It’s hot rod black. It’s got the required 7.4 liters of thumping big-block Chevrolet under the hood. It’s got the rally gauges with the tachometer, as they all should have come. It’s sitting on slot mags, it’s lowered, and from most angles, this 1973 Chevrolet Chevelle Laguna is a score for the Rough Start category, even at the full five thousand dollars. It’s how the Colonnade cars should’ve seemed instead of being upright disco-era yawnmobiles or worse, the leaders of the Brougham epoch. This is a more proper evolution of what the muscle car should’ve been and you can almost hear the echoes of designers who had been hoping to re-home the LS-6 454 under that massive hood. The suspension was up to the task and the swivel buckets would be a killer place to plant your backside. You don’t even have to worry about gigantic bumpers in 1973 on the Laguna!

But there is something you do have to worry about: floor rust. It wouldn’t be a Rough Start choice without some work being needed, and that’s where we have to look. Soft floors, or in the case of the driver’s footwell, maybe no floor at all. Does that suck? Yep. But you can get new floors and carpet from places like Original Parts Group, so is it really that bad?

Five grand will get you the car and erase your budget to nothing. But we’d still suggest giving this Laguna a shot…if there was a reason to learn how to weld, the idea of what this off-year Chevelle could be should be enough inspiration. It has the right attitude on the outside…now it’s time to get the interior looking just as decent.

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