My 55 Chevy Sedan Delivery  
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As some of you know I purchased a 1955 Chevy Sedan Delivery. I have loved every minute of owning it and I began to research the history of the car almost the day I bought it. It took me well over a year of research using the internet and the telephone to get this much information and it is not even 100% complete yet. I will list the web addresses I used along with the information I gathered so some of you who are interested in doing the same thing might be able to use the resources also.

The first thing I did was to try to find out when my car was built. I had been loging onto www.chevytalk.com and gathering information about all Tri-5's when I decided that this was the route I wanted to take for my purchase. I encountered a gentleman there who said he could tell me within a week of when it was built. After posting my VIN # on the site he told me it was built in the second week of November 1954 at the Oakland California plant. This excited me to know that it was a VERY early production car. The fact that I got this information so fast got me excited to research the car even more.

I contacted the person I bought the car from and he was only of very little help in finding out more history other then when they owned it, but it was still very informative. He told me they bought the car in 1978 in Oregon somewhere and trailered it to Auburn New York. He said it was primered when his father bought it and has a picture of him and his brother standing beside it the day it arrived in NY. His Father owned and opperated Auburn Auto Recyclers in Auburn NY. He promptly had the mechanics there install a 350 motor and TH400 trans from a 1970 Camaro and had the car painted a 1974 GM Cardinal Red. They then put a 1955 NY comercial licence plate on it (and did not register the car but thats another story). They then only used the car for parades and local cruise-in's. In 2001 the parents house burned to the ground killing both his mother and father and destroyed all of the paperwork for the car. He inherited the 1955 and a 1972 Corvette. In July of 2003 his wife said one of the 2 cars had to go and he decided the 1955 was the best one to sell as it needed the most work. On July 2 2003 I saw the add at www.collectorcartraderonline.com and immediatly called him. We spent the next 3 nights on the phone with him on a cordless takeing pictures of stuff on the car as I told him what pictures to take. After 150 digital pictures were emailed to me I decided I would buy it and made plans to go get it.

Here is where the research gets very sketchy. I did not know who owned it in Oregon so I decided to try to find out who bought it originally. After searching the net and calling GM directly I found out that the car was probably sold at a Chevy dealer in Van Nuys Cali. To my surprise the dealership had changed hands several times since then BUT they knew who the owner was when my car was sold. I called that persons family and again I was surprised to find out that the family had kept all the sales records. I then asked them if they could research my car and tell me if they had sold it. The very kind lady on the other end of the line said sure and asked if I would be willing to pay $50 for the time she would have to spend. I agreed and then I waited. 2 months later my phone rang and it was the lady telling me they had indeed sold the car on Dec. 29, 1954 to a Mr. Peterson. He bought the car using his company name Peterson's Home Painting. She said she could not help me any more then that because of the privacy act and could not reveal personal information more then that. Well having used the internet search engines I discovered that there was no business by that name open there anymore. I did however send an email to every Peterson family with an email address in Van Nuys Cali. After a few more weeks went by I got an email saying that this persons father had owned the company and gave me a contact information for him. I called him to discover a 75 year old man with a wealth of memories about my car. We spoke for 2 hours that night. Regretfully the only thing he could remember was that in 1960 he parked the car in his yard and sold it to a guy from Oregon in the last 1/2 of 1965. He did remember the gentleman he sold it to was planing to make into a dragracer. Regretfully Mr Peterson has since passed away and any hopes of getting old pictures are gone. Rest in Peace kind sir.

Well I dont think the car never made it to the race track unless someone did a great restoration and I dont know it. So that is what I know about my car so far. I have some feelers out there trying to get information about the owner (s) in Oregon but I doubt this will pan out since I dont have names to research.

Nov. 2006. More Info about Oregon but not good news. The State records do not show this car ever being registered in Oregon. I think my search has finally come to an end.