Low-mileage LS6 Chevelle was right choice after all

Imagine, if you will, a 16-year-old kid asking his dad to go along with him to look at a 1970 LS6 Chevelle SS 454. (Cue “Twilight Zone” background music.)

The year was 1973 and David Jamis was the kid. The car was a one-owner muscle car listed by Les “Butch” Rollins, an airman stationed at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita.

“He was a car guy and when he was stationed in Washington, he had raced it out there. His best E.T. with slicks was a 12.5 (seconds),” Jamis said. “Best E.T. for an LS6 with stock tires was recorded by Hot Rod magazine at 13.44.”

Jamis already had a ’68 Chevelle SS 396 at the time, which he says had been abused as a drag car and was bought without an engine. He had to settle for a “tired, salvage-yard 327 from a ’66 Caprice wagon.”

“I only drove that car for a year before I decided I needed something better,” he said. “I decided that a Z16 1965 Chevelle SS 396 or an LS 1970 SS 454 was what I needed.”

He said he was surprised when his dad agreed to go look at the LS6 with him.

“Les would not allow us to drive it. We rode while he drove,” Jamis said. “After the drive, my dad asked me if that was what I wanted. I said yes and he stated that the car was essentially a street-legal race car. I told him I knew what it was. He turned to Les and told him to consider it sold.”

Later, Jamis’ mother would tell him that Rollins had expressed concern about selling the car to such a young driver. “He said, ‘That’s a lot of car for that guy.’ ”

But his parents trusted him, so he bought the three-year-old Chevelle for $2,500, a real bargain considering it sold for $4,503 new. He put $1,000 down and payed off the balance to his parents within a year.

The odometer showed 18,149 miles when Jamis slipped behind the wheel the first time.

“It was my everyday driver from the end of my junior year all through my senior year,” he said. He parked the Chevelle at his grandmother’s when he went off to college at Ohio State, opting for a sedate, 6-cylinder, three-on-the-tree 1960 Chevy Biscayne as his school car. But he would dust off the Chevelle and cruise in it when he was home on break from college.

“I never raced it, maybe one time on Douglas, because my friends’ cars were always broke down and I couldn’t afford to keep putting money in that car,” he said. “I had guys who came up and wanted to buy it, but they always wanted a bargain. I figured I’m the one who saved the car and if someone is going to make money on it, it’s going to be me.”

Aside from a couple of relatively minor mishaps, the Chevelle remains pretty much original. Jamis figures the Fathom Blue paint is about 70-percent factory, and the white vinyl top and the African Ivory interior are factory issued, except for the plastic bucket seat bolsters, which had yellowed over time and have been replaced.

The factory shifter had been replaced with a Hurst Competition Plus 4-speed shifter and an aftermarket “Hon-O-Drive” overdrive that Rollins had installed for better gas mileage had been removed.

The car retains its original 454, 450 horsepower engine, rated at 500-plus foot-pounds of torque, and its 4:11 Positraction rear end. Rollins had ditched the stock smog pump early-on, but Jamis has found a period-correct unit that he plans to install to bring the engine compartment back to original.

“Currently, it has 35,000 on the odometer … so I have only driven it 17,000 miles in 44 years,’ he said. Interestingly, he found a Z16 ’65 Chevelle for sale for the same price he paid for the LS6 Chevelle not long after he bought it.

“I was very tempted, but I knew my father would have thought I was crazy to trade a 1970 for a 1965. Now, I wish I had traded …a Z16 is worth three times the value of an LS6,” Jamis mused.

But it’s not just about the market value of this car. He had invited Les Rollins to come see his old car at a show in Kansas City in 1995. And then in 2012, he learned from a friend of Rollins that Rollins had terminal pancreatic cancer.

“His bucket list included driving his old car one last time,” Jamis said. “I couldn’t refuse such a request.”

Les Rollins and the Chevelle were reunited one last time.

“He drove the Chevelle for about 20 minutes around the Andover area and we had a nice visit discussing the car and its history,” Jamis said. “He made the statement that the car went to the right person when I bought it. He said he would have never kept it that nice.”

“When Les was leaving, I asked him to do me one favor. I asked him to write a letter of provenance for the car. He agreed he would.

Rollins died before that happened. But David Jamis feels fortunate that the Chevelle they shared was there for Rollins’ one last drive.

This story was originally published March 21, 2017 at 2:55 PM with the headline "Low-mileage LS6 Chevelle was right choice after all."