Some might say 1970 was a monumental year for rock music, and much of it not good. Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix both died at the age of 27, and the Beatles called it quits due to musical differences between Paul McCartney and John Lennon. Both continued on a musical path to highly successfully solo careers. Joplin and Hendrix–not so much. With the two most famous Beatles going their separate ways, their fans followed suit; some took the Lennon train, while others aligned with McCartney.
It’s not uncommon for kids to become a product of their environment and gravitate toward whatever it is that gets their attention. When passing through those influential teenage years, the guy down the street with the hopped-up muscle car who spends a good amount of time wrenching and cruising the neighborhood in a car with a highly pronounced exhaust and a burley V-8 underhood can easily suck a kid into the scene.
Joey Dean has always been a big fan of ’66 Chevelles. In 2009 he came across a rust-free Chevelle wagon from California and he instantly fell in love. It was something different and he knew right away that he had to have it.
Being an enabler is typically considered a bad thing when it comes to unhealthy addictions, but if it’s your pops and grandpops doing the pushing, it’s likely to be something positive. In the case of John Griffith III, he pretty much had little choice in the matter when it came to the horsepower addiction. “I inherited the affection for power from my father and grandfather,” John admits. “It started with motorcycles in my early teenage years, then naturally grew in the direction of muscle cars soon after.”
Those were the words photographer John Jackson humorously blurted out while at GoodFellows Classic Cars in Phoenix to shoot this gorgeous yet brawny ’66 Chevelle. It wasn’t because there was an underage girl behind the wheel, but due to the front license plate that reads JAIL B8. The story of the plate goes back to when Tina’s husband, AJ Schwichtenberg, owner of GoodFellows, had a ’62 bubbletop with that California plate. As AJ tells it, “I wanted to get that same plate for the Chevelle I was building for my wife, Tina, but the Arizona DMV wasn’t having it.” AJ kept the original and put it on the front of the Chevelle, which got Jackson’s attention as Tina was moving the car in position for the photo shoot.
Matt Cirocco, of Massapequa, New York, found himself with a daunting dilemma on his hands. “I found out about a good builder 1972 Chevelle for sale locally.