Gray Murder

A 1965 Impala two-door hardtop that arrived white and left solid grey, with everything that would normally shine on it blacked out. Simple idea, and the whole build answers to it.

A ’65 Impala is a lot of car. Long, wide, and covered in chrome from the factory — bumpers, grille, window surrounds, handles, badges, the lot. The obvious move is to polish all of it. Sachin wanted the opposite: keep the shape, lose the shine, and let the lines do the work on their own.

Back to bare metal

The car was taken back to bare metal rather than prepared over what was already on it. On a sixty-year-old body that is the only honest way to find out what you actually have — and on this one it meant panel work through the rear quarters and tail panel before anything went near the booth.

It is slower than the alternative and it is the reason the finish sits flat. Paint shows every shortcut taken underneath it, and grey with no metallic in it to break up the reflections is about as unforgiving a colour as you can pick.

Murdered out

The bumpers, grille, handles, trim and the rest of the exterior details are all blacked out. Nothing bright is left on the outside of the car. It is a subtractive build rather than an additive one — the work went into taking things away cleanly, not bolting things on.

New underneath as well

It is not just a paint job. There is a new 350 Chev in it backed by a TH700, so it has an overdrive top gear and will actually sit on the open road rather than screaming at eighty. Stopping got the same treatment — a CPP four-wheel disc conversion, because a car this size on its original drums is the part of a ’65 nobody enjoys.

Sitting where it should

It runs full air ride suspension, so it sits low when it is parked and lifts when it needs to. Ride height is most of what people read as attitude on a car this size, and getting a full-size ’65 to sit properly without looking like it has been dropped on its face is the difference between a stance and a slam.

The result

Original ’65 styling with a few carefully chosen custom touches, and no more than that. It still reads as an Impala from a hundred metres away, which was always the point.