Howdy eddie_wood:
If your car has the stock, from the factory, original carb it should be an Autolite 1100. It is designed to work in conjunction with the Load-a-matic distributor. It has a spark control valve that send a vacuum signal to the distributor to taylor the vacuum advance curve to the distributor. The system works fairly well when working as designed.
The carb should have a metal tag with ID# stamped into it, attached to the top, near the air horn, with one of the top screws. C5OF-Y if it's a manual trans, C5OF-Z. An exception would be a Calif emission car.
When clean and tuned properly they work quite well. They have a weak accelerator pump system. If a rough idle and stumbling acceleration are present it's time for a rebuild.
Adios, David