GM might as well be the abbreviation for Genius Marketers instead of General Motors. How else to explain over TWO MILLION suckers that purchased a Vega? And it’s not like it was all at once, the thing was on the market for seven full years with its best sales year in 1974, well after the cat was out of the bag and far down the road. I’m starting to think that P.T. Barnum was wrong, there’s more than one born every minute, there simply has to be.
Of course GM didn’t rest on their laureled crests with that feat, no, they handed their beer to the closest bystander and a few years later managed an even more impressive score with the launch and very successful sale of the X-car line (Citation, etc.) until eventually of course it all started to catch up with them; even Americans only have so many thoughts and prayers to get them through every easily avoidable tragedy. But that’s all a series of sordid tales for another day, today it’s this little Kammback’s day to shine like a little yellow sun under our not-so-loving gaze.
We do actually love our losers here at CC of course and none better than those of mighty GM, whose rich history includes some mighty highs which are well-celebrated and some lowly lows which are prepared as lessons for the future. If one won’t learn, well, then one is doomed…
We’ve told the tale of the Vega numerous times and everyone is likely aware of the broad strokes. Born from many fathers, none willing to shoulder the responsibility until the mighty John Z. ascended to Chevrolet’s throne, he then threw the full weight of the brand behind it.
Chevrolet needed a little car to compete, and, well, while pretty and with a cute smile, it was born overweight, overly expensive, and with its nannies on the assembly line striking like the Englanders across the pond with one action after another. Nevertheless, cars started trickling out for the 1971 model year, a trickly which quickly became a torrent for a first-year total of over 277,000, a model year total that was exceeded every year until 1975.
Four shapes (paternal quadruplets) were actually created, a Notchback, the Kammback wagon, a Panel Delivery (kind of a Kammback with side-eye patches), and the looker of the bunch, the Hatchback.
Halfway through, for 1974, there was a nosejob and a slight buttlift, neither of which did it any favors whatsoever, as the original was fairly svelte and lithe(-looking), though there was always a little overly heavy bone under the wafer-thin skin. Eventually there was even a slightly bionic version created (the Cosworth) but it sold poorly as the technology proved even more fragile than the standard stuff and it was more expensive than the market would really bear at the time.
Of course the Kammback name is a bit of marketing puffery as it isn’t really a “Kamm” back, it’s just a normal somewhat but not quite vertical wagon shape where the tail increases to a steeper angle, perhaps most similar if a little more upright to what was being peddled by Opel in a Buick showroom across the street. Or maybe just across the lot in some cases.
VW had the Squareback which it had been offering for some time but was more expensive, and of course the Pinto wagon was a thing at the time as were the nascent Japanese with the early Corolla wagons as well as the Datsun 610 wagon, all available in two-door form as well. The market was there, in other words.
So two door wagons were kind of hot at the time, and just one look makes obvious why; it isn’t unattractive at all, actually looks fairly rakish, the seating position could be kind of low and appealing to those of that time, the doors were long just like in a “real” car, the hatch was supremely convenient and at least two limber folks could sit in the back.
The louvered vents on the side of the Vega Kammback couldn’t be a more obvious ripoff of the ones on the VW Squareback, but as with on that one, they work and add at least 10hp visually.
The view from dead aft is probably the Kammback’s weakest angle, but at least the up-through-1973 bumper is nicely accentual instead of steatopygial (I’ve been waiting 34 years to use something I learned in Anthropology 101 my Freshman year in college, today is finally that day).
The hatch limbo-ing lower than Chubby Checker does result in an impressively low liftover height, in fact one can just slide all of one’s whatevers in there without fear of strain.
As a bonus there is a quite large underfloor storage compartment as well that at this point has accumulated an impressive tonnage of rodent turds.
Everyone can note the mini-Camaro vibe up front here even with the slight cleft lip this one’s currently got, and who doesn’t enjoy seeing the bulge of a couple of socks down their favorite guitar-rocker’s jeans as is evident on top of this hood. There’s no real powerhouse underneath here, with one-barrel 140c.i. (2.3l) inline-4 available as standrd and the 2-barrel version being optional.
In 1973 the 2-barrel engine as was originally fitted to this particular car produced 85hp and 115lb-ft of torque. This was a reduction from prior years’ ratings due to using the revised SAE reporting methodology and as emissions controls increased, however it was enough-ish for the day and the car’s mission. When it worked, that is. This little party piece isn’t accessed as per usual through the front but rather from the top as this hood is front-hinged.
And sadly we do not win the P. Niedermeyer contest for finding a running original engine in a Vega as this one is as empty as the soul of a GM beancounter whittling away at all of the things that make a car desirable. One wonders if that was the original engine that went bye-bye or if was the second or perhaps another as the engines were of course one of the significant weak points of the Vega line.
This sticker was in the doorjamb; Mobil 1 synthetic oil was in fact introduced in 1973 in Europe, but didn’t cross the pond until 1974. While today it is the “Official Oil of GM Performance” I’m intrigued as to what role it played in the Vega. Was this the oil used in a replacement engine? Or something else? I just don’t see the average Vega owner ponying up for Mobil 1 on the regular.
Many Vegas were built at Lordstown, Ohio, a plant that is famous (or infamous) for labor strife and other issues. However this is one of the Canadian-built ones, perhaps with a dollop of French-Canadian Pride in St. Therese, Quebec. The sixth digit’s a 3 so it’s a 1973 and enlarging it shows the car was built in October of 1972, with a fairly low sequence number for a year in which 400,000 Vegas were sold. It’s also clear that this car was originally blue instead of the yellow it wears now.
It clearly was repainted early in its life as this rather shocking fender rust-through shows. This is the result of GM not using inner fender liners until the next year. GM still doesn’t use them as standard in the rear of their full-size pickup trucks (none of the domestics do, just the imports) which results in the bed fenders rusting far quicker than the front fenders which do have inner liners in all of them as standard.
Why buyers/owners continue to put up with that I don’t know, but it’s an easy and cheap option to seriously prolong the life of this sheetmetal area. A cynic might say it’s obviously done to promote sales of repair panels and quicken trade-in times, but I wouldn’t know about cynicism, no Sir…!
In this case somebody used a rather large piece of fiberglass weave to effect a patch over the rust which solved the problem for about a winter or two, Maybe. Now it’s just flopping around like that off-brand Band-Aid you put on your sweaty thumb after you cut it doing yardwork ten minutes ago.
The show continues inside, where the disappearance of the passenger seat opens up a panoramic vista for us. The dashboard is fairly modern, seems well-padded enough, and there’s even a woodgrain applique on the shift lever surround.
The woodgrain is supposed to be paired with matching stuff on the doorpanels but this one doesn’t have that so who knows, perhaps the Plasti-Forest lumberjacks were in the midst of a sympathy strike when this one came down the line. This car does have the slush-o-matic which was not the thing to pair with a four-cylinder back in the day, at least not if forward progress was desired in a high-elevation state such as Colorado.
Look at that, there’s a badge known for quality! It even says so right on the sticker! And there’s the Vega badge in the opposite corner, having been dealt multiple knock-out punches over its lifespan but somehow getting back up off the ropes for Seven. Long. Years.
That panel by the way houses vents in other Vegas, so while this one was not equipped with Air Conditioning, of course occupants still do desire a whiff of fresh air at times, but not if you don’t pay the General a few extra Shekels for the privilege. Clean Air wasn’t considered a right until the first Act was enacted in 1963 and since the General was fighting emission controls, perhaps he figured he wasn’t providing anything clean or fresh, so no cigar unless it’s your own.
The AM and nothin’ else radio is there for the twiddlers amongst us with two knobs and five buttons and of course a ciggy-lighter to the left of it.
The view from the helm gives the driver the only things that matter in life, the speedometer and fuel level. How fast and how long… There’s also a blank in the upper right-hand corner to remind the driver of their cheapness of course.
While I dirtied my finger scrubbing the muck off the lens, the camera decided to focus elsewhere, however the mileage stood at 87,560 miles which seems heroic for just one Vega engine, but maybe on par for two. I doubt this one has been around the dial almost twice, so feel confident that this has been moldering somewhere for close to four decades now.
We can’t forget about the backseat passengers though, they were treated to a featureless bench with hard side panels and a pronounced center hump in the floor, and perhaps even a hump in the seat the way this one looks. At least the view out is far better than in something like a Lincoln MkIII through V so there’s that.
The Vega left GM with a serious black eye, but as alluded to earlier, the propensity for Americans to forgive is great. Of course many don’t like to be fooled more than once, yet that occurred to many as well. I’m sure some people had great experiences with Vegas and many (some? one?) probably traveled hundreds of thousands of miles without issue, yet they are exceedingly rare in the junkyards and even more so on the roads for what was at first a physically attractive and not unappealing package. If it was good there would be more of them today.
Here’s the first of two videos regarding the ’73 Vega, this one is about the most banal, insipid commercial I’ve sat through in a while telling you absolutely nothing about the cars, perhaps by design…
And this one is the polar opposite, actually informing the buyer about some reasons why a Vega might be a good idea…even if the way he squeezes the seat is a little creepy. You’ll see. Vega!
Related Reading:
Chevrolet Vega – Winner Of 1971 Small Car Comparison and GM’s Deadly Sin No. 2 by PN
Announcing The Great Vega Hunt: Who Will Find A Genuine CC Running Vega 2300? by PN
The Great Vega Hunt Continues – Bone Stock 1973 Notchback With Powerglide by Ed Stembridge
1976 Vega Cosworth #2196 – Muscle Memory, In Honor Of the Vega’s 50th Anniversary by Ed Stembridge
COAL: 1973 Vega – Were They Really That Bad? by Just Plain Joe
1974 Vega Kammback – GM’s Deadly Sexy Sin #2, Take Two by PN
TIL that the wagon without side windows was called “Panel Delivery” by Chevrolet.
In my mind, the term “panel delivery” implies a truck-based vehicle with a full-length body, generally used as the precursor to the “van”. The Vega, being car-based, should have been called a “sedan delivery”, as it was car-based.
Interestingly, Chevrolet was the last US manufacturer to sell a true Panel Delivery, the 1970 C-series panel, of which fewer than 10,000 were sold.
It could be interesting to know if GM continued to sold the Panel Delivery in Mexico like Ford did with the B100 in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s like this 1975 model or if they bring the Chevy Van/GMC Vandura south of the Rio Grande?
https://jalopnik.com/at-19-500-is-this-1975-ford-b-100-panel-truck-a-deal-1849567378
It was actually called the panel express.
Nice find, Jim. Did you add a Vega and/or Kammback badge to your collection? Priceless. And thanks for including all the links to past Vega CC’s. I don’t recall reading Just Plain Joe’s COAL of his ‘73 GT; I know there were a few other past Vega owners here but other than the color, Joe’s was pretty much identical to my own green ‘73 GT.
I feel some sentimentality for a few of the cars I have owned and sold, but despite that list including a few Alfa’s and a Scirocco, as well as some vehicles that have developed a cult following like our Vanagon, 80 Series Land Cruiser and Toyota T100, it’s the Vega that I’d most like to try again. Probably not to own, but at least to drive. I had it for four years, up to about 90k miles (about four times as long as the Scirocco which replaced it), and I recall really enjoying the driving experience. I wonder how it would feel with a more modern perspective.
I feel the same way. My future ex-wife had a very early new ’72 when we met. It had the 2bbl engine and was a similar green, but it was a base hatchback with a Powerglide. In terms of durability, it was absolutely atrocious, and despite being a new car, she kept it less than 2 years.
Yet, for some reason, I still liked driving it, and I can’t help but wonder how good it would be with be with at least a THM, Cosworth Twin Cam engine, a larger radiator, and assorted newer, more robust replacement parts. It was more my idea of what a Camaro should be.
FWIW, this one has the THM.
Yes, I noticed that. I think the THM was first offered in mid-’72, and was disappointed that my ex’s car missed out.
Considered one when they were introduced. but no. kept my 68 Cougar A good friend did buy a new Dk Green 74 Kammback not long after I got my 74 Audi Fox. He liked it and it was a decent dependable piece of transportation, lost it in the divorce to his 1st wife. He was a country hippie boy and she was a city girls school girl….a doomed relationship. Brother in law’s 1st new car was a copper 75 Vega Well apppointed. Also dependable. So that is 2 of the 2 Vegas I have had close association with where they seemed 180degrees from the accepted notion of vegas. Neither showed any tinworm issues. but then, both were of post teething issues build.
Another excellent junkyard find, and biography. On the plus side with these, GM did a beautiful job with the styling. Even, if it was cribbed. Wasn’t a fan at all, of the more traditional old school Chevrolet dash. But the Italian-inspired exterior, is near timeless. And partially why, so many people have bittersweet memories, regarding these. They also did a great job, with marketing. At least, with the early ads. Quite creative, and perfectly introduced the car. If only the design lived up, to its potential.
A few years ago, I prepared a Photoshop of a potential true GT wagon, easily able to accommodate the small block V8. Perhaps much cheaper to make than the Cosworth. If Ford and GM, had introduced affordable factory performance versions of their early ’70s subcompacts, it might have afforded the cars and companies a better legacy.
Beautiful, looks Italian or British.
I am surprised this one ended up in the scrapyard. Likely a junked-up lot clearance and no title. Even one with no paperwork, in this condition, likely could have been “sold” on CL, for parts.
A lot of people bought these, and also Citations, because many people really tried to support the domestic manufacturers, back in the day. Domestics were all domestic, foreign cars were all foreign, and many buyers, especially in the Midwest, would not buy foreign cars, under any circumstances. All of that is different now. GM had built up a huge amount of goodwill, and it took a good couple of decades of disasters and mediocrities to exhaust it all.
As a Midwesterner, we didn’t see many Japanese cars, until after the Oil Crisis of 1973. So there wasn’t any resistance to Toyota or Datsun in the Midwest – they weren’t much around. Foreign cars were very well known in my neighborhood. Volvo, SAAB, VW, Triumph, Midget, DAF, Opel, and Mercedes owners were all on my block. I grew up in blue collar Chicagoland and WWII immigrants surrounded us and they brought their tastes in cars along with them. Dutch, German, Norwegian, Polish, Czech and Spanish were all spoken ON MY BLOCK.
So don’t read into the fact that we weren’t buying Toyota or Datsun as being opposed to foreign makes. It just isn’t true. We liked our little imports. They were hobby or second cars for dads. Why? BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO SMALL.
We had large families, and you cannot cram a family of six or more into a small imported car. We had to buy affordable large cars and those cars were made in the Midwest. Ford’s Torrence Avenue assembly plant is only 10 miles north of where I grew up. Ford’s Stamping Plant was three miles south. Chrysler’s Belvedere plant was 90 minutes northwest. AMC was two hours north in Kenosha. Studebaker was two hours east in South Bend. You want to know who made cars? WE DID. We worked for those companies and for the companies supplying parts for those cars!
So can the crap about being opposed to buying foreign. You make us sound like ignorant rubes. Can the crap about wanting to buy domestic over foreign – that’s also totally untrue. Not only did we drive foreign cars, our fathers and mothers MADE domestic cars. Most families got a manufacturer’s discount to drive the brands they made. The average family size rules out Toyota and Datsun.
Toyota and Datsun really don’t show up until after 1974. Before that, everything was European, especially VW.
They weren’t being rubes, they were being loyal to local employers and to their friends and neighbors who had relatives working at the plants. That’s a small form of noble behavior that is less often seen these days.
And the Detroit marketing guys worked that angle very hard (“Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet”). The Deadly Sins of the Malaise Era are on the backs of Detroit, not the buyers (who were some significant minority of buyers, but still a minority, even in the Midwest), who often demonstrated brand loyalty in the face of objectively inferior Detroit offerings, by many important measures (until they didn’t any more).
“and many buyers, especially in the Midwest, would not buy foreign cars, under any circumstances.”
That’s what you wrote. The idea that we would never buy a foreign car under any circumstance is an common trope trotted around as though it is fact and it is not. The fact that the Midwest was a tough market to crack for the Japanese auto market is not due to the narrow mindedness of Midwesterners. It was an excuse.
It wasn’t a default position, no. That sentiment was real in certain circles, however, and it was particularly prevalent in the upper Midwest where auto manufacturing put food on many a table, as you rightfully pointed out. Scenes like this weren’t one-offs:
As a Michigan native, I agree. Talk of buying a foreign car was often as heated as politics.
But especially in the rural parts (like anything north of Lansing), there were reasons other than supporting our state’s workers. Support for foreign cars up north was little to none. Nearest dealers and service centers were only in the urban areas, which was often a several hours drive. Local mechanics didn’t know how to work on them. Parts were ungodly expensive, that is if you could even get them. They supposedly needed fewer repairs, but when they did, watch out. Even basic foreign brands such as Toyota, Nissan, Honda.
After 2000 the playing field started to level, but it’s still limited. I think it was late 2000s, a coworker had a Hyundai Sonata with a brake rotor chewed up by a stone stuck in it. Nearest brake rotor was over 3 hours away in Grand Rapids. Yet then and now, there is always one or more parts stores that stocks parts for my 80s/90s GMs and Jeeps. As far as my Geo/Suzuki, it might as well no longer exist.
That’s a great image, but I don’t think the sentiment expressed on that sign worked out quite the way it was intended with all of the Japanese and many of the Germans and some of the others fairly swiftly building American plants to employ American (but non-union) workers for a large to huge percentage of their products sold both here as well as exported from here and the American companies looking and succeeding in off-shoring more and more of their product, then importing it here to sell it. If they staged that same photo again today then they should be using a Mustang Mach-E or a Buick Envision.
And while I understand how (and why) NAFTA and its replacement work and how the CAW is analagous to the UAW, I (with no slight meant to our Canadian and Mexican readers) find it difficult to consider something made in a sovereign country beyond the USA’s borders to be considered a domestically built product (or component). In the end I believe that the line worker’s wages and where they are earned and spent are far more important and useful to an overall and especially local economy than whatever stock options and perhaps enormous salary the CEO and upper management earns, much of which is not re-circulated into the economy at large.
If American-owned, American-designed, American-built (as in USA, not just North American) including major components such as drivetrain along with final assembly is actually important to people, then the choices in the marketplace are quite slim nowadays with a perhaps to some surprising number of “American” cars being nothing of the like. 3 of the 4 Buicks in the 2023 lineup, several full size pickup truck versions for one manufacturer, a major percentage of the V8 engines for another, the leading EV not named Tesla, the last two remaining domestically badged full size RWD cars, and many more, all with domestic badges – but none of them assembled in any of the 50 states. A large percentage of people that think they are buying American really aren’t and many who may be lambasted for buying foreign are doing nothing of the like either. Then there’s the apparently large group of people that think Tesla is a foreign brand and their cars are imported to the US…Oy. Buy the best car that does the best job for you and your family for your money or dig deep and see which car actually represents what you think it represents if a particular aspect is important to you.
My take on imports in the midwest back in the day – during my early 1970s driving days (in Madison, Wisconsin) my friends and I saw a variety of imports, but the problem we noticed was that they rusted even faster than the domestics. You could (almost) stand around and watch the rust eating VWs, early Honda Civics and the few Toyotas in town. I drove ’60s Novas and Mustangs.
Vega is proof that you cannot judge a car on looks alone.
Great write up Jim! As a former owner of a ’73 Vega GT Kammback, I think that I’m most impressed with the color change on this one. Someone put a lot of work into a pretty thorough paint job given the canvas they had to work with. A base model was worth its weight in…scrap… so that was quite an investment!
I’m wondering if someone fitted a Medium Blue front clip on a Chamois colored car, then painted to match. I don’t think this colored interior was fitted on the blue cars, and I just don’t think someone would go to the trouble of masking around every door opening as diligently as is seen on this car. I could be wrong, though…
It appears to have been a blue car if you look at where the side trim strips used to be. I’m guessing it was repainted fairly early in its life due to the care taken although why they didn’t remove the side trim is beyond me….
I missed that, I really need a new pair of glasses!
It’s hard for me to imagine this color interior being attractively paired with Medium Blue.
BTW, I always enjoy your curbside recycling posts, Jim.
Thank you!
Very sad; quite a “fair lot” of the car left though. That , in itself, is surprising.
Vega by Chevrolet. Like Cimarron by Cadillac. As they didn’t want to be associated with it at first.
The first year’s cars did get large script “Chevrolet” emblems with “VEGA 2300” in smaller block lettering beneath it; no “by Chevrolet” yet. I guess they lost confidence after seeing how the ’71s turned out.
Well, they look great in the commercials! They use the term “little car” instead of “small”, “new-sized”, or “sub-compact”.
As to why so many “suckers” bought them (as well as other crappy cars like Citation, etc.)–the so-called “oil shortage” really panicked people. You say that sales didn’t really take off until 1974–that’s when the oil crisis hit. And buyers kept coming back because, you know, everyone knows Chevrolet, and there’s a huge dealer network, and the cars were cheap.
CC is filled with excellent cars that sold poorly. And crummy cars that sold like mad. We tend to over-estimate the taste and sophistication of the general buying public. And it was the ’70s, when nearly everything was turning into cheesy crap.
In the ’50s, the domestic economy buyer got a solidly built car that was roomy, comfortable, quite durable, with good visibility and made of good materials, even if it had less chrome trim. Today’s economy buyer can buy just about any low-priced model, and it will be light years ahead of these older cars in terms of power, handling and reliability. It’s hard to believe that I remember a time when cars like this Vega were “the norm”.
I personally find the Vega attractive and completely understand why they sold in the beginning and why sales in the first few years were very strong, not everyone needs (or wants) a huge car. The high point of ’74 number surprised me, although that is the year of the facelift so maybe that gave it a new “pop” as well as gas prices, although ’75 sales dropped off precipitously and never recovered.
1971 – 277k
1972 – 394k
1973 – 427k
1974 – 460k
1975 – 207k
1976 – 160k
1977 – 78k
The Monza came out for ’75, with most of the same body styles, and even more expressive styling. And it was based on the same platform. I’m surprised they sold as many ’75 Vegas as they did. The post ’74 models likely sold mostly on price alone.
Also, it wasn’t until 1974-1975 that the public came to be aware of the Vega’s shortcomings. It took 2-3 years for all those front fenders to rust through.
Didn’t the Monza come out originally as just a coupe and add the notchback and wagon – no longer a Kammback! – in 1978, following the Vega’s demise?
1974 = Energy Crisis. The Pinto was the best selling nameplate that year.
I cannot remember ever seeing one in the flesh, and am not sure these Kaambacks were actually sold here in the Netherlands.
These are really beautiful cars. On the looks alone I would not mind one but the rest, well. Not sure I could live with that tiny engine and bland interior.
The GT had a much better interior, and on my ‘73 GT the front seats were exceptionally comfortable. I bought mine used on 1976 to replace my ten year old Volvo 122S (Amazon) and the seats were more comfortable for me, although my ‘65 Amazon had the first-year upgraded seats which seemed to deteriorate, both upholstery and padding, than the earlier seats like those fitted to my parents’ 1964 Volvo which lasted another decade. And, coming from the 1.8 liter Volvo, but also keeping the Vega through ownership of a 2 liter Alfa and a 1600 Kent-powered Fiesta, the 2.3 liter Vega motor felt very torquey and tractable. Which was a good thing as of course it didn’t like to rev. I also briefly drove a Cosworth Vega and by the standards of the time it was pretty nice.
Thankfully, those large, clunky, and unsightly, under roof-mounted hatchback hinges, didn’t last long on most cars. Replaced soon, with much smaller, more conventional hinges, and pressurized gas struts.
What a find! Even in Colorado, the Vega rusted faster than most of its contemporaries, by the looks of this survivor. All Vegas were attractive cars, but I agree that the early 1971-73 models looked best.
My father’s 1974 notchback saw its life extended when my brother submarined it under a pickup in a low speed accident. No injuries, and the mechanicals were fine, but all the sheet metal in front of the A-pillar was replaced. Before the accident, when the car was three years old, the front fenders had numerous holes in the rocker panels and around the wheel arches and the hood sported several patches where it had rusted through. Dad traded the Vega two years later for a Chevette and actually got some extra money from the dealer who saw parts potential from an otherwise throughly used up car.
I worked at a gas station in high school. The manager won a car in a street race – his Corvette beat a heavily modified Vega with a high output V8. Real life “pink slip” racing.
It had a racing Powerglide transmission and a Dodge Dart rear end so the giant rear
wheels stuck way out and dwarfed the front wheels.
He gave it to his younger brother who attended the same high school as me. He left early
every day and popped wheelies regularly for all to see. That was 1976. Wonder how many
had second lives as street modified racers.
Of the few Vegas that didn’t loose their life to the rust monster, lost it due to the small blocked dropped in place of the original engine.
One mental game I like to play at the junkyards is to add up the rows of cars out there, at about $25k a pop when new. Some cost more, some less, but financing charges got thrown in there as well, likely more often on the cheaper ones. Adding it up, in any given lot on any given weekend, gives one a staggering figure. On top of that are the operating and maintenance costs, insurance and licensing, and most of the value has been depreciated into nothing over the years, on any given car. The collective consumer financial commitment to the automobile is amazing to tally up.
With all of that in mind, the manufacturers really do have a responsibility of sorts (not legal, but something close to moral) to manufacture the best cars they can make. No more Deadly Sins. People are making such a financial commitment to their cars, and they need them to last much longer than the typical Vega managed to last.
I drove 2 different Vegas as a youth. A 1974 Notchback and a 1976 Kammback. Both cars had the fender vents – you can see the levers on the driver’s and passenger’s sides. Those vents provided a good amount of air – you almost did not need A/C, especially on the highway.
The 74 probably saved my life – I was T-boned by a 1966 Wildcat that would have decimated a 1974 Corolla or Datsun 210. It drank oil, smoked, stalled and backfired. But it was a car!
The 76 was much better, and had power steering. I slept in the back in Washington Square Park once with some college friends when we went partying in NYC.
I just like that it’s the same color of hearing aid-beige as an Austin Allegro… another dearly beloved car.
I think I would have tried to cut out that dash panel saying “Vega” for posterity.
Another great junkyard find Jim, even with the massive fiberglass patch on the fender this is relatively rust free for a Vega. Drop in a S10 drivetrain, hose out the rat turds and hit the streets. Or go Lemons racing.
Again, I still carry the torch for our 73 hatchback, which wasn’t completely terrible (excellent by Vega standards)
And I had no idea that any Vegas were made in Canada. There’s another CC fact!
My parents bought a new 72 Kammback to replace our 67 Saab 95 wagon when the transmission failed. They had never bought an American car before – besides the Saab, predecessors had been a Volvo PV and a Renault Dauphine. I think after the Saab they were hoping for reliability, as the electrical system in the Saab was horrible and it would often quit if it was particularly humid or rainy.
Obviously improved reliability was not to be as it started smoking after something like 5 months. At first Chevy refused to replace the engine, but my normally non-confrontational dad got progressively angrier and eventually balled out the zone manager and it did get done.
After that the car wasn’t bad for a few years, with long heavily loaded summer roadtrips to Maine every year and frequent trips from Philly to Providence. Those trips give me very fond memories of the car. Finally, when I hit my mid-teens (back seat was tiny; I wasn’t) they traded it in on a 77 Impala wagon, which was the best car they ever had.
God, the Vega was a beautiful car. The styling was the one thing GM got really right. If only they’d put an aluminum crossflow head on the Chevy II 153 four from the get-go and put the savings to better rustproofing and quality control. Oh well, 20/20 hindsight, Monday morning quarterbacks and such…
Part of the reason I thought the final season of Mad Men was disappointing was the previous season explicitly set it up so Sterling Cooper and Partners were to do those insipid Vega ads, but they never went anywhere with it. I was so excited when I heard XP-887, imagining Peggy calling it a piece of junk and Don struggling to spin it into that stupid happy face ad
FWIW a lot of cars don’t have fender liners, then and now, foreign and domestic depending on the model, though fronts are definitely the norm, but the Vegas rotted abnormally fast and extensively, as did the Chrysler F bodies. I chalk it primarily to poor steel quality and poor corrosion protection techniques, a liner might have helped for a year or two extra but it’ll corrode eventually, cars with liners, even modern ones usually rot at the bottoms where road debris and leaves collect from behind through windshield drain channels and panel gaps, the liners actually make it harder to clean that crud out.
In real life those ads were done by Campbell-Ewald, Chevy’s ad agency since the invention of the wheel. But they and the matching showroom materials looked different enough from the rest of the Chevy line’s ads that they could well have been the product of a separate agency.
I had imagined Don proudly presenting Sally with one for her 16th birthday only for it to break down on a regular basis, often at the worst possible times.
Argh! Another article dumping on the Vega.
So be it, as a former 74 GT hatch owner I’m in the minority. My little Vega did me well until, you know, the engine overheated. And did I forget or did I never know Vega’s were built in my country?
What a shame such a good looking car was so poorly engineered biting many well intentioned buyers down the road.
Huh, I just reread what I wrote and don’t think I dumped on it anywhere near as badly as perhaps the things I’ve said (and believe) about certain Cadillac products. I did point out very generally the engine woes and the rust issues (both facts, nothing gratuitous there, and hard to just ignore that fender) and maybe veered towards the critical in matters of interior ventilation and gauge (gage) package but that’s about it and objectively I don’t think anyone would disagree.
On the plus side I waxed somewhat poetically about its looks, how the hatchback is especially pretty, how the performance was probably just fine in its day (even if an automatic equipped I-4 isn’t the hot ticket for 5000 ft minimum elevation, the inference was that it’s probably fine at sea-level-ish), the interior was decent, and the early bumpers etc looked great (and better than the facelift ones) and that it sold very well except for the Cosworth which was another self-inflicted wound.
Any demerits I brought up were I believe self-inflicted by the car or at least burdened upon it by its creators and experienced by many more than the average number of owners of the average car..
This is the first Vega I’ve seen anywhere in the last couple of years. 2 million were sold. Although I’ll now probably see several more in the next month…
From my amateur sleuthing, Mobil 1 switched to round plastic bottles, from cans, in 1985. Not sure when they stopped calling it ‘synthesized engine lubricant’. This label could date from the late ’70s. Or closer to 1975/1976? Remarkable. Print ad below, is from 1984/’85. When they made the switch from cans to bottles.
Before my time, but I do recall the Vega having a bad rep as a very little kid in the mid ’70s. It mostly seemed from word-of-mouth from owners, knowing it was a POS, at the grassroots/street level. I used to read my dad’s ‘Time Canada’ magazines every week between about 1974 and 1979. And Ford with their rust issues, corporate in-fighting, and Pinto gas tank, seemed to get more regular bad press. Purely anecdotal.
1976/1977 commercial with Vic Tayback. Tayback started playing, ‘Mel’ the short order cook in 1976, in the TV series ‘Alice’. ‘Synthesized engine lubricant’ on the can. As on the junkyard Vega label.
Spent my junior-year summer of 1986 working for Princeton’s in-house architecture office, which shared a building with the facilities department. We also shared a pair of clapped-out Kammbacks painted a dull dark green with orange lettering – as were all facilities vehicles back then. (They’re all white these days.)
They had the overworked four and very worn four-speed manuals, and the interior was black vinyl and plastic. Sad, sad little cars, and I wish I could say they were fun to drive, but they definitely weren’t.
Can’t resist, but one last word on the Vega. I paid $1200 for my three year old 1973 GT, which was in “very good” condition though fairly high mileage at 60k. In 2023 dollars that’s a bit over $6000. I just checked the private party blue book for a three year old Mitsubishi Mirage GT with 60K miles: over $12000. I picked the Mirage because I assumed it’s about the cheapest car one can get in the US. As a sanity check a base Nissan Versa is worth about a grand more than the Mirage, so 2x the value of the Vega in equivalent dollars. Of course these 2020 model year cars are safer, cleaner, more refined and probably quicker and far more economical than any Vega, but the fact remains that within just a few years of its launch, the Vega’s reputation made it a great used car buy.
I always like the Pininfarina-inspired mini-Camaro styling of the Vega in general. The Kammback reminded me of the Volvo 1800 ES shooting break, as well as the ’84 Honda Civic Hatchback.
I am late but cannot resist joining this lively Vega discussion. I vividly remember what big news the Pinto and Vega were in late 1970 – The two biggest names in the US auto industry were going mano-a-mano against the imports. I remember being a Ford fan at the time and being chagrined at how good looking and appealing the Vega was.
One reason they sold so many was because it was a Chevrolet, and Chevrolet was the best selling brand in the US (had been for years) and had a dealer body second to none. In the midwest, buying a Chevy was what most people considered normal. Everyone assumed the car would be good – it was a Chevrolet, wasn’t it? I think by 1974, the combination of the energy crisis and that then-reasonable belief that all of the Vega’s problems had been with earlier cars and were now fixed got the thing to record sales that year.
I still love the looks of these. But I hated that butterscotch-y paint color that was so popular in the 70s.
One would forget but the Chevy Cobalt based HHR was the actual spiritual successor niche to the Chevy Vega Kammback, Monza Wagon and Cavalier Wagon.
Never would have thought of it that way. I always thought the HHR was nothing more than GM’s answer to competing with Chrysler’s PT Cruiser.
I need a manual for this specific car. Where can I order one? Trying to restore. Thanks