Home

Larry Sebranek’s 1968 Chevelle SS is one of those cars that’s lived a very full life. It started off as Vietnam vet’s dream car, went on to ably serve as a mean street machine terrorizing the Wisconsin backroads, eventually became a grocery getter and all-around family hauler, then changed owners and started collecting pink slips at the drag strip. “I bought it brand new when I came home from Vietnam. It’s got the 396 (-cubic inch), 375-horse engine it. I ordered it when I came home from leave. When we were over there we got a lot of brochures on muscle cars … I wanted a 427 and the dealer said, ‘You can’t get it, we’ll get you a 396.’ I was naive and didn’t know, and you believe what the dealer said, you know? So, the first one came in and had the 396 and 325 horse. I said, ‘No, that’s not the one I want .

Eventually, another SS came in, but Sebranek turned that one down, too. Finally, a third 396 came to the dealer and it had something unique about it. “The interior was always different, but nobody could really tell me what the interior was,” he said. “The dealer said, ‘Well, somebody must have screwed up.’ I was a young kind and didn’t really know, so I took it, and it was finally about 10 years later that I found out it was a Buick Grand Sport interior … Apparently, GM was on strike, or something, and some Chevelles got the Gran Sport interiors. You’d get different stories over the years, and yet there is no official record of GM being on strike. But there are a few cars out there like this that got the Gran Sport interior. The guys who really know Chevelles know about them … There’s no logos, no 396 logos on doors, the seats are completely different in a ‘68 Chevelle. A Buick guy could probably pick it out right away. The Gran Sport has more of a pleated upholstery in it.” “In about ’87, we sold it. Our son was getting old enough to drive, and I just had raised enough hell with that car that I knew what it would do and I knew how dangerous it was for a 16-year-old boy,” Sebranek said. “I hated to see it go, but then you know, when you got two boys and one’s getting old enough to drive, it’s hard to say no to them. I would have had to say ‘no’ 100 percent of the time. That was dad’s car. But he got one more chance. About five years later, the man sent a letter to Sebranek asking some questions about a warranty block that had been put in the car when it had 48,000 miles on the odometer. “I asked him again if he wanted to sell it. He called me a week later and said he’d sell it back to me. He lived in Kentucky at the time, so we grabbed a trailer and a come-along and we used a winch and went and got it.

Read more...