I was never big on cigars, though
(first posted 10/26/2011) In a recent Nova CC, I lamented the fact that I’d never had the pleasure of a direct encounter with a four cylinder Chevy II or Nova. GM must have known about my distress, and in their typical caring way, arranged for me to be a professional pre-production test driver of their soon-to-appear 1977 Iron Duke 151 four cylinder engine. The purpose of the program was to ensure the Iron Duke’s durability in an environment where it would accumulate miles as quickly as possible under the most extreme stresses conceivable. In other word: try to kill it. No wonder they chose me.
In the summer of 1976, I moved to San Diego, and became a taxi driver for Yellow Cab. It was still an old-school taxi company, where they owned and serviced the whole fleet, and drivers were actual employees, not independent contractors like in modern times. And it was also on its last legs, which explained the fact that its fleet consisted of big Chevy Biscaynes, the oldest (mine, naturally) being a 1970 six with probably a million miles on it or more. The newest ones were ’73s, with V8s, and even they were now some four years old. As the youngest driver, I naturally got the oldest cab, a truly venerable pile, with manual steering, Powerglide and unassisted drum brakes.
One day that August I pulled into the big open-air shop/garage after a shift, and I saw a very strange sight indeed: a yellow compact sedan that looked like a Nova from a distance, and a bunch of drivers were standing around it, looking in its engine compartment. I parked and walked over. So they were going to buy new cars finally, but Novas? Never seen them used as taxis, what with their rather modest rear seat legroom.
When I walked up to it, I realized this was no Nova, but its Pontiac clone, a Ventura (CC here). Hmm; downright odd, actually. I worked my way through the gawkers to the open hood, wondering what could possibly be so interesting about the inevitable Chevy six. Holy cutting torch! There was a blue four cylinder sitting in there, looking rather lost in the very ample engine bay of the Ventura, and obviously embarrassed by all the attention. This totally threw me for a loop.
I was Professor Knowitall, but had absolutely no clue about this four cylinder engine coming down the pike. One of the guys explained that it was Pontiac’s new four, set to debut in a few months for the 1977 model year. And GM had sent two of them (in 1976 bodies) our way for a real-world durability test. So how do I get my hands on one of them?
My day came sooner than I might have hoped for. I took my old ’70 Biscayne out one morning, and just a few blocks from the garage, I had to hit the brakes just wee bit harder than average. Like a horse tripping on the racetrack, the Chevy’s left front corner dropped down, and we stopped abruptly, as metal hit the pavement. The whole front wheel assembly had sheared off from the tired ball joints. Suddenly I’m remembering the blast up I-5 at ninety-five mph to LaJolla the day before. And all the other wide open runs…and here I had been going all of 30 mph.
Well, it was convenient, as I just walked back to the garage. And lucky timing too, because one of the Venturas was in for a check-up, and I hung around and nabbed it from the mechanic’s hands as soon as he finished with it. Time for him to get back to rebuilding tired and smoking Chevy sixes with 300k miles on them, for the second or third time around.
It was odd to hear (and feel) the distinct throb of a big four under that long hood. Now my expectations weren’t exactly high, given what I was used too. I dropped it into gear, and…ok, somebody raise the anchor! The Iron Duke wheezed, grunted and growled, but it all didn’t exactly amount to much. In fact, it was slower than my now-dead ’70 Biscayne six, despite the fact that Pontiac had a three-speed THM tranny.
The original version of the Iron Duke was rated at 84 (net) hp, at all of 4000 rpm. The 1976 Ventura is listed in the Encyclopedia of American Cars as weighing 3200 lbs. That makes 38lbs/hp. The 1970 Chevy 250 six was rated at 155 gross hp, or about 115-120 net hp. The Biscayne was listed at 3600 lbs. That makes about 30lbs/hp, and explains why the Ventura was such a dog, especially at higher speeds. Its power-to-eight ratio was worse than the typical American car of the thirties. Now that’s progress.
Call me insane, but I often hit or exceeded 90 in the Biscayne six (without a fare in the back seat) on the freeway, weaving in and out of traffic. The Ventura struggled to pin its 85 mph speedometer, if the run was long enough. And the noises…
The whole experience was particularly frustrating, because the Ventura handled superbly, just like a Firebird, with which it shared much of its platform. The 1975-up X-Body Nova and its clones were undoubtedly the best handling of their class, and among the best Detroit had to offer anywhere. With its quick power steering, disc brakes, and surprisingly flat and precise cornering, the Ventura would have been a joy in my youthful fingers, except for the Iron Duke. Unfortunately, nobody from GM asked my opinion.
Just a year earlier, when I was a transit bus driver in Iowa City, we had a newish ’75 Nova sedan with the 250 six for ferrying drivers between the garage and the downtown station. I had driven it a few times, and it was the best six cylinder American sedan I had ever driven, by a big margin. What a contrast from the tippy Falcons and Chevy IIs from the sixties.
They didn’t bother to fix my old ’70, it was so utterly worn out. So I was upgraded to a ’71 Biscayne, also with a six and Powerglide, and even power steering! It was decidedly mushier than the ’70, and compared to my brief encounter with the Ventura, it felt like driving a not-quite set-up Jello salad full of nuts and bolts, and about to break apart any second. Like all of my hundreds of careers, this one also (mercifully) came to an end quite soon too. But I gave it my best, especially in pushing the Iron Duke hard. And it survived, and went on to grace millions of Americans with its refined and powerful manners for decades to come. I’m so proud to have played a small part in proving that it could stand up to endless abuse. And gratified to know that I was being paid for my only wheel time ever behind an Iron Duke. Everyone else who paid good money for one (specially Camaro and Firebird owners) should have been so lucky.
“And it survived, and went on to grace millions of Americans with its refined and powerful manners for decades to come.” – Oh, Paul, you so funny.
“The Ventura struggled to pin its 85 mph speedometer, if the run was long enough. And the noises…” Now as the owner of a 1982 Celebrity with the mighty 92hp fuel injected version of the Iron Puke, that sentence I recognize.
Later when I found out the motor’s origins I wished someone had given me both halves of the V8, not just one bank of cylinders. I think the thing that my Father will always remember about the Iron Duke is how he got a distant relative to rebuild mine at 120,000 miles for a mere $600.
Your ’82 was carbureted
It said fuel injection on the fenders. But to me it looked like an injector screwed into a modified one-barrel carburator. I did have the air cleaner appart a few times.
Yep, many of the early GM cars had throttle body Fuel injection which was as Dan said, a modified carburetor with a fuel injector installed instead of the usual jets.
These were also made as retrofits for those who wanted to convert to FI back in the day by the aftermarket companies if I recall right.
It’s true that not all Celebrities, let alone the Citations got FI, but some of the Celeb’s apparently got the Throttle Body injection system.
FI was an option.
(The carbed cars had a Varajet that was basically a Quadrajet cut down the middle. Neat carb!)
TBI was standard on the ’82 Celebrity, Citation and Camaro:
http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/static/NA/Chevrolet/1982_Chevrolet/1982_Chevrolet%20Celebrity_Brochure/1982%20Chevrolet%20Celebrity-04-05.html
Oops. My bad! Maybe I was thinking of the 2.8 with a carb?
The Iron Duke wasn’t “half of a V8.” That was the Pontiac Trophy 4 from the early ’60s, which was half of a 389.
http://www.hemmings.com/hmn/stories/2010/08/01/hmn_feature22.html
There is no engine note more tortured than the old Iron Duke. I’m so glad most of the surviving roach FWD A bodies are V6’s. We had a neighbor with a Pontiac 6000 with an Iron Duke…
…That lived 3 cul de sacs away. At 5:45am on weekdays it was like an alarm clock in a quiet suburb. GM Air compressing starter noise…. garbling marbles…. “why did you wake me up, it’s cold!” exhaust note down the block. Most miserable engine ever. I bet each one wishes it didn’t exist.
I’m not saying my old Iron Duke was happy about it but it did start on a -50 degree F day in Defiance, Ohio during my college years. I swore the damn thing was going to snap the crankshaft out of pure anger at me… but I was amazed that it did start.
I looked up a video to see what you meant and uhhh… yeah. I’ve never heard an engine that sounds like an angry old man before but now I have.
https://youtu.be/32KwV_edU80
That Ventura would be very much like a 70s Aussie Kingswood as they used the Camaro/Firebird floorpan but at least Holden didnt try 4 banger engines the 6s were slow enough. Holden did produce a 4 from its version of the family 6 called starfire 1900ccs of pure thrills not, same idea as Chevy just saw off 2 pots from a 173 cube 6 it was installed on Commodores in the 80s.
Did it have a/c? I knew of one of these, similar vintage Ventura with the 2.5 “Iron Duck” that was also loaned out to a local colleges engine lab where they used it for diffent fuel tests, I am assuming diffent blends with ethanol and gas and what not, after they reported their finding to GM, GM sold them the car at a give away price, but as I recall, it had no a/c since the 4 was not available with a/c.
A/C? Nope, and in coastal San Diego, that wouldn’t have been an issue. None of the cabs did,
To be fair, the 305 versions of these cars were pretty doggy too. Like I said in the Nova post, the 77 Skylark may have been the slowest vehicle I ever owned. It was truly horrible.
It’s a shame too as the 75-79 cars were pretty well set up as well as fairly easy on the eyes.
Totally agree on the 75-79 Novas, they did very well in ways not expected for a rear driver, like in the snow, and I should know.
The big storm of 1985 that blanked the Puget Sound ares with up to a foot of the white stuff didn’t flumux the 78 Nova I had and for the most part, it did very well, but somewhat less so when the snow hardened and refroze into semi ice after the initial storm as temps plunged into the teens and in many places, the single digits overnight and barely into the 20’s during the day if they made it that high for about a week afterwards.
I have to agree the 305 wasn’t exactly lighting fires in the performance arena but it at least got out of its own way in reasonable time though.
The 305 was light years faster than the Iron Duke and considerably stronger than the 250 or Buick 231 in these cars. It made 145 horses up until 1978 with a 2 BBL carb. A swap to a 4 BBL intake and carb with a little timing advance thrown in woke them up considerably. A high school student had a brown 1979 Nova coupe with the 305 and bucket seat option. His dad and him made those changes to it and I remember how it used to burn rubber.
So, in a way, you DID get to drive a 4 cylinder Nova. At least you got one with the THM and not the Powerglide. I cannot imagine that the Iron Duke in a Ventura was any worse of an experience.
I must have repressed it the other day. Too bad Torque-Drive was history by then!
Never heard of torque drive till yesterday but I had a186 cube Holden wagon with a 2 speed powerslide thar didnt shift some times so I get the picture that must have bee the cheapest of options ever an automatic that wont work
Oldcarbrochures.com has the ’77 Ventura brochure which points out the Iron Duke came with a 5-speed manual as opposed to the 3-speed for the sixes and 4 with the V8; no mention is made of an automatic option with the four.
Nothing said here about what is essentially a 4 banger in a Nova is a big surprise and nothing about driving it makes me envious. However, I once owned a 77 Olds Starfire (Olds version of the Monza/Vega) with IIRC the 231 that became the 3.8/3800 and an unknown automatic. After separate dealer replacements of the engine and transmission, under warranty, this aggregate of GM trash caught on fire while idling at a stoplight on Virginia Beach Blvd.
It sounds like the iron duke with a manual would have been a lot better choice for that little dumpster. I must say though, that GM continued to replace the born to fail parts that died until the one in Virginia Beach decided he had had enough. After some convincing, he got it back on the road as well. They stood behind their trash.I guess that would be a story for another day. The Monza was available with the Nova 4 and I don’t believe any of the clones were.
That little dumpster fire pushed me into a much better driving experience. As soon as the warranty was expired I traded it for an AMC Concorde which managed to wind up with me in Guam. I always liked straight sixes and the Concorde was no less reliable with the 258 than the chevies and fords of my youth had been
I am convinced that GM stood for Generally Muddled during that time frame.
I wouldn’t exactly say the Iron Puke with a 4-speed was a better experience. The car wouldn’t get out of its own way and struggled on hills at highway speed.
I can recall a spot on Hwy 65 in Arkansas with a 55 MPH speed limit, and a stop light at the bottom of a hill. Climbing the hill was never an easy experience from that light because 3rd and 4th were so far apart. You could get to 3rd, but it’d run out of breath at 45-50. Shift to 4th and it lugs. The Saginaw 4-speed was made for a V8’s torque curve. I lost count of the number of clutch cables it broke.
For its entire life it had a mysterious miss that would come and go regardless of what ignition parts were replaced. At idle it would literally jump off its motor mounts due to shaking (L-shaped brackets on the motor, O-shaped receivers on the fenders). Agricultural refinement indeed. The shaking engine sheared off the radiator neck innumerable times. We finally solved the problem by putting a piece of aluminum pipe in the upper hose and building a bracket-and-clamp assembly off the radiator support to dampen the vibrations before they got to the radiator.
When the key was turned off, it would continue to run, dieseling violently for several seconds, finishing with a 2-3 second “last gasp” where the engine would rotate BACKWARD and run smoothly at fast-idle speeds in REVERSE ROTATION! Of course popping the clutch would stop it, but why stop the jalopy jumping of the little 4-banger? It was almost a game to see how long it would continue to run with no key.
The engine was reliable, never leaving me stranded in 185k miles, but toward the end it was running on 3 cylinders until it warmed up (though consuming no coolant). What a piece of junk.
So what you’re saying is the Iron Duke ran smoother backwards than forwards?
Buying a 231 V6 in the 70’s was almost asking for trouble, especially the early non even firing versions. The fact that GM took this engine and turned it into one of Wards 10 best engines of all time is still pretty astonishing to this day.
Dad bought a 1984 Cutlass Ciera brougham off his co-worker back in 1987 for a really good price and that along with mom’s 1982 Cutlass coupe were our two main vehicles through the 80’s and early 90’s. Those Iron Duke Tech IV’s may not have been very refined but they sure had a following. With 130K plus miles give or take dad put that Ciera up for sale and within a day had a guy call on it. He arrived in a 1985 Grand Am with the same engine and 200k miles and thought he was buying a new car with 130K. And his wife had a 1987 Buick Century with 225K on the original Iron Duke 4 banger. The 84 Ciera was going to be there primary car and the Grand Am passe down to there son.
We sold a crap pile of cars equipped with these motors. After the late 80’s and early 90’s they were hard to find but the occasional 90-91 Grand Am or Skylark would appear with this engine and very rarely a stripper Cutlass Ciera. The best ones were the 1988-92 versions with the balance shaft and later the John Deere heads which bumped them from 98 to 110 Horses. 200-300K mile examples at the auction still running quite well were quite common.
“There was a blue four cylinder sitting in there, looking rather lost in the very ample engine bay of the Ventura, and obviously embarrassed by all the attention.”
There was an Iron Duke shoe-horned into the not very ample engine bay of my 1984 Fiero. Actually “engine bay” is too kind when referring to that rather narrow space. Maybe “engine fjord” would be more appropriate.
This coming Monday will mark 27 years since my parents brought home their first new car, a 1985 Skylark with the Four. It was great at first. A trip from MI to TN logged over 40 mpg on the highway. However, the fun was over at 14000 when the head gasket went. I don’t know what happened at the Buick Dealer that “fixed” it, but it never ran right again. Years later they gave me the car. I always described acceleration as you stepped on the pedal and the car said “what?” It should have been a diesel, as it was a slow as one, and sounded like one at idle. Other than that the car was rather solid.
Several years after I sold it I found it in a junk yard. Some poor soul tried taking parts of the engine. I had to laugh…
In my Celebrity (which was heavier than your Skylark) when I went out to pass (even if it was a piece of farm equipment going 15mph) I would usually tell passengers; “You’ll have to excuse me, I’m going to file a “permission to pass” form with the engine room.”
You could compare the experience to stepping on a plum.
I drove an ’80 Skylark with the Iron Duke and a 4-speed transmission. It was a fairly simply car, manual steering , no a/c and it actually ran pretty good-until the warranty expired-then it started breaking starter bolts; I had to have them replaced four(4) times and let’s not forget intake manifold and carb gaskets which failed and problems with engine knocking caused by carbon deposits. It was very easily the worst GM car I ever owned; even worse than the ’72 Vega and the ’75 Opel. I have not owned another GM car since then.
A few years ago, I bought a `90 Buick Century, with the Iron Duke, for all of $225. It was to serve me as my winter car, which it did faithfully. Sure, it was slow and had a funny exhaust note, but that car was extremely reliable, only needing a new radiator and alternator in my time with it. Given how rusty it was and how many miles it had (close to 200k in the snow belt) I could forgive it these two repairs. I finally junked it when, while in storage, some animals ate through some wires and the rear brake lines gave up the ghost. I miss that car, and oddly enough, that ridiculous Iron Duke. As a side note, those Buicks had eighteen lights in the rear panel. Replacing them was actually kind of fun; especially the clerks face when I brought six packages of 194 bulbs!
For what it’s worth, starting in 1988 the Iron Duke had the benefit of a balance shaft, which made it run quite a lot smoother than before.
When they made the 1988 overhaul the Iron Duke became the “Tech Four”
The Iron Duke was already called the Tech4 by the time the 88 balance shafts were introduced. My 86 Olds Calais had the Tech4.
According to Hemmings when the throttle body was added for 82 GM called it the Tech4.
Interesting. The Chevy II motor was pretty much accepted as a tireless workhorse, if rather industrial in character; and the Iron Duke was hated as a gutless wonder that resented its very existence.
This in spite of computer controls, balance shafts, other refinements. Why is that, I wonder? Is it that the Iron Duke was stuffed into cars where owners would never have expected a four; was it because of the relative refinement of Japanese fours; or was there really something lacking in the Duke?
I don’t know – I never had either. When I was on my Post Office Jeep kick, I wanted to find a Kaiser DJ with the Chevy II engine but never did. Nor did I ever own a GM car with the Iron Duke.
I DID have my Wrangler with the AMC four; that was somewhat lethargic but fully up to day-to-day use. Just as the Iron Duke was based on the Chevy II which was a Chevrolet Six with two cylinders missing, so, too was the AMC engine a 232 Six with the center two cylinders cut out.
Were those engines all so very different, or was it just that the expected refinement lacked?
The Chevy II four found its true calling in vehicles like the Jeep DJ. A rather rough-running four feels right at home in something like a Jeep. Not so much so in a Buick Century or the like.
The Pontiac Iron Duke really was essentially a new engine, and not directly based on the Chevy II four. It’s bore and stroke are all different, and it shared much with the also-new for ’77 Pontiac 301 V8 (same bore/stroke).
Don’t forget that the Chevy engine also was modified and increased in displacement for use as a 3.0 liter boat engine.
They’re reliable, kinda cobby, but relaible. And most make 130-135 horses, more than that engine really should make.
I’m a fan of the big 4cyl, combining 4cyl simplicity with decent torque for a smallish car. I had a 2.6 Astron II Mitsubishi in a 2535lb Sigma which went quite well, they would do 115mph, with 110hp at 5200rpm and 150lb-ft at 2400rpm.
You could change gear at 1700rpm even on a moderate hill which would put it at about 1400rpm in the next gear and still pull ok. Similar to 73ImpCapn’s experience it could scrape the mud flaps in cornering (very soft suspension), even had both front mudflaps scrape simultaneously once – when it landed…
“The 1975-up X-Body Nova and its clones were undoubtedly the best handling of their class, and among the best Detroit had to offer anywhere.”
I do remember Car Buddy Zach’s 78 Omega as the tightest bomb any of us had. We had put chintzy headers and side pipes on it – good sparks if you hit the turn hard enough. (Previous owner had swapped in a 350 out of a Chevy truck…I don’t think an Iron Duke would have pulled off that stunt.)
OK, I’ll spill a little about my later X-car experiences. The father of a buddy of mine bought a new 1978 Olds Omega 4 door to replace a 1974 Mercury Comet. The Olds had a 305 Chevy and (IIRC) a THM200. It was a peppy ride for 1978, all things considered. My buddy Joe was an incurable hoon, and anything he got his hands on was fair game.
We lived about three miles away from where two highways met, and there was an Ohio ‘cloverleaf’ interchange. Somehow, one evening my buddy Joe got his dad’s Olds out of the garage and stopped by my house to pick me up to go for a spin. I had no idea.
What ensued was only what I could call a tire torture test; we proceeded to spend the next hour taking each individual branch of the cloverleaf at progressively faster and faster speeds (it was a slow weekend, even for us) hanging the tail out further each time.
Until the Goodyears gave out. We were tail out on the approach to the freeway that ran West, when instead of hanging our tail out, we ended up in a spiral kind of spin, the back end of the car leading the way, with the car finally ending up 100 feet off in the grassy median. It all happened so fast, I couldn’t comprehend what had taken place for a few minutes after we’d stopped.
When it was all said and done, we were up to our ankles in mud and had lost all four hubcaps. Joe ended up walking the mile and half back to the closest pay phone and called his cousin who ran the 24 hour towing service in town and had him drag us out.
Then it was a mad search in the dark for the hubcaps (we found three), and a trip to the late night car wash, where we got out all of the grass and most of the mud. I don’t think he ever told his father what really happened that night, but he did buy him a new hubcap for the one that was lost.
There were other nights with the Omega, and other cars were given the tire torture test (ask me about the Dodge Omni 024 incident), but none were as dramatic as the off-roading of the Omega.
(it was a slow weekend, even for us)
Man, that’s the opener for a million random-dude-hijinks stories. 🙂
And this:
“…a trip to the late night car wash, where we got out all of the grass and most of the mud.”
Why are car washes even open late except to serve teenagers hiding something from Pops?
Yeah, those slow weekends sometimes suddenly sped up, too!
There was only one of those in our small town, and I’m pretty sure my buddy Joe was in there at least once a week washing something off of either his car, his dad’s car, his mother’s car… you get the picture.
Everybody has a friend who is/was an incurable hoon. I had the misfortune of three friends who are/were incurable hoons…
“Why are car washes even open late except to serve teenagers hiding something from Pops?”
Dunno…but I’m grateful. As someone who’s worked for years on-call, with downtime coming at odd hours…my favorite time to wash a car is midnight or later.
Why? No bright sunlight; owners’ manuals used to warn against washing a car in the sun. The drops of water focus sunlight, making a paint-burn possible. Also, the glass isn’t going to be scorching hot to make a window-crack when the colder water hits it.
Not much traffic to kick up dust on your drying car.
No lines. No idiots….I remember once, in one of those automated washes where the equipment circles the car…some senile retired guy tried to BACK OUT of the bay. Right into my new Escort. Then he took off…hit-and-run.
He didn’t do any damage other than a scuff mark…the only time a 5mph bumper did me good…and I had things to do, so I decided calling the cops was more bother than it was worth. But anyway…I vote for the midnight wash.
A few times the late night wash helped me erase the evidence of discovering that FWD and good tires will get you through some pretty serious Ohio clay mud. But then that does fall into the hoon category.
Back then, I knew the guy who owned the local Yellow Cab. He would only buy Mopar with slant sixes.
They won’t get you there quick, but they always get you there!
Yup…me, too…a small suburban cab company in suburban Cleveland. The owner was sold on Slant Sixes…he had Aspens and Volares and M-bodies exclusively. When they were phased out, he went to extraordinary lengths to get those cars…he bought NYC police cruisers, which inexplicably, were fitted with those sixes.
Once a year for several years, he’d go to police auctions with several drivers, make his buys, and lead a caravan back to Northeast Ohio with his booty.
But anyway…aside from anemic power and electrical gremlins from the Lean Burn system…they made decent fleet cars. A lot of funny things happened to his freshly-painted junker cabs, but I never saw an engine fail.
Back then, the city used sixes for city patrol cars and V-8s for highway pursuit – they do the same today, except now they have turbo fours and even hybrids on the city patrol cars.
I remember when this engine debuted; I believe that Car and Driver ran a big story on the engine, and gave it a decent review. But then, anything would have been an improvement over the old Vega four.
Of course, it was obsolete compared to what the Japanese were offering, and even the Ford 2.3 four cylinder.
Paul, I e-mailed you a story a few days ago…has the e-mail address changed? I just wanted to make sure that you had received the story and photos.
No, I haven’t received anything from you. But if you sent it this past weekend, it got lost along with quite a few others from my e-mail hacking. Resend, please.
I’ll send it again tonight…it’s a story, along with photos. I sent it Saturday night, so it must have gotten lost.
Am I the only one that thinks the late X cars were REALLY good looking, or at least the basic lines were good? They look…Jaguar-esque? No, but they do look pretty slinky for an American sedan. And it is one case where the sedan looks far better than the 2-door to me.
This girl I went to school with had a Pontiac Phoenix, which was the last of the RWD X cars for Pontiac. Looked just like pictured Ventura except for the nose, so I don’t know why they changed the name. It had a 305 and an automatic, and dual exhausts with the pipes bent around to exit immediately behind the rear tires liked they always had. I thought that looked cool.
Out on the marching band practice field with our cars parked along the side, I’d ponder that Pontiac for considerable amounts of time. Its side profile was very captivating to me. Still is. The only other car I stared at quite the same way was an ’86 Seville, of all things. I know, I know, in context of its time, the ’86 Seville was an unmitigated disaster, but in the context of MY time, I like them.
The X cars were good looking. They had the right stance with the front wheels pushed forward with minimal overhang. It was the proper proportions of these cars that made the Cadillac Seville the success that it was, as it was based on the X.
One last thought, if anyone reads back: Pontiac already HAD a four on the design boards – the Tempest Slant-Four. Why, given their limp-wristed Duke’s shortcomings, didn’t they just pull that design up?
Because it still had the bottom end of a 326 V8. Imagine taking a sawzall to a V8 cutting off the cylinders and welding a steel plate over the holes that are left. They didn’t exactly do that way but that is what they looked like. A better engine would be the Pontiac OHC 6 with two cylinders lopped of to create a 4. I can testify a Firebird with the OHC 6 207 hp version is hot little package. I often wonder why GM never went that route.
Hi! My father worked as a mechanic at Yellow Cab in San Diego from ’76 through ’94. His name was Jesus Chavez, and usually went by Jesse. By chance, did you happen to know him?
No; I didn’t get to know the mechanics that well.
I had a 89 Grand Am with the Tech4 and I don’t remember ever thinking it was underpowed–I think it was smartest engine choice that year since the other 2 were the Quad 4 or the 2L Turbo.
When the POS Iron Duke debuted in 1977 I remember reading in Car & Driver, Road Test and I think Road & Track that it was based on the old Chevy II four; according to the articles when GM dropped the old four from the Nova they sold the tooling to GM Argentina. When they needed a “new” four cylinder they bought the tooling
back from GM Argentina and redesigned the engine as best they could. If true it would go a long way to explaining why this engine was such a POS.
Driving a ’70s sedan with six above 90….
typical youngsters. I did slightly over 100 years ago too.
Love that picture of Bob Lutz from back in his Opel days. As I remember there’s a good story behind it.
A weird, “CC Effect” coincidence: Yesterday, I watched a 1966 video on YouTube, in which San Diego’s Yellow Cab Company extolled the virtues of the Chevy II. Sounds like they switched back to full-sized Chevrolets by the time that Paul arrived.
https://youtu.be/IuNCNtRmnSo
Great film. And brought back memories of that Yellow Cab garage. Yes, they must have switched to the big cars, because that’s all that was there then, except that one Phoenix. And the ’73s had 350 V8s, so fuel economy was also a thing of the past.
As was the whole operation.I got a job there as a scab, during a strike. That strike was the beginning of the end of this old-school type of big cab operation where the fare income was split between the company and driver, but the company paid for gas, etc.
They went to the more typical lease arrangement, where drivers paid a flat fee per day/month to lease the cars. And eventually, Yellow cab in SD went belly up and then it was all just smaller operators. But back then, they had a monopoly in SD; there were no other cabs except Yellow.
I’m going to post this on its own.
This weekend I talked to an elderly woman who was slowly making her way to a car in a supermarket parking lot. From her VERY slow walk I hoped she was a passenger, but as is often the case, she was the driver. When she fired up her Chevy Lumina the engine made a very odd sound. The idle sounded a lot like one of those industrial air compressors….but with a sizeable leak. As she passed I saw her car in all it’s glory….a metallic gold Lumina sedan with what had to be the Iron Duke for power as there was a minimum of badging on the car, just Lumina and the Chevy bowties. She might have been that car’s only owner.
could have been either the Iron Duke or the 122 (2.2 OHV) depending on the model year.
I actually owned that car! Mine was a production 1977 Pontiac Ventura. I bought it way back in ’91. I saw it in the apartment complex where I lived at the time. It had a 5 spd stick, which I had never seen before in a car like that. Usually expected 3 on the three with the Chevy Six. I bought the car for $200. It had 108,000 miles on it, and it was very tired. Tired paint, tired seats, and an old very tried Iron Duke under the hood.
It was the strangest production car I had ever seen. The 5 speed was a Borg Warner “T-50” which had a conventional shift pattern with R at the upper left, and 1st right below like a standard 3 spd shift pattern, except there was an extra gate on the far right for gears 4 and 5. Under the hood was the Iron Duke, like no other Duke I had ever seen. It looked nothing like the one pictured on this web page. For one, the block and head were painted with the classic “Pontiac Blue” engine paint. The valve cover was chrome! It had a staged 2 barrel Holley carburetor. The air cleaner did not have a removable element, and was just sitting on top of the engine loosely.
To make a very long story short, the engine wasn’t running. I rebuilt the carb, replaced the fuel pump, and did a brake job to get it running. It was our first 2nd car. This car had suffered severe neglect. It idled ok, but the RWD X-body was quite heavy for the Iron Duke. The rear end was a 3.73 to help get the car moving, but the 5 spd. provided an overdrive to make up for it for cruising. The A/C had been removed. The rear main leaked 1 quart of oil every 100 miles. (not 1,000 miles, 100 miles). It was very sad. The carb had progressive linkage, so when you leaned on the gas enough, the 2nd barrel would open and the Duke would do it’s level best to give you surge of power. I maintained the car as best I could for about a year ( I couldn’t afford a new car at the time; I was young just starting out). One day I really needed to be somewhere fast, and took the car up to 65 mph for about 15 miles. The next day it overheated badly (pinging and engine oil frying); presumably a blown head gasket.
I replaced the engine and transmission with a Chevy 250 with a Saginaw 4-spd. That car was very interesting!