America's Best-Selling Car Of 1965 Would Go On To Become A True Automotive Icon

The best-selling car in the U.S. during 1965 sold an incredible 1,074,925 examples. It's a record that has never been surpassed, making it an icon for this achievement alone. It's also the first car in history to go past the 1 million sales mark for a single year. With today's fragmented market and so many more brands, it is a record likely to remain unbroken for the foreseeable future. As a comparison, the Ford Mustang's best year was 1966 with 550,000 sales, while the VW Beetle managed to sell 423,008 examples during its best year of 1968. It's not even close — and it's not like these other models were rare or unpopular, as they're some of the cars you definitely remember if you grew up in the '60s.

The 1965 Chevrolet Impala was all-new for 1965, with smoother, more rounded styling than gave it a completely different look compared to the previous, more formal 1964 Impala model. The 1965 Impala's all-steel "Girder-Guard" frame was new, while its steel body, styled by Chevy's chief designer Irv Rybicki, was long, low, and wide, featuring a gently sloping fastback roof that was totally different from the angular looks of the early 1960s. It kept the 1964 car's 119-inch wheelbase while extending its overall length by 3.2 inches and width by 1.5 inches. This unique styling also makes the 1965 Impala iconic, as it strongly differentiated the new car from the old one. This also applied to the Impala's competition, the Ford Galaxie and Dodge Polara, which kept their old-fashioned, squarish styling for a few more years.

The array of powerplants available for the rear-drive 1965 Chevy Impala also made this car iconic, letting you order anything from an economical grocery-getter to a fire-breathing drag car. Your choices started with a 230 cubic-inch inline six producing 140 horsepower mated to a three-speed manual or a two-speed automatic transmission. The V8 options, which could be specced with a four-speed manual, opened with a 283 cubic-inch breathing through a two-barrel carb making 195 horses, with the most powerful four-barrel version putting out 220. The next step was the 327 with a four-barrel, in 250 or 300-horsepower versions. The top of the line was the famous big-block "409," which was both special and rare, with 340 or 400 horsepower. Halfway through the model year, the 409 was replaced with the new 396, produced in both 325 and 425-horse variants, upping the ante even further.

The 1965 Chevrolet Impala became an iconic vehicle for many reasons — for its record-breaking sales results, for its daring new styling that made its competition seem old and dated, and for the wide range of engine performance that promised the right powerplant for any driver's needs. This made the model year 1965 a high point in the lifespan of the Chevy Impala, which went on to experience the rise and fall of a generational automotive icon. A car that started out as an upscale trim level of the Chevrolet Bel Air turned into Chevy's flagship model for many decades, until it became a fleet-only vehicle and was dropped for the last time in 2020.