OPGI Customer Car Spotlight: 1965 El Camino

The OPGI Customer Car presented in this Spotlight is yet another prime example of a classic 1965 Chevrolet El Camino. Although the Customer Spotlight car featured here in September was an El Camino from the California coast, and the clean black ’65 pictured this month hails from the high country in Flagstaff, Arizona, both have been restored to near factory original specs with a healthy dose of OPGI parts.

Art Marquez of Flagstaff sent us these photos along with a very nice letter explaining his El Camino’s unique restoration history. It seems that Art bonded with this El Camino before he even had his driver’s license as he was present at the dealership the day his grandfather purchased the car in 1965. Art writes that his grandfather ordered the car as a Custom Deluxe model in Tahitian Turquoise with a two-tone Aqua interior. It came with a 195 horsepower, 283 V8 hooked to a Powerglide transmission and Art’s grandfather opted for power steering too.
Art says the car was used as a shop truck for the body shop his grandfather owned at the time. As a teen, Art worked at the bodyshop part-time after school and during summers to learn body and paint work. When Art got his own driver’s license in April of 1966, he began driving the El Camino to wrecking yards and parts houses to get parts for the projects his grandfather’s shop was working on.

That situation changed when Art’s grandfather sold his body shop and later passed the El Camino down to him in 1995. Art says in his letter that he has enjoyed the car every day since receiving it, and that amounts to a lot of enjoyment, as Art states “The car has about 170,000 miles on it, and the drive train has never been out of the car or apart. It still has plenty of power, the engine doesn’t smoke and the tranny still shifts as good as a Powerglide ever has!”

Despite the rock-solid powertrain, over the years the car had been repainted twice by his grandfather, so Art decided to give it a full cosmetic update in 2006. Art stripped the whole car down to bare metal both inside and out, and did all of the paint prep work by himself at home. Lacking a proper spray paint booth of his own, Art had Max’s Body Shop in Flagstaff shoot the car in Dodge Ram Truck Hunter pearl. Art said “The interior I re-did in the two-tone Aqua with kits from you guys, along with updating the dash to the SS dash with the tach in the center where the clock used to be, and also the SS gauges instead of the idiot lights. I also added a Racemark mahogany steering wheel with an adapter that I made myself.”

The only chassis upgrades that Art performed were “Changing over to front disc brakes, and dropping the front 2 inches, again with your fine products.” Today, Art says his restored El Camino “Drives really nice, and it draws a lot of attention where ever I go, which I feel would make my grandfather happy! Art also included a few kind words for OPGI in his letter stating “Thanks to all of your staff for the help they’ve given me through the years, and I will continue to be a loyal customer for a long time!”

Arturo G. Marquez, Flagstaff, Arizona
1965 El Camino
Chevrolet Small Block 283
Factory stock powertrain
OPGI Interior with SS Dash Conversion Kit