Well the cars were not desperate, we think. Mostly because they are cars, but then again, maybe they just had a good disposition. 1975 was the pits and we’re trying to decide if 1975 was the worst car year of the worst car decade but that is neither here nor there. Basically in 1975 the cars were getting smaller, the horsepower was long gone, and the best some company like Chevrolet was going to do was to sell this cheap idea of “personal luxury”, “sportiness”, and “practicality” through the three smallest cars they sold.
We’ve had people argue with us about the roles that cars like the Monte Carlo and Nova played in this era. People forget that the Monte Carlo was still a pretty good sized whale of a car in 1975 and it would be until the 1978 Chevy lineup came out. The Caprice got shrunk (to rave reviews) in 1977 and then it was Monte Carlo, Malibu, etc. When you get to that 1978-1979 time frame you definitely have a Monte Carlo and a Nova that were the same prize and one of them had to go.
The Nova was gone by the 1980 model year, replaced by the X-platform Citation. So what’s interesting is that in 1975 product planners likely already had this thing marked for death. In fact, the Vega would be gone by 1977 and the Monza by 1980, so all three of these cars were basically in the “dead man walking” category as this film was being made.
Take a few minutes and give this bad boy a watch. Was 1975 the peak year for garbage in the 1970s?
“Clean, elegant appearance”. LOL, have never heard a turd described that way before.
Agree with all, but:
While they were dead-men-walking they were also the most-developed versions of their respective platforms and, with the exception of the OHC 2300 experiment GM slopped onto it’s public and was still hanging onto, not really bad cars it could be argued. The positives of ’75 Chev small cars as far as I’m concerned:
Body/chassis quality was reasonable, the H-body getting tighter and the new X a general improvement over ’74. Interiors were more comfortable without being garish. Paint was still flat, shiny lacquer that would last for years. Handling was getting better all the time.
HEI ignition was a sudden, vast advance. Catalytic converters actually allowed slightly-improved tuning once they carried some of the emissions load.
Built as conventional-for-the-time-design/downsized, thus rear-wheel drive. Vegas (incl. ’75s) and Monzas were easily hot-roddable and probably were in the tens-of-thousands which for car-nut purposes helped make the good side of the ’70’s what it was. 350 Novas were a staple of law enforcement and respected thus. The front-wheel-drive cars that would follow, none of that.
Hatchbacks. Drive to the mountains, back two cars together and throw a blanket over the top and you had an instant van. Some pleasant memories there I’ll not elaborate on, people with other cars just had that sucky back seat. Hatches also had practical uses. Why did it take ’til the mid-seventies for hatchbacks to be common?
“Personal luxury, sportiness and practicality” sound pretty ridiculous now but at that time if you stepped out of any very-common VW Beetle or maybe the used ’62 Falcon you’d been driving and into one of those cars you’d appreciate it. As for future trending, GM was heavily criticized for being behind the times and was rushing toward front-wheel-drive for the small cars, and ’77 Vega sales would be down by 3/4s anyway due to reputation for unreliability. The downsized ’78 Malibu would render redundant the Nova (and the Monte Carlo, its’ “Concours” version). So for the most part and besides the 2.3 motor, it was changing times that killed them, not really because they weren’t decent cars.
Bad cars were a reality of 1975, but to me the worst lay elsewhere.