Not that soon. Cars had 15K mile spark plug replacement intervals in the days of leaded gas, and at that mileage they were replaced for normal wear, not for lead fouling.
The 2012 Impala is flex-fuel capable, so this would probably be the best way to fuel it, given the resources of the time.
I have been pondering a related issue…
What would happen if I took my 2004 Dodge Neon, and went back to, say, 1960. If I drive it (at night, carefully) to get it to Detroit, assuming I can find a car exec who believes me, what sort of advances would be made in short order at that point?
This may need another thread.
Probably not much. So much of what makes a 2004 car more advanced than a 1960 is in the electronics, and I’d wager it would be pretty darn difficult to reverse engineer it. Semiconductors were still relatively new at that time.
oh, there is one thing- a modern car would show them just how much of a car can be made from plastic 
A 2012 Impala weighs more than a 1942 Chevrolet - 3,649 v 3,425 lbs. The heaviest Cadillac (7 passenger limousine) weighed 4950 lbs but that doesn’t come close to a 2012 Chevrolet Suburban at 5700 lbs. So you would probably be OK.
I think the tires are your biggest problem but someone could weld the center of the impala rims into a 16" Cadillac rim. Assuming the Chevy has steel wheels, which may not be true.
I would have thought the rental queen Impala would have steel wheels standard, but evidently for 2012 16" aluminum wheels are standard. Even on fleet cars.
If we’re stuck with Impalas, I’d rather be sent back with a 2012 LTZ V8 (with extra gas tanks) appearing in the 1910 or 1911 Indianapolis 500 just after the race was underway, with me wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt and smoking a big fat cigar, elbow resting on the driver’s side window and my iPod blaring John Philip Sousas’s Biggest Hits through loudspeakers under the hood while I wave to the race cars as they eat my dust.
Noblesse oblige would prevent me from lapping the field more than twice.
I guess you had better take some extra serpentine belts back with you-they didn’t exist in 1942. Your 1942 mechanic would be amazed at the modern alternator-he would be used to a cranky old generator-that needed its brushes replaced now and then.
Really, comparing a 1942 car to a 2012 car is like an Ipod to a gramophone.
Not sure if this contributes much…but my dad was a great ‘amateur’ mechanic. He could fix anything it seemed. People even brought him cars that mechanics couldn’t fix and he could usually do so.
He had to give it up after…mid 90’s? I can’t remember exactly when but he had to stop trying to fix cars because he could seldom do so anymore. The engines were much more complicated with computers and such and it left him by.
This didn’t bother him…he was a big fan of the new cars…he said they were so much more reliable than what he was used to that it was like science fiction/miraculous to him.
I imagine a good mechanic from 1940’s would have similar problems.
It shouldn’t be any trouble to fabricate a rim that’ll fit the Impala and take a 14 or 15 inch bias ply tire. Worse case you might need a funky offset to clear the brake calipers. The factory aluminum rims can then be melted down for the war effort. Getting the TPM sensors to work with a tube tire might be a bit trickier.
Yep.
[GetOffMyLawn]
Younger people don’t realize how spoiled we are when it comes to automotive reliability and durability. Hell, back in my day, if your car got to 100,000 miles, that was an event.
[/GetOffMyLawn]
That’s the point. I was wondering what could be fabricated, what could be bypassed, and what is just plain impossible using '40s technology.