This Wheels-Up ’65 Chevelle 4-Door Wagon Is One Surfers’ Paradise

For a car guy from a Southern California beach town, there are few things cooler than a 1960’s muscle car-era wagon toting a surfboard on the roof — something we’d argue is second only to said wagon wheels up, ripping its way down the dragstrip.

For Hermosa Beach native Mike Moore, his ’65 Chevelle wagon has done time as both.

Moore was fortunate to grow up in a time and a place to witness some of the sport’s all-time great people, cars, tracks, and moments. Barely 10 years old, he attended races at Lions Drag Strip, surrounded by race cars and street rods throughout his youth in the 1960s and ‘70s. In ’76, right out of high school, he entered the automotive repair industry and bought a ’65 GTO that he raced at Terminal Island in Long Beach. He also helped his older brother work on his ’55 chevy C/Modified production drag car.

“We got parts from junkyards and Super Shops. We’d surf in the morning, work on cars in the afternoon, and work at night. I got married in 1982 and sold my GTO to buy a house. I then went through an offroad period with dirt bikes and trucks,” Moore shares.

Photo by Chad Cline

The year was 1997 when Moore, itching to get back behind the wheel of some classic muscle, paid 400-bucks for his prized ’65 Chevelle Malibu four-door wagon. The car had been sitting in his next-door neighbor’s driveway rusting away, so he made the deal, pushed it home, got it in running condition, and put it to work as a surf and snowboard wagon. He also drove his kids to school and martial arts classes. He even put its extra cargo space to use transporting lumber and bricks in it.

Powered at the time by a 283 with 270,000 miles on it, the mill was soon swapped for a 350 crate engine, along with a new Turbo 350 transmission, and a fresh new coat of factory Teal Green paint. He stuck an Alpine sound system in it and made it a cool street cruiser. But his brother had begun building drag racing engines and wanting to try his hand at…