1955 Chevrolet Bel Air Sees Daylight After 45 Years, It's an Amazing Survivor

But some Tri-Fives are more sought-after than others. Yes, most enthusiasts go after the Bel Air models, simply because they have the extra chrome trim, the nicer interiors, and more convenience features. As a result, many entry-level 150 cars and mid-level 210s ended up as rust buckets in junkyards or hot-rod/restomod projects.

The Bel Air also gets the tuning treatment regularly, but most of them do get restored to original specifications, especially if they still have their original engines under their hoods. And it's even better if it's a V8 and not the base inline-six. But collectors are picky when it comes to the Bel Air too.

You see, Chevrolet offered no fewer than six different versions of its range-topping Tri-Five. The lineup included two- and four-door sedans, a two-door convertible, and a two-door hardtop known as the Sport Coupe. Chevrolet also sold two wagons: the four-door Beauville and the two-door Nomad.

Which one's the most desirable? Well, collectors are usually chasing the two-door hardtops, perhaps because they look slightly hotter than their two-door sedan counterparts. But here's the thing: the Sport Coupe is by no means rare.

Chevrolet built almost 190,000 of them in 1955, about 130,000 in 1956, and a little more than 168,000 units in 1957. That's almost a half-million examples over three model years. Or about 10% of total Tri-Five production.

Which one's the rarest? That would have to be the two-door Nomad wagon. Far from popular at the time, the Nomad moved exactly 22,897 units from 1955 to 1957. That's less than 0.5% of the total Tri-Five output in three years. How many of them are still around? Well, the figure is low enough to send the value of all-original survivors north of $100,000.

But I'm not here to talk about the Sport Coupe of the Nomad. I'm here because the two-door sedan version isn't getting the attention it deserves right now. Yes, I totally get that no-post cars look better than their post counterparts, but the thing is, the two-door sedan is actually significantly rarer than the hardtop.

Specifically, we're talking around 337,000 post cars versus almost 500,000 Sport Coupes. But it's not just the production numbers we need to think about.

Because collectors have been more concerned about saving the hardtops, a lot more sedans have succumbed to rust in junkyards and barns. So they're actually much harder to find in unrestored, unmolested, and low-mileage condition.

Which brings me to the stunning 1955 example that Jerry Battaglia recently saved from a sad life off the road. Yup, this two-tone beauty is a genuine garage find that spent more than four decades in storage. Specifically, the previous owner bought it in 1978 hoping that it would use as a family car but life got in the way and the Bel Air ended up sitting in the garage. Yes, that's a whopping 45 years without a sip of gasoline.

And Jerry discovered it by pure luck while driving by the previous owner's house in Melville, New York. The story goes that the garage door was open and he spotted a small portion of the car's rear end, mostly because it was covered in junk. He couldn't tell if it was a two-door or a four-door, so he decided to stop and ask if the Bel Air was for sale.

The answer was "yes" and he was surprised to discover that it was a two-door sedan in fantastic shape given the amount of time it spent off the road. It also turned out that it had just 71,000 miles (114,263 km) on the odometer. After a couple of hours of negotiating, they reached an agreement and Jerry returned with a trailer to drag the Bel Air out of its resting place.

Finished in India Ivory over Regal Turquoise, one of the coolest Chevy color combos for 1955, the Bel Air is pretty much rust-free and almost complete as far as chrome trim goes. The paint also appears to be in great condition, albeit in need of a good cleaning. The interior is also in good shape and sports the same scrumptious color combo.

As for the engine, this Bel Air is fitted with a 235-cubic-inch (3.9-liter) inline-six. It was the base engine for 1955 when Chevrolet also offered a 265-cubic-inch (4.3-liter) V8 good for 162 or 180 horsepower. The six-cylinder isn't all that potent at 123 horsepower but hopefully, it's a numbers-matching unit that will run again without a rebuild.

It would be great to see some follow-up footage with this Bel Air running and driving but until that happens, see it coming out of storage after almost 50 years in the video below.