1992 Pontiac Trans Sport

Some observations upon seeing a weird 30-plus year old General Motors vehicle looking like new on the street:
* Yep, it looks like a Dustbuster.
* GM vehicles from this era aren't exactly known for their longevity, so good job somebody.
* Love it or hate it, at least GM was willing to try new things. The era of carmakers experimenting with radical designs is over. Everybody builds identical mid-size SUVs and crossovers now.
* Pastel blue stripes. If I'd never seen one of these before, just the stripes would be enough to tell me it was made circa 1990.

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2 Pontiac Fieros on the Same Block?!

These have got to be owned by the same guy. I mean, this car is not exactly known for its longevity. It has its fans I'm sure, but not enough that two guys on the same block would own one. Both of these are the 1984 or 1985 model. One's a stick, the other automatic.

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2022 Greenwood Car Show: General Motors

After a two-year absence, the Greenwood Car Show is back and the weather was perfect. I'm going to do all my favorites in a few posts. Here are the GM cars.

I think this 1969 Camaro SS is a "tribute" car. It's done up like the very rare Camaro SS 427 sold by Yenko Chevrolet, but I see a number of things about it that don't look authentic.

 

1969 Pontiac GTO.

 

1969 Chevrolet Camaro SS 396. This looks completely authentic.

1970 Oldmobile F-85 Cutlass Rallye 350. A budget muscle car featuring GM's forced air induction system (makes car go fast).

 

   

1970 Oldsmobile 442. Top of the line.

 

A rare 1957 Chevrolet delivery sedan.

 

1957 Chevrolet Bel Air.

 

1967 Pontiac GTO.

   

1955 Chevrolet Bel Air

 

Probably the most desirable Sting Ray. 1963 split-window coupe with fuel injection.

 

1967 and 1968 Camaros. The convertibles have the Rally Sport package, denoted by the hidden headlights.

 

1962 Chevrolet Corvette.

 

1967 Pontiac GTO.

 

1969 Pontiac Firebird.

 

1954 Pontiac. Sometime around August 1954, GM built its very last straight-8 engine.

    

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1967 Pontiac GTO

Gotta love Seattle, where seeing the greatest cars of all time on the street is an every day occurrence. In 1967, this car got its first 3-speed automatic transmission. This GTO also has the optional Hurst Dual-Gate shifter. Gotta love 60s car culture, when GM could say, "Look we know you're going to street race, so we'll help you out." The left side of the shifter has a normal shift pattern. For drag racing, you can bring the car to a stop, then move the shifter to the bottom of the right side. What happens next? From drivemag.com: "Placing the lever at the very back at 1 for first gear, you accelerated peal to the metal. The trick was for the driver to keep its cool up until the red line. With tires screeching, this was the moment to punch it into second gear. Usually, this meant the car tried to spin out of control and kill you. If you survived, you got to repeat the performance for third and final gear. After this, it was smooth sailing until the police caught up with you."

 

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1966 Pontiac GTO

From outwards appearances, the '66 and '67 GTO were the same. But beneath the skin, in '67:
* The old 389 c.i. V-8 was replaced with a new 400.
* A new 3-speed automatic replaced the old 2-speed.
* A new 4-barrel carb meant the end of the "tripower" intake of 3-linked 2-barrels. This car has the tripower setup. Harder to tune but more fun.
* I can see that the owner of this car has upgraded the master cylinder. In '66 master cylinders (for brake fluid) were still single-chamber but all cars went to 2-chamber in '67.
* Other interesting options on the greatest muscle car:
** You could order a GTO as either a hardtop like this one, or as a fixed-pillar coupe with full door and window frames. The coupe was less popular, but the stronger body made it a better car.
** If ordered automatic transmission, and you didn't order the optional center console between the front seats, you got a shifter on the steering column. With the console, the shifter was on the floor.

 

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More Junk from GM: 1984 Pontiac Fiero

General Motors sold a lot of bad products on its long road to eventual bankruptcy, and the Fiero was certainly one of them. Despite being a very profitable company in the 1980s, GM's design philosophy went something like this: Thanks mostly to bloated management bureaucracies, our company's cost to develop new products is ridiculously high. Therefore, to be competitive with the imports, we'll insist that new cars use assemblies and parts from other cars, and in general focus on making cars as cheaply as possible rather than as high quality as possible.

From curbsideclassic.com: "To keep costs down, ...existing components and assemblies were begged and borrowed, like the front suspension straight out of the Chevette."

The engine used was, "the unloved Iron Duke 2.5 four, an engine as agricultural as ever was built in the modern era." "It made all of 92 hp @ 4000 rpm. How’s that for getting the juices flowing?"

"Unfortunately, the Iron Duke brought some serious shortcomings to the Fiero, beyond its modest output and crappy sounds. It leaked oil from the valve cover gasket, which dripped on the exhaust manifold and caused some fires. But the more common reason for a growing rash of fiery Fieros was the result of a mind-bogglingly stupid decision: not enough engine oil capacity."

"It’s a well-known phenomenon that was repeated with so many new GM cars during the non-golden era: lots of PR buildup, fluff advance reviews from well-fed and entertained “journalists”, sales have a great first year (the Citation sold 800k in its first year), and then watch the slow-motion train wreck unfold as the thrill quickly wears off. Engine fires are quite exciting, but even they get old after the first couple of hundred."

Bonus: Ford Ranger pickup from the same era.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Ain't That America? 1955 Pontiac Chieftain, 1970 International 1200 Pickup Truck

In 1955, Pontiac replaced its venerable straight-8 with an OHV V-8 and 12-volt electrical system. Though very similar to and slightly more upscale than 1955-57 Chevies, they've never been as popular. An IH pickup with faux-wood trim is not something I see every day.

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Oil Crisis? What Oil Crisis? 1973 Pontiac Grand Am

The GM A-body was America's standard car in the 1970s. GM sold about 600,000 vehicles per month in the US in 1973; about three times as many as they do now. The car pictured was America's best-selling car for years in the form of the Oldsmobile Cutlass.

The Grand Am was the top option package for the Pontiac LeMans series. It came standard with a gas-guzzling 400 c.i. V-8 and a premium interior. It was more expensive than that year's Pontiac GTO, another LeMans option package (and a shadow of the GTOs of the past). I've never seen a Grand Am four-door before; there were fewer than 9,000 made in 1973.

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1980 Pontiac Firebird Yellow Bird

Trying to explain anything from the 1970s can be challenging. Like the fact that the enormous, garish vehicle pictured was what General Motors was marketing to women. You see, the Pontiac Firebird was considered the epitome of cool in the late 1970s, most especially in the form of the black Trans Am model. So GM decided that what the ladies needed was the same car in color-coordinated "Sky Bird", "Red Bird" and "Yellow Bird" editions.

Why were cars like this so popular? How did Ford manage to sell 352,000 gargantuan, land-yacht Thunderbirds in 1978 in the middle of an energy crisis? I guess one might as well try to understand why men wore leisure suits.

Observations:
* Most of these were sold with V-6 engines making only around 100 hp, so I hope you're not in a hurry.
* GM sold a vast number of cars with these expensive t-tops. I have seen someone driving around with their t-tops off about once in my entire lifetime.

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1968 Pontiac GTO convertible

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1978 Pontiac Sunbird (Chevrolet Vega). Ladies and Gentlemen, the Worst American Car Ever Made

Since I started this blog, it's been my privilege to photograph in Seattle many still-running examples of notoriously bad cars. Yes, in the Emerald City there are people whose disregard for their own personal safety and lack of self-respect is so complete that they will actually take to the streets in a Ford Pinto, Chevy Chevette, Chevy Citation, Plymouth Volaré or Cadillac Cimarron. How these cars are still in operable condition, even in a city free of road salt, is equally remarkable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I have taken snapshots of many of Detriot's most notorious bombs, I have often wondered if I would ever spot the Holy Grail of bad American cars. Would I ever see a Chevy Vega?

By 1978 the original Vega had been reworked as the Monza for Chevy, while the old Vega wagon, dating all the way back to 1971, was dumped on Pontiac. The Vega represented everything that was wrong with General Motors in 1970 and its cynical response to the challenge of small, fuel-efficient imported cars. From a Popular Mechanics article by John Pearly Huffman entitled, How the Chevy Vega Nearly Destroyed GM:

"Of course, no one car and no one moment set GM on its downward path by itself. But the Vega embodied practically everything bad that was about to consume the corporation and, decades later, send it into bankruptcy."

The Vega, "was a small car developed not by the Chevrolet Division, but by a corporate team assembled by GM's president Ed Cole during 1968. Rushed through development in only two years, the Vega was delivered to (Chevrolet President John) DeLorean and Chevrolet as a fait accompli; a nearly complete vehicle over which Chevrolet itself would have only minimal engineering and design input. It was Chevrolet's and DeLorean's job to sell it."

"(T)he lack of engineering focus and the drive to keep the price low resulted in a car with notoriously thin sheetmetal only haphazardly covered in anti-rust primer. Soon the Vega was earning a reputation as a rust-prone bucket. It wasn't uncommon for rusted Vega front fenders to need replacing after only one or two seasons driving in the salted slop of northeastern winters. Even in states like California or Arizona where rust was almost unknown, Vega owners would see corrosion eating away at their cars.

The engine also had a barely adequate cooling system that combined with the delicate engine block for horrible results. When the engine got hot, which wasn't uncommon, the cylinders distorted and the piston rings wore off the exposed silica that was meant to provide a tough wall surface. Then, at best, the cars burned more oil. At worst, the distortion compromised the head gasket, caused the coolant to leak and eventually killed the engine."

"Since the Vega sold so strongly (almost 2 million were built before it left production after 1977), the result was that literally hundreds of thousands of buyers were having awful experiences with the car. Some were merely disappointed. Many were incensed. And a lot of them felt betrayed by General Motors, Chevrolet and the American auto industry as a whole. Surely, those customers were then far more willing to consider the Japanese alternatives that were starting to arrive."

Final note: This car does not have the notorious Vega engine; that's probably why it's still running. Instead it has Pontiac's 4-cylinder. While that motor has little going for it, at least it didn't blow up after just a few thousand miles.

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1957 Pontiac Safari

Everybody loves the Chevy Nomad, the "hardtop" 2-door wagon sold from 1955-57. But few are aware that Pontiac sold the same car with different trim. Slightly more than 20,000 Nomads were sold during the 3-year production run compared to only 9,000 Safaris.

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1970 Pontiac GTO Judge convertible

Pontiac built fewer than 11,000 GTOs with the Judge package between 1969 and 1971, including only 287 convertibles. In 1971, only 17 convertibles were made; enthusiasts know the history of every one of those cars. "The Judge" included the forced-air induction system, a Hurst shifter, wide tires, a set of decals and a spoiler on the trunk. This car has the 'endura' front bumper, made of plastic and foam formed over a single piece of steel. Today all cars have plastic noses, but in 1970 it was a very new idea.

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