68 Chevelle/Nova Steering Wheel

[Mr70]

There is a 1968 SS 396 Chevelle over here with SS396 on it's steering wheel shroud.It is a December,Baltimore built car.It looks Original to the car,as he has owned it since 1979 with that emblem.

[Tommy]

Tom, Gateway Reproductions had one A while back that had been off A car and on the wall for most of its existence. I spoke with Jim when I dealt with them, they did A great job with the things I needed. Gateway is in Winfield, MO (636)566-6666. Those wheels are 68 only wheels having the small ridges from the center down and the "SS396" emblem was for the Chevelle and the ChevyII and Camaro only had "SS" from what I have seen and read. The Sun really reaked havoc on them, I found A "yard" last summer with six Chevelles in A row and all the Steering wheels were cracked beyond repair.

Tommy

[68SS396]

Belair, I do not know what the SS 396 wheel emblem is for, but it is not for the Camaro. Joe and Belair, here is a pic of my unrestored survivor SS 396 Camaro wheel. It only has the SS emblem in the center.

[WILMASBOYL78]

That's the wheel I'm looking for!!!

Tom

[Tommy]

I failed to proof read my last post and it reads incorrectly because of my poor use of punctuation... The 68 Chevelles used the SS396 emblem. The 68 ChevyII and camaro used the SS only emblem. My wheel is identical to yours Bill, only not in such good shape.

Tommy

[Zman]

My 68 Chevelle has the SS only, and I'm 99.9% sure it is original. The wheel is junk, but the shroud is nice. It's a plain jane, no frills, bench seat 4 speed car if that matters...Don't remember the build date off hand, and I'm at work so I can't go look.

[GTO_DON]

my 68 is a 1 owner car and the wheel has ss396 on it..

[camarojoe]

I think the SS396 vs SS emblem is more of a production timeframe thing than a model thing. I don't think it matters if its a Camaro, Chevelle or Nova as much as WHEN the particular car was built. My guess is that early cars had the SS396 emblem, and was later changed to the SS emblem so ALL models could use the same one, including SS 350 cars.

[Supercar_Kid]

LV's Harrell Chevelle has the plain SS emblem and I think it's a safe bet to say it hasn't been touched, and the rust bucket '68 I posted pics of had the plain SS as well, and I can say for sure it's hasn't be touched. Both cars shared the rare UAW strike interior so I'd bet that the build dates of these two cars are within a week or two of one another. LV...what's the build date on your Chevelle? Let's look at known unrestored cars both before and after these dates, then maybe we'll come up with a time frame for the switch. I agree you'll probably find all later cars having SS only, as it makes more sense to switch to a generic "SS" for all Super Sport models than to have two separate parts for such a trivial application. Wonder if late production SS427 Impalas got the SS427 horn shroud emblem, or if that was done away with too and replaced with SS only?

[camarojoe]

Did they produce an "SS350" emblem for the 68 steering wheel? I have seen SS, SS396, and SS427, but can't recall for sure if I've ever seen SS350.