s love of cars, and how it all probably started with this one long-lost convertible. The idea hit me to stage a reunion, which would function as a long-overdue introduction for my dad, my uncle, and me.

As we leave the deli, Grandpa shares what was so special about the ‘55 Bel Air in general: “It was a brand-new shape. Brand-new design. So much different from the ’54s and ’53s. They came out with all these different colors, peaches and aquas. Very sharp-looking.”

Indeed, Chevrolet offered nearly 40 solid and, more famously, two-tone color combinations for the 1955 model year. Since this was Chevy’s first attempt at a commercially successful V-8, it pulled out all the stops when designing the all-new Bel Air. The ’55 was the first Chevrolet to utilize a 12-volt electrical system, and with that came optional air conditioning, another first for the brand. The Bel Air also offered power steering, power brakes, and power windows—all relatively new options to Chevy showrooms and unheard of in an entry-level car. To complement these advanced features, Chevy designers completely modernized the Bel Air’s look with flatter side panels and wrap-around windshield glass. The long, flat hood, adorned with a chrome jet, flowed down to a Ferrari-inspired egg-crate grille that hinted at the Bel Air’s firepower: an optional 180-horsepower 265-cubic-inch V-8.

As important as the Bel Air is to automotive history, we don’t form deep attachments with cars because of what makes them great on paper. The experiences we have with them are what carve out a niche in family legends. For my grandpa, his ’55 Bel Air came at a crucial time.

While the Korean War was in full swing, and the Tri-Fives were still on draft paper, Grandpa Mel left Spring Arbor University in Michigan to work at GM Truck & Coach in Pontiac. He knew this was a temporary arrangement; every month he would get a notice saying his draft number was coming up. Finally, in January 1953, Mel and his childhood friend, Keith Kennedy (born one day after Mel), decided to volunteer for the military so they could have some say in their futures, even if neither had a clear vision of what that future would look like.

As they were waiting in line at the recruiting office, Keith asked Mel which branch he favored. Mel joked he planned to just pick the first door on the left. Keith laughed and said he’d go right. In the end, it was the Army for Keith. Mel joined the Air Force, and just in time, too. Later that night, after he packed up his belongings and drove to see his parents, Mel found an empty house and a note on the kitchen table informing him that his draft card had arrived.

Over the next several months, Mel was stationed across the U.S.—basic training at Sampson Air Force Base near the Finger Lakes in Geneva, New York, then Sheppard AFB in Wichita Falls, Texas, for six months of Tech School. Ultimately, he received a two-year assignment at Eielson AFB in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Although he’d spent his whole life in Michigan up to that point, nothing prepared him for the cold of The Last Frontier. “I saw 58 degrees below. I think that had set a record at the time,” Grandpa Mel recollects. “It would be 40 below for weeks. When it would get up to negative 20, we would get out there in our sweats and play football in the parking lot.”

When his assignment was up, Mel planned on making the drive back to Michigan in his 1953 Ford Deluxe. As he was preparing to head home, he learned that his service was extended by 30 days to make up for a month of missed service due to a non-work-related hockey injury. His planned road trip crew split up, and there was no way Mel was making the nearly 70-hour drive alone. He sold his Ford to the air base’s mail clerk (for a $100 profit) and, once he’d put in his extra 30 days, flew home. “I was 20-some-years-old and ready to do anything,” Mel laughs, thinking back on how horrible that drive would have been. “I look back now, and I’m glad I was extended.”

Though he enjoyed his time in Alaska, it was a welcome surprise that my grandpa’s next assignment took him to Norton AFB in sunny San Bernardino, California. Since he just missed out on a long drive, it seemed like a great excuse for a road trip. He would need a car, though.

Boy, if I was going to California, I see the car I would want.

Mel and his dad went down to Summerfield Chevrolet in Flint, Michigan, to see what the dealer had in stock. Mel still vividly remembers this day 70 years later. As they walked the lot, his dad said, “Boy, if I was going to California, I see the car I would want.” Mel was shocked by his suggestion—a bright yellow 1955 Bel Air convertible—given that his dad was “the old black Chevy” type. They took it for a spin and Mel was blown away by this car of the future. As he sat behind the wheel, he had to agree with his old man. He bought the lightly used Bel Air for $2100 and drove it home.

***

The front fascia of a 1955 Chevy Bel Air convertible peaks out from a garage doorway. When Grandpa Mel comes face-to-face with the car, he just stares, wide-eyed and speechless. The rest of us introduce ourselves to the owners, Fred and Marlene Darin, of Charlotte, Michigan, who are kind enough to have facilitated this “reunion.” Mel remains a statue, fixed in place. I open the driver’s door and motion for my grandpa to take a seat, which he finally does. Behind the wheel, as he touches the knobs and feels the vinyl, he is transported back to that winter in Flint. “It felt almost like second nature. It brought back so many memories of me buying it, having it for the month of December, and then getting ready to drive it to California.” Although he only owned it for a year, my grandpa had a lot of seat time in his ’55 Chevy.

Buying a convertible in December, in Michigan, requires a healthy dose of optimism. That outlook may have dampened a bit when the radio went out and all attempts to fix it were unsuccessful. Two-thousand-plus miles seemed even farther to Mel with the prospect of only his thoughts and the hum of the tires to keep him company. It was a welcome surprise when his older brother, Duane, offered to come with.

On January 2, 1956, the brothers drove west from Michigan, connecting with Route 66 south of Chicago and making it to St. Louis that evening. They pulled into the first motel advertising TV access so they could watch Michigan State beat UCLA in the Rose Bowl. The next morning, they continued west on Route 66, stopping at any attraction along the way: Meramec Caverns, Will Rogers Memorial, the Grand Canyon, and the Hoover Dam. His drive through the Painted Desert in that Bel Air carved itself into memory.

Their scenic drive across the country took four days and proved relatively easy. “I had nothing to compare it to, so it was good to me.” Mel remembers. “Two-lane all the way, pretty much, and well-marked through all the small towns and Albuquerque. Gas was only about 25 cents.” Aside from the broken radio and a thump from one of the tires, “the car ran like a top. Just a super car. A long way to go in, what you might say, was an unproven car.”

Mel owed thanks to the tried-and-true 235-cubic-inch “Blue Flame” inline-six under the hood of his Bel Air for its dependability. Though the ’55 Chevy’s famous small-block V-8 had 30 percent more horsepower and weighed 30 pounds fewer than the straight-six, it had drawbacks on a cross-country road trip. Burning oil was a big issue on early small-blocks, as they didn’t have an integrated oil filter. Optional external bypass filters were offered later in the ’55 model year, but that didn’t fully fix the problem, with only a fraction of the oil actually being filtered. Chevy corrected the issue for 1956, adding a full-flow oil filter system, but in the Bel Air’s debut year the Blue Flame was the more proven powerplant. The engine was an evolution of the Stovebolt Six that had by that point been manufactured for decades. Mel remembers getting smoked at a stoplight drag race by a V-8 Bel Air only a week after he bought the car. If that race had continued all the way to California, he notes, he would have won.

***

Our Bel Air for the day has the classic small-block V-8. This is Fred Darin’s second ’55 Chevy, his first a Bel Air two-door sedan (with a Blue Flame six and manual transmission) that he bought in 1963 for $200. As you can imagine, even in the early 1960s, a $200 car came with a long to-do list. “The car had over 100,000 miles and was burning oil,” Fred recalls. “I worked on the rusty body all summer, bought a shop manual to guide me through an engine overhaul, then had a local body shop repaint the whole car in time for me to return to college.”

The car looked great and accompanied Fred through most of his school days, until it was totaled by a drunk driver while parked on the street. But he never forgot about his first ’55, and when the right one came along in 1977, he bought it: a beautiful Shoreline Beige / Gypsy Red Bel Air convertible with a small-block.

I watch Fred and my grandpa move around the Bel Air, reminiscing about their shared experiences and pointing out minor differences between their cars. Fred has owned this car for 47 years, so his mental recall makes sense. But I find it surprising how many of the little details my grandpa is able to remember, having not seen his car in 68 years. “I love that color, the red and white. But, you know, I haven’t seen a yellow/white one anywhere.”

***

Neither had the soldiers at Norton Air Force Base. When Mel and Duane finally got to San Bernardino, Duane took the train back while Mel reported for duty. “I remember pulling onto the base. I got quite a few looks,” he says. A big yellow convertible on a military base will do that.

“When I left the office after reporting, I heard ‘Heeey, Willy!’ Mel turned around to see Bob Lam, his buddy from both tech school and his time at Eielson AFB in Alaska. Mel stayed in Bob’s extra room, and they took the Bel Air all around the Southwest on their days off, often from Las Vegas to Palm Springs to Big Bear. On a holiday weekend, they planned to drive south into Mexico, but Bob went back to San Francisco to visit family. However, this didn’t stop my grandpa, who decided to drive down on his own. He made it to Tijuana but kept driving as “it was too lively of a place.” He eventually hit the vast, empty expanse of Baja, where the young U.S. airman was alone with his yellow convertible. As Mel drove south, a shack appeared every couple of miles.

California was a welcome change, he remembers. “When it would rain, I would grab a blanket and pillow and go out and sleep in the car, because I loved to hear the rain patter-patter on the roof.” It was a far cry from Alaska, where he needed to run an extension cord out of his third-floor window to power the head-bolt heater in his Ford in order to start it in the morning.

Like the Bel Air, California was trailblazing into the future at that time. Many American institutions we now take for granted were beginning to take shape there. During the summer, Mel would often head over to Redlands to watch the LA Rams practice, stopping at the first McDonald’s on the way. At that point, the burger tally showed only a couple million sold. “It didn’t seem that special back then,” Mel recalls. “There was a drive-in burger place on every corner.” Disneyland had also just opened a few miles west of the base, and he went for the park’s first anniversary. It was an exciting time; the Detroit Lions even won three championships that decade. But all good things must come to an end.

“I remember pulling onto the base. I got quite a few looks,” he says. A big yellow convertible on a military base will do that.

Mel’s assignment was up in January 1957, and in the months before he was unsure if he wanted to drive a convertible back to Michigan in the winter. Bob, who had just traded his Plymouth for a Buick Special, suggested he go down to the dealership and see what kind of deal they could make. When Mel pulled up in the Bel Air, he had his pick of eager salesmen. He traded the yellow Chevy for a 1956 Buick Special two-door hardtop with a Fireball V-8 and took the southern route back to Michigan. Mel recalls his Special “had a lot of guts under that hood. It was a good car,” but it was no Bel Air. My family spends most of our time discussing cars, but it isn’t until this day that I learn my grandpa owned a ’56 Buick.

***

Did you know how easy these are to steal?” Fred says as he takes the keys out of the ignition after switching it from Lock to Off. He then holds the keys clearly in his left hand and outside the car, while turning the ignition with his right. The car starts right up. “Ready to go for a drive?”

My dad and uncle jump into the back. My grandpa slides into the passenger seat. As I lightly hold the thin metal steering wheel, I feel my fingers tingle. I don’t think it is entirely from the vibration of the small-block.

I idle slowly to the end of the driveway and turn right into the street. The slow steering ratio catches me off guard—a reminder I am driving an antique—as do the heckles from my dad and uncle in the back seat. With a few full turns of the wheel, I quickly adjust to avoid a ditch, but as I find my way to the main drag I overcorrect and end up in a lane closer than intended. Grandpa does not seem to notice. He is miles, or perhaps years, away.

As we cruise toward downtown, turning heads, my dad and uncle wave at pedestrians. In the passenger seat, Grandpa’s full attention is now on the inside of the Bel Air. He leans over to me, giving voice to the memories rushing to the forefront of his brain. “My brother wasn’t happy with a broken radio. A couple hours into our big road trip, his head was under the dash and he was messing with wires.” I laugh and turn the dial on the AM radio. I struggle to find a working frequency.

Train tracks and bumps in the road barely register to us passengers, even with the Bel Air’s skinny stock tires, and the low burble from the V-8 out of the dual exhaust reminds me of the sound and smell of idling through a low-wake zone. Despite it being a bit of a hot rod in its day, the ’55 doesn’t tempt me. I never give it more than 20 percent throttle. I now understand the appeal of these early American cars: Nothing happens in a hurry. A Bel Air begs to be cruised, and it embodies how my grandpa describes the attitude of the 1950s: “No sweat, just do your thing.”

Times change, of course. As I hang my arm out the window, enjoying the fresh air and letting the Bel Air’s momentum pull us along, Grandpa remarks that his ’55 felt sportier. Or maybe he was just more reckless in his youth, I wonder. (Earlier, at lunch, I admitted to my family that at 19 I hit the limiter on my first car, a 1996 Toyota Camry, on an empty stretch of Michigan highway.) I realize that this is the first time I have driven my grandpa anywhere. Usually, he or my dad drives, but after a lifetime of sharing his love of cars with me, Grandpa Mel moved to the passenger seat as I took the wheel. He is uncharacteristically quiet on this big day, soaking it all in.

A Bel Air begs to be cruised, and it embodies how my grandpa describes the attitude of the 1950s: “No sweat, just do your thing.”

While driving Fred’s Bel Air, top-down, on a nice fall day around Charlotte—a small town that hasn’t changed much since the 1950s—I imagine what life must have been like for my grandpa as a young man. I think back to myself at 22 years old, when my sister and I drove that same ’96 Camry to Alaska to work summer jobs. How much youthful freedom I felt then. The emotional attachment I still have to that indestructible machine.

I wager the human-car connection is even stronger with my grandpa and the memory of his Chevy. In 1955, America, and its cars, were hitting their postwar stride. No longer was it just about slight improvements on prewar designs. It was a clean-sheet era that had no patience for nostalgia. There was no desire to look back, so automotive designers, and for a large part, America, looked forward. At 22 and with a wide, open road ahead of him, my grandpa’s life mirrored this transition. A child of the Great Depression who came of age during WWII, he remembers gathering scrap metal to help the war effort. When he started driving shortly after WWII ended, his first car, a 1936 Plymouth Coupe, wasn’t too far behind many new cars on the road, which were largely minor improvements on prewar designs.

That Bel Air was a turning point, for Mel and many others. By the time he got back to the States, the Korean War was over. An age of uncertainty was passing. He was overwhelmed by a new sense of the world having been cracked wide open: “It was an exciting time. I had my whole life to live and part of it was going to be in California.”

Through my grandpa’s eyes, I can see that the ’55 Bel Air is more than a vehicle for nostalgia. It represents, for him, the spirit of possibility and adventure—the type that happens only at major turning points in life. Once we park the Chevy back in the Darins’ garage, Grandpa Mel turns to me. “That was the top of my story as far as cars. It was a love story, and it was good to relive it with you.”