People love to hate on Chevrolet. It’s the most popular division of what was long the world’s largest carmaker, but it sold so many cars for a reason. For decades, the combination of style, performance, and near ubiquity has also made 20th-century Chevrolet products excellent and highly accessible hobby cars. And while there were lots and lots of performance-type Chevrolets built between the debut of the small-block V-8 for 1955 and the detuning of the early 1970s, some combinations of factory equipment are very uncommon, yet highly sought after by collectors.
Setting aside Corvettes for a moment, because their quasi-exotic nature means at times their collectibility overlaps with pricey European machinery, an LS6 Chevelle like this may be one of the most desirable regular-production Chevrolets, period. It owns that position because it exists at the intersection of an incredibly popular and accessible model, the Chevelle, and one of the most powerful V-8s put under the hood of a car in this era by any automaker.
Hot Chevelles are no rarity, of course. The SS 396 sold like hotcakes and many a pedestrian Malibu has had its 307 replaced with something more potent. That only works in this car’s favor because it makes it broadly relatable in a way no Lamborghini will ever be.
The owner of this car, Bob Priest of Blairsville, Pennsylvania, owned one of those hot Chevelles when new, a 1970 like this one.
“Back in the day,” he says, “I had an L-78 375-hp 396, with 4.10s, a four-speed, Astro Blue paint, white stripes, and cowl induction. I ordered mine in ’69, but if I’d known the LS6 was coming, I probably would have held out for one.”
The 1970 LS6 454 was the culmination of probably the most intensive five years of Chevrolet’s big-block program, which benefitted not only from the muscle car marketplace, but from Corvette road racing, too. It also had the serendipitous circumstance of debuting at the same time General Motors lifted its corporate ban on engines over 400 cubic inches in intermediate cars.
Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac wasted no time stuffing their respective 455-cu.in. engines in their midsize offerings, creating a memorable year for the GS, 4-4-2, and GTO. Chevy fans might have anticipated the vaunted 427-cu.in. big-block finally available in a Chevelle without requiring a Central Office Production Order, but the division went them one better, stroking the big-block to 454 cu.in.
As with the 396 and 427, the 454 came in several varieties. If you were in the market for, say, a Kingswood station wagon, you could order the LS4, which served up a smooth and reliable 345 hp. The full-size models could also be ordered with the LS5 version of the 454, which was available in Corvettes and the Chevelle SS 454 as well. It was rated at 360 hp (or 390 in Corvette) with a 10.25:1 compression ratio, oval-port heads, Quadrajet carburetor, and a hydraulic valvetrain. The LS4 and LS5 both made great torque and had the mild manners expected by the average driver.
The LS6 didn’t need to go to great extremes to make its power. It started with a four-bolt main block and to this added 11.25:1 compression, square-port cylinder heads, a Holley four-barrel on a low-rise aluminum intake, and the same solid-lifter cam used in the L-78.
The 450-hp rating of the LS6 was probably conservative (few believe it made only 25 more horses than the original 1965 396—enthusiast estimates peg the actual gross horsepower closer to 500), but it was still the top advertised horsepower for any Chevy big-block. It bested the also-conservative 425-hp rating of the 426-cu.in. Hemi available in midsize Mopars and the 375 advertised horsepower of the Ford Torino’s 429 Super Cobra Jet. In stock form, an LS6 Chevelle was on more-than-equal footing with any of its market rivals.
Of course, few in those days could resist the urge to improve their stock cars, and the mass-produced Chevrolet V-8s appropriately had the deepest aftermarket support. Remarkably, however, this car wasn’t modified to any great extent, and when Bob acquired it in 2013, it had remained quite close to home. It was sold new at Grabiak Chevrolet in New Alexandria, Pennsylvania, just a dozen or so miles away. The Chevelle was actually one of two LS6 cars sold through Grabiak that came without cowl induction or stripes.
When we heard this information, and when Bob told us that during the restoration, he’d had to replace the quarter panels because the wheel openings had been clearanced for racing slicks, our immediate thought was that it was perhaps intended as a sleeper or had a racing history. It doesn’t appear that was the case, however.
It’s certainly gorgeous, finished as it is in Tuxedo Black with a red interior. You have to appreciate its cool, competent demeanor. By 1970, many muscle cars wore eye-searing colors, flamboyant graphics, and/or pop-culture references on their flanks. Later in the decade, garish visual elements would be the only thing that remained of Detroit’s crop of sporty cars. This Chevelle calls back to the early ’60s, when Super Sport trim alone was enough to imply an interest in performance and the exhaust note could tell the rest of the story.
The transmission might also be considered a retro element by 1970. Chevrolet was one of the last to permit its hottest, solid-lifter engines to be ordered with an automatic transmission, but by 1970 even the mighty LS6 could be had backed with a TH400. The dominance of the four-speed in the muscle era was never as complete as popular imagination would have it, and after the Chrysler TorqueFlite and GM’s old Hydra-Matic had paved the way, drag racers especially quickly recognized that automatics gave considerably better consistency if your name wasn’t Ronnie Sox.
Nevertheless, the original purchaser of this machine opted for the traditional four-speed—another GM pinnacle, the Muncie M22 rock crusher. The M22, a close-ratio box, was so called because of the reduced angle on which its gears were cut, which were stronger but considerably noisier than those in the wide-ratio M20 and close-ratio M21. Today, that whine is just one more part of the old-car sensory experience, along with the ticking of a mechanical valvetrain and the smell of uncatalyzed exhaust, that the real connoisseur appreciates.
That connoisseurs do appreciate these cars is undeniable. The LS6 engine and a four-speed nearly double the book value of a ’70 Chevelle Super Sport (versus the 396 model) and boost the value over something like a quotidian Malibu hardtop by $100,000. A nonscientific sampling of sources outside the book suggests that most authentic LS6 cars are trading hands for even more than that.
The big trick, though, is that authenticity. Chevrolet’s voluminous production records from this era weren’t preserved. You’ve got to have documentation if you’re going to claim provenance because “numbers matching” just doesn’t cut it.
Bob, thankfully, has the factory build sheet of the car to confirm what is already known through local history. He also draws on deep experience as a Chevrolet enthusiast. He’s had four 1970 Chevelles, including that first one and this one. “I just like them,” he says. He’s also owned more than 70 Corvettes, including a ’71 with an LS6—Bob demurs on saying whether the Corvette or the Chevelle is more fun with one.
As an old hand at Corvette restoration, Bob’s shepherded numerous cars through rigorous National Corvette Restorers Society judging all the way to the coveted Duntov Mark of Excellence Award. The standards for receiving a Duntov require contenders to score at least a 97 percent not only on looking factory correct, but on demonstrating correct functionality.
No surprise, then, that this Chevelle’s first outing, to the 2019 Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Chicago, saw it bring home three separate awards: the Carlisle Events GM Pick, the Hemmings Muscle Machines Pick (by Senior Editor Tom DeMauro), and a Concours Gold Award.
The full rotisserie restoration, which Bob executed along with paint, body, and assembly work from Arone Restorations of Homer City, Pennsylvania, was “not difficult,” even “fun.” Maybe credit that to Bob’s length of involvement, but also to the complete and rust-free nature of the car when he acquired it. “It spent most of its life [garaged] so there was no rust on it at all. I had to do the wheel lips only because they’d beat on them.”
When it comes down to it, this is the King of Chevelles. For 1971, the engine was downgraded to a 425-hp rating. In 1972, the LS6 disappeared from the lineup entirely. Finally, in 1973, the classic muscle era body, which dated back to 1968, would give way to the new Colonnade. The 454 lived on for the first couple years of the new body style, but in a much more tepid form. But for a while, things were good, and even today, any one of us can still go out and buy a ’70 Chevelle to enjoy.
