For some reason, comedians have some of the best car collections. Gabriel Iglesias aka Fluffy is no exception, and while he’s mostly famous for having way too many VW Type 2 busses, this 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle SS is his new baby.
The Chevelle SS is one of my top 3 favorite muscle cars of all time, right up there with the 1968 Dodge Charger and the 1970 Mustang Mach 1. It’s just so well designed, especially for the 68 and 69 model years which are quite different from the boxy cars of that era. “Sexy” is a simple way to describe this body, which quite often gets modified beyond easy recognition.
Chevelle restomods are great and all, but what’s wrong with having an immaculate example with no modifications? That’s what Fluffy has brought over to Jay Leno’s Garage this week, and there’s an interesting story behind it.
Iglesias was at the Barrett-Jackson auction in Vegas to sell a couple of his cars, a Dodge Demon and Trans Am Bandit, making some room in his crowded garage. But it didn’t work out because he fell in love with this 1969 Chevelle SS and bought it… along with five other cars. The auction house shipped it straight to Leno’s Burbank garage, and the video actually shows the “first drive” for both of them.
Jay Leno loves and appreciates the car too, because it’s all-original, numbers-matching, and comes with a lot of paperwork. How much did Fluffy pay? Well, the video doesn’t mention this, but we looked through the Las Vegas auction results and found a red SS 396 with red interior which went for $79,200. The comedian says he also bought a restomod of the same model, which seems to have cost him $80,300. But he got $154,000 for the Challenger Demon, so it’s alright to splurge.
Of course, the V8 rumble is a big part of this car’s appeal. In 1969, this was one of the most powerful muscle cars, its 396 big-block delivering 325 horsepower and 450 pound-feet of torque. The numbers-matching engine is paired with an equally original M20 4-speed manual transmission, positraction differential, power steering, and power brakes.
The Chevelle itself isn’t that rear. Chevrolet made a lot of them in 1969. That year, the SS became an option instead of a standalone model, and customers could make their supercar dreams come true by ticking as many boxes as they could afford. The 325 hp L35 was the base setup of the big-block, which could be upgraded to 350 hp with the L34 pack with more aggressive cams. The L78 or L89 were also available, rated at 375 hp.
So other Chevelle models were almost Corvette-powered and thus cooler/faster. But people bought the SS 396 to drive hard, so it’s pretty rare to find an all-original example with the factory-fitted motor.
