These Chevrolet Impalas are a Lifelong Obsession

“How can you spend 12 hours out there and work on those things all day?” Don Rogers’ wife will sometimes ask, to which he replies, “The day just flew by…I don’t know what happened.” With a love for the iconic Chevrolet Impala, Rogers’ garage is filled with two, both ’64 models. One is a hardtop, the other a convertible. What makes Rogers a bit different from most enthusiasts, however, is that he does all of the work on his cars himself. “When I got it, it was mostly all there,” Rogers says of his Impala Hardtop, “…but it was a rusty mess.” There’s a reason for that: the previous owner fell ill, and his family moved the car into the backyard, “so he could see it out the window,” Rogers says. The Convertible was garage-stored, but not driven for more than three decades, and the rougher of the two, he says. With a lot of restoration work ahead of him, Rogers takes the opportunity to add a few small improvements, including air ride suspension, period-correct hop-up parts, and—in the case of