Rotting in Style - 1961 Chevy Lakewood (Corvair 500)

When I had the privilege of spending four months in Alaska, I took advantage of all the sights that I possibly could.  This included the vast amount of abandoned cars that I had found.  One of the towns I was in was Skagway, Alaska.  Anyone who played the old computer game “Yukon Trail” should recognize the name.  It was a gorgeous small little town of just over 900 residents, but with a vast amount of abandoned cars.

One house had quite a few in the yard.  The woman I approached told me she was renting the property.  The owner of the house inherited the land with the house and cars on it when his father passed away.  While the cars are mostly now all junk, he doesn’t want to get rid of them due to sentimental value.  That works for me, because now I can bring them all to you, including this 1961 Chevy Lakewood (Chevy Corvair 500 Lakewood).

This car is pretty rare as it was only built in 1961 and 1962.  I cannot confirm this is in fact a 1961, so I’m just making an assumption here.  Anyway, this was the base Chevy station wagon as it was built off of the cheap Corvair 500 platform.  It came with a 146 cubic inch flat six that made 86 horsepower which was located in the rear of the car.  Now apparently, that was enough of a power to weight ratio to blast this car up and down sand dunes.  Check out the video at the end which includes an old commercial where Chevy did just that.

This car’s days of dune crushing though are over.  It is being completely overgrown.  This grass was well past my knees.  Rust was replacing the paint; not too aggressively surprisingly, but it was sure enough.  It was also accompanied with moss, which was very common on anything that didn’t move much in Alaska.  Having been granted free range, I opened the doors to check out the inside.  It was dusty, dirty, and musty.  It also had a couple trees growing in it.

The original dealer badge was located on the rear of the car: Taylor and Drury Motor Limited.  I couldn’t find much about them except for the fact that they were located in Whitehorse Yukon Territory, which you can also figure out from the badge itself, and that Taylor and Drury was a big business name in the area for other businesses apparently as well.

The dealer is long gone, and this car is fading away as well.  It’s now destined to be overgrown as is sits in Skagway, Alaska, Rotting in Style.

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