The Dinosaur lumbers on: 1977 Chevrolet Malibu Classic

 

 

There's a good article on curbside.com comparing this car to that year's Honda Accord: "GM’s mega-mid-sized cars of the seventies were the perfect embodiment of why cars like the Accord started (to) take the country by storm. The Colonnades were longer, wider and heavier than full-sized Chevys not that many years earlier. Their arrival in 1973 on the eve of the energy crisis didn’t help, but it’s not completely fair to say that GM didn’t have any idea which way the wind was blowing. Small cars were already booming, and GM launched its own Vega just two years earlier." "The real shocker was space utilization. These two-ton coupes had little if any advantage over the tiny Accord, save for width. The rear seat was a veritable cave, lacking visibility, light or adequate leg room."

As the author above notes, GM wasn't just building gas-guzzling behemoths. It was trying, in a half-hearted way, to join the smaller car revolution. Two problems. One, the company didn't really want to build compact cars and those they offered to public were just terrible (the Vega, the Chevette). This of course led the next generation of American buyers to be even more open to imported makes. Two, yeah, GM was also getting ready to join the movement to lighter, more space-efficient front-wheel drive cars. But that of course led to the infamous 1980 Chevy Citation, another terrible car that, like so many of GM's products from the 80s, eventually led buyers by the millions to abandon the brand.

Note the above car is for sale. I'll cover this particular used car lot in my next post.

 

 

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Where the 70s Survived: 1978 Chevy Van

It's hard to wrap your mind around American culture of the 1970s. What to say about the forgotten phenomenon of the custom van?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From flashbak.com: "There were no minivans in the 1970s.  This was a time before the van had been tamed, before it had been neutered into the soccer-mom machine that it is today.  In the 1970s, vans didn’t carry spoiled kids drinking juice-boxes and watching Spongebob…. quite the contrary.  Vans were basically a bedroom on wheels.  No Spongebob, no juice boxes, no trips to organized sporting events in the suburbs…. just lots of sex and recreational drug use.  You might say the 1970s full size van was the crazy uncle of the modern minivan – the uncle that lived dangerously in the 70s, then flamed out at decade’s end.

In the 1970s, many van owners took their shaggin’ wagons seriously and tricked them out to the limit: Big shiny sidepipes with mellow sound, plush interior carpeting for maximum fornication, duals to amp up the horsepower,…. and, perhaps most importantly, the artwork on the sides….

The vans of the 1970s were decorated with airbrushed psychedelic wizards, doobie smoking dragons, naked slave girls, flaming unicorns… the trippier the better.  I reiterate – this was not your mom’s minivan.  This was a place where “bad” things happen, and the designs were warning signs.  Get into the back of a van with an airbrushed Grim Reaper in a land of mushrooms and naked fairies, and you should know what your (sic) getting into."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1975 AMC Pacer X

March, 1975: Good times in Kenosha: From the New York Times:
"The American Motors Corporation announced today it would increase production of its new Pacer model by 32 per cent to 700 units a day because of stronger than expected demand."

You might say it was all downhill from there. AMC had a great year in 1974, and it looked like their huge investment in the new Pacer was paying off. Unfortunately, after a strong first year-and-a-half, Pacer sales took a dive along with everything else AMC was making. By that point the company had little money to invest in new platforms. The good news was that AMC had purchased Jeep in 1970. But the dream of a car company that would compete with Detroit's Big 3 was reduced to a flicker that finally burned out when Chrysler purchased the company in 1987.

The car on the left has the 'X' sport package. If you bought a Gremlin X, you could get a V-8 engine. In this video, Jeff Dunham refers to the Gremlin X as 'the poor man's Corvette', to which Jay Leno replies, "Well, maybe the homeless man's Corvette." The Pacer X didn't even have a V-8, although a few Pacers did get one late in the production run.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It Costs How Much?! 1985 Mercedes 380SL

Cars built by Mercedes today aren't particularly expensive. You can get in the door with an A-Class for $33K. That's not much more than the list price for my VW GTI. Times have changed. When I was a kid, Mercedes were very expensive cars. This 380SL started at $44K in 1985. That's $111K today. In 1986, the last iteration of this car, now called the 560SL, went to $48K or $122K in 2021 dollars. I mean it's a nice car and all, but wow that's expensive.

 

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The Dodge Guy: 1969 Charger x2, 1964 Custom 880, 1971 Dart Swinger

Here's a guy living his best life. He's got two unrestored Chargers for daily drivers, both in pretty decent shape. The Custom 880 probably has the big 361 DeSoto engine. The Dart is also considered a classic; easy to maintain although the grass growing around this one suggests it hasn't been on the road in a while.

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